Content Marketing: How to Get More Results Spending Less Time Creating Content
According to Wikipedia, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is named after an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto. In 1906 he noted that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. This was later developed as a principle and known as a specific power law distribution thanks to a production quality/flaws analysis made by consultant Joseph M. Juran.
How does this principle apply to content marketing? Well, the literal application of the rule to content marketing would mean that you’d spend 80% of your time promoting your content and only 20% creating it. In a practical example, this could be visualized better if I put it this way: say that it took you or your team 10 hours to create a piece of content. Logic follows that you’d need to spend 40 hours promoting it. However, that’s not a very efficient way to go about it, because the content you’ve just created may not interest your audience that much, and you may not get visible results from this effort.
How to apply the 80/20 rule to content marketing?
The real world application of this rule is much different from the example shown above. The implication of the principle is that 80% of our results come from 20% of our activities. So, by focusing on the activities that consistently drive traffic to your brand’s site, engages your audience, gets more subscribers, etc., you can identify the type of content that will be most effective for your company.
The point of this rule is then to identify those activities that make up the 20% and that are responsible for 80% of the buzz your brand creates. It’s not just about creating less and promoting more.
How to use the 80/20 rule in content marketing?
- Track your data: if you’re creating content for your website, the first step you should take is to make use of an analytics tool that will allow you to visualize which of your content is getting the most results.
- Identify the 20%: Now that you can see which pieces give your company the best results possible, you can start working directly with these, narrowing your focus so that your efforts are more effective. Also, don’t be literal about it, it doesn’t have to add up to exactly 20%, just take note of the best performing content your brand produces.
- Expand your reach: So, thanks to all of your data tracking, you now that you have a better idea of what’s giving you traffic, more buzz and more leads. It’s time to start creating more of the effective content and expand your reach. This means promoting it as much as you can without spamming your audience (nobody likes a spammer). Try using a new social media platform, guest blog, reach out to influencers via email outreach with the help of email finding tool; basically, focus on distributing your content.
- Evaluate the results: Once you start using the 80/20 rule in your content marketing strategy, you have to keep track of the results you’re getting (like with any other strategy). See how it’s doing, what could make it better, measure the success of each piece of content across the different platforms. This way you can continue narrowing down your focus to those activities that have the highest impact.
- Repeat: Take all you’ve learned from step four, improve where you need to, and repeat the steps all over again.
Conclusion
Content marketing is not a one size fits all endeavor; different companies and brands all have different objectives and audiences. What works for one brand may not work for you; their 20% activities may be the complete opposite of your company’s.
The important thing here is to identify your 20% and invest your time in creating solely that kind of content, because believe it or not, the fact that 80% of your marketing results come from 20% of your marketing strategies is completely true.
