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.

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