The 80/20 Rule Applied to the Time Management of Social Media

By David Bullock

Are you leveraging your efforts and managing your time with regard to your social media marketing and networking?

This simple question comes from the following client observations:

• Plenty of traffic with no revenue.
• Plenty of content with no revenue.
• Great rankings with no revenue.
• Beautifully designed website with no revenue.
• Huge followerships with no revenue.
• Large networks with no revenue.

So here are a few of the questions that I ask…

• Do you have a strategy for your content?
• Are you making headway in terms of leads, conversions and sales?
• Are you just creating and posting content for the sake of posting content?
• Are you just online and now using this thing called “social media” because it just sounds like a good idea?

In your social media productivity mix you have…

• Learning what to do. (Market Research)
• Learning where to do it. (Market Segmentation)
• Learning what to say. (Content Creation)
• Learning where to place your content. (Content Deployment)
• Gathering new information and skills. (Preparation)
• Learning what tools you need. (Assessment)
• Learning what tools you will actually use. (Resource Assessment)
• Reviewing tools for effectiveness. (Optimization)
• Reviewing overall goal attainment of campaign. (Monitoring)

Learning what to do (and what works) is a huge part of the productivity equation.  You can have all of the tools and knowledge in the world, but without knowing where and how to effectively apply the tools and knowledge your efforts will be in vain.

I learned this lesson all too well as I was a road warrior as a salesmen for industrial equipment company (1997 – 2004). I listened to over 100 programs about sales, marketing and business. I have the stacks of these tape programs in my office to prove it.

The one thing that I learned over all of those hours was that the concept of leverage can be applied everywhere.

My definition of leverage is “small effort, larger return. Less in, more out.”

• Less Time In (Planning)
• Less Effort In (Tools)
• Shorter Time From Ideation to Transaction (Strategy)

In terms of leveraging social media:

• Are you in front of the right people?
• Are you saying the interesting things to them?
• Are the people that you are promoting to taking action and moving toward you?
• After they move toward you, have you designed the next steps and followup actions?

And this is a big one…

• Are the followup actions and next steps measurable?

Hint: Just getting more traffic, “buzz” and influence is not an acceptable answer. Traffic is meaningless unless it converts. Buzz is chatter and is meaningless unless it converts to an action. Influence is meaningless unless it it exerted to create an action.

In most models, these factors are not easily measured and monetized. Measured means you know “where, how, who and when.” You may not be able to figure out the “why,” but if you have the data you can figure that out later. Once you know “who” you can work on the monetization part of the equation.

Sounds simple. doesn’t it? I only wish that it were. But there are some thinking tools that will give you a head start. Here’s one of them.

The 80–20 Rule

I really got a good understanding about this idea of leverage and doing the right things, right time in the right environment when I started studying the Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule. Once you understand the power of leverage and the 80/20 Rule your moves in the marketplace will become so much more effective and meaningful. This is the audio program that I studied to learn about this business/life principle.

In The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less, you'll learn that you can actually be more effective with less effort by learning how to identify and leverage the 80/20 principle. The 80/20 principle is the well-verified observation that in business, economics, and life generally, about 80 percent of all results flow from a mere 20 percent of our efforts. But it goes much further than that.

• Installed WordPress or started a real blog.
• Entered an unfamiliar competitive online market.
• Ranked a website via SEO
• Purchased and pointed of the domain name.
• Managed a PPC campaign in a new market.
• Earned an affiliate commission.
• Failed completely with a project.

Tagged as: 80+20+rule, Pareto+Principle, Search engine optimization, Social Media, Social media marketing, Social+Media, Social+Networking, Time+Management