Using the 80/20 Rule to Enhance your Social Media Strategy

Happy New Year! 2017 is the perfect year for you to stretch your small business muscles and engage in proactive planning, goal setting and, with a little help from yours truly, creating and implementing a social media strategy. The 80/20 rule (also known as the Pareto principle), wherein roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, will be extremely useful in the planning and implementation of your social media strategy.

The very simple way of applying this theory is to remember that 80% of your social media posts should discuss or invoke themes of interest to your audience (all those prospective customers!) and the other 20% should be focused on self-promotion (basically, talk about yourself, or better yet, your business, 20% of the time)!

“But Claire,” you say, “I’m too busy running my business to spend so much time thinking about my social media presence, especially now that you’re asking me to track the content of my posts!” Of course you’re busy – running a small business is hard work. So, to help you, I’ve created a handy checklist that can assist you in effortlessly applying the 80/20 rule to your social media posts.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY – 80/20 CHECKLIST

1. Identify your audience. You should be able to close your eyes and picture your ideal customer.

2. How old are they?

3. Where do they work?

4. What is their gender?

5. Why do they need or want your service?

6. Create shareable content (keeping the 80/20 rule in mind). One of the best ways to get the word out about your product or service is by creating content that customers want to “share.”

7. Keep your posts between 300-500 words;

8. Include a well thought-out image;

9. Making sure you are using the appropriate key words;

10. Make sure the post is public so that others can share it.

11. Set goals and a schedule.

12. How many times a day do you want to post?

13. Find a software (e.g., postcron or hootsuite) to help you schedule your posts.

REMEMBER: Each social media platform caters to a different demographic and your posts should be tailored accordingly. Below are tips about how to do this.

FACEBOOK:

1. Be sure to TAG relevant pages.

2. USE PAID ADS if they will help increase awareness of your product or service. This can be especially useful when you are discounting services or produce or when your business is doing a large promotion.

3. RESPOND to fans. INTERACT thoughtfully. Ways to do this include a live-video mention, answering questions in the comments, or hosting a live question and answer session.

TWITTER:

1. TWEET REGULARLY. Tweets should include at least one of the following:

2. Content offers;

3. Calls to action;

4. Images that relate to your product or service.

5. FOLLOW new people every day to increase your visibility.

6. MONITOR your use of KEY WORDS.

7. RESPOND POSITIVELY to tweets by followers.

PINTREST:

1. ADD KEY WORDS to your pins.

2. BE CREATIVE in naming your boards to attract a wide audience.

3. FOLLOW a new board each week.

4. LINK pins back to your website.

YOUTUBE:

1. CREATE videos that showcase your expertise.

2. ASK questions of your fans/followers; CREATE a follow-up video to discuss their answers.

3. ADD personality and fun to your videos. Make them MEMORABLE.

I know that maintaining your social media presence can be a beast! Bookmark this post so that you can come back to it the next time you are working on your social media strategy. Better yet, LET US HANDLE IT FOR YOU! We offer . . . Packages large and small for maintaining all your social media needs.