4 Tips for Sharing Content Under the 80/20 Rule

Have you heard the cardinal rule of social media?

The 80/20 Rule states that “80% of your social media posts should inform, educate, and entertain your audience, while only 20% should directly promote your business.”

Whether you want to start using social media or evolve your social media use, the 80/20 rule is a standard best practice online – it means that 80% of what you share is content aggregated from bloggers, journalists, podcasters and writers whose content you like and agree with.

Then, the other 20% can be self-promotional: photos and links to your website, products, press clips, blog posts, awards, honors, profiles of you and your team members and more.

Social sharing is a great way to be a good social media citizen: when you are generous with sharing other people’s content, they will want to share yours because you are so giving through your social networks. 

Just remember to use proper attribution and tag the person whose content you’re sharing!

Here are a few ways to find fresh content to post to your social networks.

Use social listening

Set up Google alerts and search Twitter for topics that you want to be known as an expert on. If you're a real estate broker, it might be a particular neighborhood that you're farming or a demographic, like first time home buyers. 

This will help you find out who is having conversations or sharing content about that same area. You can engage in these conversations, share new content and find ideas and inspiration.

Set up a news feed

Use a tool like Feedly (feedly.com) to aggregate your favorite blogs, digital newspaper columns and podcasts so that you’ll get a notification when they update.

Then you can share their content to your favorite social network directly from your feed – it couldn’t be easier!

Share others' content 

This doesn't mean that you get to go around scraping the web for content to plagiarize (not that you would do that anyway). 

You can share content from your favorite brands and businesses directly from their blogs and websites -- just look for the social icons, click the network you want to share on and you're good to go.

When you share the articles, you can even include your own tips and commentary in your social post to personalize it.

Create content 

There are countless ways for you to get creative and market your brand using social media. Tools like Canva and PicMonkey are great for making graphics and visuals, while Instagram Layout lets you make collages to showcase your listing photos.

Use social media to ask questions and crowdsource for content, such as “What is your favorite real estate app?” or “What is one piece of advice you’d give a first-time homebuyer?” and create a roundup to share, linking to and tagging each person.

A version of this post first appeared on my portfolio website.