Applying the 80/20 Rule to Your Content Creation and Promotion Strategies (2)
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If you're looking for a way to streamline your content strategy and get more bang for your buck, begin with a detailed audit of your existing content. That said, revisiting old content shouldn't take over your entire strategy. Even when you're up to your eyeballs updating and promoting old content, it is a good idea to make sure you're not neglecting your blog. Have you ever landed on a blog that hasn't been updated for two or three months (or longer)? It doesn't look good, does it? Did you assume the person or company behind the blog has given up on it? Yep, probably. And did you hit “subscribe”? I didn't think so. Delving into your content archives is an awesome way to reap more rewards from old content, but you should make sure you're allocating some resources to creating new content. How to Promote Content… In the Words of Derek Halpern There are tons of different ways to promote content, and if you ask around, chances are, every person will give you slightly different advice. This post alone, curated by Kristi Hines, includes 32 different content promotion tips from 32 different marketers.
These include “have a relationship with your social connections” (from Heidi Cohen), “email people you mention in your posts and ask them to tweet” (from Neil Patel), “share influencer content without asking for anything in return” (Joe Pulizzi) and “facilitate real social buzz for quality content with Viral Content Buzz” (from Gerald Weber).
However, if you ask Derek Halpern his views on how to promote content, he'll likely summarize his advice into four succinct words: “write email, hit send”. Now, I don't by any means believe that this is the only content promotion strategy you should use. Personally, I'm a big believer in never putting all your eggs in one basket. That said, I have to admit that Derek seems to be onto something. Why? Because if someone asked me, “what singlecontent promotion tactic should I use?” I would say “email outreach.”
This is because, in my experience, the single most effective content promotion tactic is email outreach.
As you'll see in this post from Derek, there are a lot of myths surrounding how you should and shouldn't do content promotion… Myth: Timing your Twitter updates is really, really important.
Reality: In most cases, Twitter has such a negligible impact on referral traffic that when you Tweet doesn't really matter that much (just try not to Tweet when most of your followers will be in bed). Myth: Your existing readers will promote your content for you.
Reality: Unless you already have a really large, loyal, and active following (aka, Mark Schaefer), to put it bluntly, they won't. Myth: You don't have enough time. Truth: Chances are, time isn't the issue – your priorities are. If you believed your blog, your content, and its promotion were as important as they actually are, you would make time, period. So make the time!
You could spend your time worrying about the perfect day, hour, and minute to send a Tweet. You could sit back and assume your existing audience will carry your content for you. Or you could push content to the back of your mind because there's something (always, something) more pressing to deal with. Or… you could actually start producing content on a regular basis (it doesn't have to be often – it just has to be routine) andpromoting the heck out of it. It all comes right back around to the 80/20 rule: create less content, and spend more time promoting it.
In Summary There's tons of misinformation surrounding the 80/20 rule. Mark Schaefer is, quite clearly, not a fan. But he's not reallygetting what it's really about. The 80/20 rule is not about taking your existing content plan and upping the amount of time you spend on content promotion five-fold.
The 80/20 rule is about cutting back on the amount of time you spend on content creation, investing more time and effort into producing quality content over quantity content, and investing more time and effort into promoting that content.
It's a rule that's best suited to those that are relatively new to the content marketing game – the brands and bloggers that don't have an existing audience to consume their content that are trying to build one. The brands and bloggers for whom, producing more content will offer them very little benefit – unless they're also able to increase that content's visibility. How can they do that?
By focusing less on content production, and more on content promotion – at an 80/20 ratio (or thereabouts).
That said, if you do already have a decent following, you can still apply and benefit from the 80/20 rule.
Instead of cutting back on your content creation, you simply apply the 80/20 rule strategically. What does this mean? Instead of applying it to every piece of content, you apply it only to that truly great content which you believe has the potential to go “viral”.
Whatever your situation, and however you apply it, the 80/20 rule isn't about weighing yourself down trying to push content that clearly isn't cut out to perform. It's about ensuring you give your content the time and energy it needs so that it attracts the attention it deserves.
