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The 80/20 Rule of Corporate Content

80/20 Rule for Content MarketingI was reading a book last night with my two boys right before bedtime. In the story was a girl named Jan. Jan was new at school and was trying to make friends with the other children.

Unfortunately, no one wanted to play with Jan, as she was left alone on the swing by herself during playtime. Why? Jan only talked about herself. She told the other children what a nice house she had; how many video games she had; about her cool dog who could do tricks; about how she was the most popular girl in her former school.

It was all about Jan. And the kids didn’t just ignore her, they went out of their way to avoid her.

It’s obvious, right? Marketers inherently know that the more they talk about themselves the more they are ignored by customers. And yet, even though we know this, most companies actually do talk about themselves.

The 80/20 Rule of Content

The more we work with brands the more we find this to be true.  Let me explain.

80% of the information (content) we develop inside companies is about our customers. We write proposals trying to solve customer challenges. We develop customer service FAQs to answer questions. We pen emails across the enterprise about how this customer needs this and that customer needs that.

20% of the content we create is sales-related content. It talks about our products and features and how wonderful we are. This is Jan.

So, the internal content we develop on a daily basis is almost exclusively focused on our customer.

Then a horrible thing happens. Before we let all that 80% of goodness be shared with our customers (through traditional/social media and other distribution outlets), a marketing expert strategically blocks it to focus on how wonderful we (the brand) are.

So, even though 80% of our content is actually about our customers and will help solve their challenges, live better lives, do better at work – in reality, the real 80% of content we share is about us and how great we are.

It still amazes me why companies don’t understand why their social media programs are ineffective.

Are you Jan? Are customers trying to avoid you?

Want to learn more?  Try this free white paper on attracting and retaining customers with content marketing.

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