The 80/20 Rule of Content Marketing

Jemully Media - The 80/20 rule in content marketing

The 80/20 Rule of Marketing

Or: Why constantly promoting yourself and your services can have the opposite effect.

One of the best ways to explain the 20/20 rule of marketing is to imagine a scenario where you are hanging out with your friends. What if you only talked about ONE thing… every single time you hung out. And that one thing was something you were trying to sell to them. YIKES! Probably not the best way to keep friends, right? Perhaps you would be lucky if those same friend would hang out if you only talked about what you were sellingt 80% of the time. Then you could engage in conversation about other topics 20% of the time. How about, an even better idea. What if you switched the 80/20 rule around and most of the time you could talk about mutually entertaining and enjoyable subjects, leaving only 20% of the time to promote your product? 

The same idea holds true for social media practices. If a company only posts about their products and services, their friends and followers may quickly tire of hearing about it. Ideally, companies will intersperse this type of information among other content that is a little more personal and engaging. Just as your friends want to learn more about you, a company’s following typically wants more than just a sales message.

At Jemully, we encourage our clients to follow the “80/20” rule for social media marketing. In fact, we recommend the 80/20 marketing mix for all of your content marketing. This rule says only 20% of the content will directly promote your products or services. The other 80% can be topics related to your brand, or things that you have strategically planned that your audience will enjoy. We can adjust these percentages, depending on the client, but it is a good rule of thumb. You are more likely to get engagement on your posts if they vary in type. It makes your sales pitch less likely to be tuned out by your audience.

20 percent self-promotion and 80 percent other content

 

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Using Long-Tail Keywords In Your Web Content

how long-tail keywords help your SEO

Long-Tail Keywords (LTKs) can be your secret SEO weapon for attracting highly specific and actionable traffic.

As anyone not privy to Google’s ever-evolving search engine crawling algorithm can (and should) tell you, SEO (search engine optimization) is a long-term commitment and the process is never finished. Text-based content, meta descriptions, image descriptions, headings, URLs, links… there are an awful lot of factors and knowing the list is an essential part of the uphill battle. Here, we are focusing on one specific and unheralded element of SEO: The Long-Tail Keyword.

But first…

Keywords

While they are not officially designated like the items listed above, keywords woven throughout your site, and the relevance and richness they lend your content, are ultimately the most important factor in SEO. Search engines (Google) seek to find the results that best match a Googler’s inquiry. Google is really good at finding the best results. That’s why it’s so popular. The best results (websites) are those best able to demonstrate to Google’s crawling non-human bots that they have the best and most relevant content. So basically, if you want to show up on the results page when someone searches for “shoes,” your website better be all about shoes, or at least have a lot of shoe-related content.

Over the years, there have been loopholes and cheats that enterprising webmasters have found to artificially boost their SEO. For example; cramming an unnatural amount of keywords into a page, or using trendy keywords in content that had otherwise nothing to do with those particular trends. These practices and many others are always snuffed out by Google’s crawlers, which are constantly improving because—you guessed it—negating shady practices ultimately helps yield better search results to Googlers. Again, Google is very good at this, which is why Google is far and away the top search engine, owning an estimated 70% of the global search engine market.Continue reading

Factors Impacting Your Social Media Management Costs

Which major factors can cause social media management costs to go up (or down)?

Social Media costs go up and down as your social media needs change. There is no “one size fits all” approach. However, there are some factors that impact the social media costs to fluctuate. Being armed with the knowledge can help you plan and prepare strategically for times when you need the budget to fluctuate.

  • Strategy
  • Frequency of posting & engagement
  • Quality of posting
  • Scope of creative services (graphic design, video creation/editing, writing service)

 

1) Strategy

Before a social media campaign’s frequency, quality, and creative services can be determined, a strategy must be developed. How detailed should your social media strategy be? Social media strategies begin with determining the specific target audience, selecting the right platforms to reach that audience, and then defining the goals, how you will measure success, and actions are considered a conversion. These aspects can be as general or as highly detailed as you see fit, but they must both be in place to effectively determine your social media costs. In our experience, we believe the more detail in your strategy and plan, the better your execution will be, and the better you can control the social media costs in the future.

For our comprehensive guide to defining your target market, click here.
Goals, Measurements, Conversions – What are you looking to achieve with your social media campaign? Knowing your goals will help your social media team (whether they are in-house or an agency) put together a strategic plan to accomplish the goals. Some goals to consider are:
    • increasing followers to boost brand awareness and website traffic
    • engagements and interactions including comments, likes, shares, re-pins, lists, etc.
    • customer service and answering customer questions through social media messaging
    • lead generation through sign-ups, downloads, phone calls, brick-and-mortar visits, etc.
    • online sales

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