Social Media Content Ratio: What is the right mix for posting original and shared content?

• Team Outreach @ KDROM
• Business, Corporate, Digital Marketing Strategies, Inbound Marketing, Social Media

As a follow-up to our post on three great reasons to use social media, we want to consider the next topic – the Social Media Content Ratio. 

We hear one very common objection to posting on social media or creating blog posts – It’s hard to write and leverage the content.  True, if it were easy, everyone would do it.  Creating content in the right context plays the very important role of converting strangers into promoters for your business.  Distribution is what makes that content relevant – the right distribution technique gets the right content in front of the right person at the right time. There are no shortcuts, creating tailored content that is leveraged and speaks to your audience in their voice is fundamental to developing a successful content strategy.

However, it’s not all about about self-promotion. In fact; if you do too much self-promotion, your readers are likely to be turned off by it, may bypass your information, or even unfollow you.  The content you create should be encourage visitors to read, share and come back for more.

Here’s the good news: You don’t have to create it all yourself, some of that content can and should come from somewhere else.  A Social Media Content Ratio helps content creators decide how much shared content to use in the mix.

The Benefits of using a Content Ratio:

1. More content from others helps establish your brand and position yourself (or your organization) as a subject matter expert on a topic.
2. Shows that you care about your customers, not just about pitching your product. Sends the message that you want to help them learn more about a topic.
3. It gives your readers a reason to return for something new, perhaps even follow you or subscribe. They’ll more likely be there when you do self-promote
4. A good post might go viral (Warning: Be careful what you post, it might go viral).
5. You get useful and relevant additional content without having to write it all yourself!

The Downsides of not using a Content Ratio:

1. 100% Original content – All too often, this leads to creating and distributing content that is almost 100% self-promotion. As we mentioned earlier in this post – It’s hard to write and leverage the content. Readers will usually unfollow, pass over, or never return if all you have to say is “Buy! Buy! Buy!”.
2. 100% Sharing content from others – If all you do is share content from others, what value do you bring to the party? Readers and viewers want to see what you have to say too. Besides, aren’t you doing all of this to share your knowledge on a topic, encourage people to join the conversation or buy into a solution? This often occurs to content creators who are feeling overwhelmed about writing original content.

Think of the phone thumb browsing affect.  How many will people scroll past your content because they’ve come to know that it will be 100% of one or the other.

There are no hard and fast rules – just focus on your audience and work on getting the right mix into place.

Here are two popular Social Media Content Ratio Rules:

4-1-1 Rule

Originally by Tipping Point as the 4-1-1 rule for Twitter

For each 1 self-promoting Tweet, you should have:

• 4 Tweets with relevant content written by others
• Retweet 1 relevant Tweet

  

This rule can be easily modified for other platforms. (e.g., email, Facebook, LinkedIn)

• 4 Posts with relevant content written by others
• 1 Item that is a relevant Repost/Share
• 1 Post that is self-promoting

Check out how Marketo recommends using this rule for lead nurturing using email.

The 5-3-2 Rule

To help get the right mix in place, for every 10 posts distributed:

• 5 should be content from others that are relevant to your readers
• 3 should be content that you create that is relevant to your readers
• 2 should be personal and fun to humanize your brand and company

  

Here’s a great article from Business.com that details some additional rules and resources.

Shared content comes in many forms. So, no matter which social media platform is selected for use, you will always be able to find something to add to your mix.

Some good examples include:

1. A blog or press article you write that references and puts into context for your readers some other good content on the Internet (Just like this blog entry!). Many articles have a way to share their article with a simple click built into their page.  Just ensure that your share comes from the company and not you, unless you are the brand you’re promoting.
2. A share in social media platform like LinkedIn or Facebook of an article you found interesting and that is relevant to your readers or a post that you enjoyed that provided relevant information for your customers.
3. An industry event announcement that shapes your industry.
4. Something not even related to your industry but is topical for the day, to show that human side. It doesn’t hurt if there is a small connection to what you do, but it’s not actually required.

One of the great things about the Internet and Digital Marketing is that you can test many different approaches for your content ratio.  Look at your reports and analytics, see what content upped engagements in the forms of seen by, viewed, clicked, and other stats such as hits to your site(s) or an increase in followers.  If something did not work well, you might want to shelve that idea for a while.  If something worked well, try recreating that magic again!

If you would like to have more assistance in building your content plans and ratios, KDROM Enterprises is always available to assist.  Please feel free to reach out to us.