"The 10-4-1 Rule is a ratio that serves as a guideline for the right balance of content to publish in social media. For every 15 of your social media updates, 10 should be pieces of other people's content, 4 should be your own blog articles, and 1 should be a landing page."
The thought behind the rule is that your social media posting shouldn't be a series of blatant sales pitches. If you do the math, you'll find that the 10:4:1 rule dictates that 67% of your postings should be other people's content and 33% should be your own. The message is that you should be helpful to your target audience when you post on your social media accounts.
In my current social media posting, half of the content I post is mine and half is content from others that I think will be useful to my target audience. While I still stick to the rationale behind the 10:4:1 rule, I'm posting more of my own content. The reason is simple: I've produced a lot of helpful content designed to educate SMB owners and executives to help them grow their companies. I have a library of over 200 blog articles that grows every week. When I first wrote the article, my library had about 10 blog articles in it.
My blog articles aren't sales pitches. They include how-to-articles, opinion pieces and observations on how to be successful in a highly challenging business environment. I do include calls-to-action that link to lead generation landing pages, but they link to content offers that are helpful as well and are entirely voluntary. I spend a lot of time and effort creating this content to help people and I want to share it.
Although it varies, I usually schedule 4 social media post per day on the social media channels I target (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.) Typically, I will post 2 blog articles from my library and 2 content pieces that I think will be useful to my audience. I very rarely post links to landing pages - generally when I publish a new eBook.
Here are some of the tenets I try to stick by when using the 50/50 social media posting rule:
The 10:4:1 rule is still a good foundation for effective social media posting. The tenet behind the 10:4:1 rule is that effective social media marketing aims to help people, not sell to them. For those of us who are producing a lot of good content, the 50/50 rule may be more appropriate. When using the 50/50 social media posting rule, keep in mind the thought behind the 10:4:1 rule - at all times, be helpful and useful to your target audience.