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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The 80/20 Rule... What Do You Think?

This post was actually inspired by a reader's comment on my last post. Thanks for planting the seed Rick :-)


Also known as The Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule basically states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes orin other words, 20% of your efforts create 80% of your results. An example of how this could apply in business could be that 80% of your income is generated from 20% of your customers, which I have found to be fairly accurate in my own business. An example in blogging could be that 80% of your comments come from 20% of your readers, if your lucky... lol

Rick Vaughn said...

"As an avid reader of everything business. I'm a firm believer of the 80/20 rule. Marketing should be 80 percent of your time with 20 percent devoted to content. What do you think?"


Now... Rick is obviously looking at this from a unique perspective which I find very cool. He's not talking about the 80% being an effect of the 20% cause, but rather a relationship between two causes (marketing and content) to create a desired effect (success, readers, money etc.)

So let's think about that for a minute...

It's certainly and unfortunately true that a crappy product with a brilliant marketing campaign will most likely be more successful than a brilliant product with a crappy marketing campaign; but with respect to blogging, does this really mean that you should focus the majority of your time on marketing rather than on content. I don't really think so, especially not in the early stages of your blog or in a highly competitive niche.

I'm a firm believer in creating quality content first and the rest will follow. I'm not saying forget about marketing because it is absolutely critical to success, however I believe that you're much better off focusing on making your content stand out from the rest before you over-publicize a "mediocre at best" blog which could totally backfire on you.

So... What's the perfect ratio?... In my humble opinion... I would shoot for 50/50... you can start with the 80/20 but with 80% of your time focused on content.

http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com

6 comments:

  1. Hey,c'mon! Do you use a timer to blog? You guys talk about these things as if it is really feasible to conciously "divide" the time by any ratio one likes. The botomline is that sometimes one may be lagging behind in say....posts and you have to catch up. At other times, you have not been dropping cards so much then you sit up.To be able to share accurately is a falasy. there is no such thing unless you have abattery of staff and then say 5 market and 5 blog>

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  2. Hey mcneris... Thanks for the comment... No, I don't use a timer... lol

    I do this in my spare time... which I don't really have a lot of so yeah, I do the "fall behind then catch up thing"(that's why I'm up at almost 2 am) and I don't time-manage my blogging efforts as effectively as I do my business but time management is critical to success dude :-)

    Make a schedule and you can consciously divide your time to any ratio you want. I do it everyday in my business.

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  3. I think the principle of 80/20 rule is applied for the pros and for people who just start to blog, a 50/50 is a good ratio.
    It is important to have a time management when you blog. Just like any everyday business, effective time management is applied for a better success and growth.

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  4. Thanks for the comment infinite... as I said in my post...I agree... I think a 50/50 marketing to content ratio works well for blogging

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  5. In my article on the 80/20 Rule I point out that 80-20 is no more than a "rule of thumb", and that it applies to people as well as events or effects.

    The issue of marketing vs. content isn't really subject to the 80/20 Rule. There's no cause and effect.

    Not only that, they are overlapping functions and not mutually exclusive.

    From the 80/20 Rule I would rather predict that 20% of all marketing professionsals account for 80% of all bonafide marketing and copywriting.

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  6. Great article, Thanks for your great information, the content is quiet interesting. I will be waiting for your next post.

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Thanks for your comment... this blog is do-follow so you just got yourself a link ;-)