The Golden Ratio for Social Marketing in Practice:How Do Marketers Mix Different Types Of Content?

July 2014

www.rallyverse.com@rallyverse

In planning your social media content marketing strategy, what’s the right mix of content?

How much of curated content should you share?

How much of your owned content should you share?

And how often should you post purely promotion calls to action?

We typically answer that question with a very specific ratio:

30/ 60/ 10Owned/ Curated/ Promotional

That is,

30 percent of what you share should be Content You Created.

60 percent of what you share should be Content You Curated.

and

10 percent of what you share should be Calls To Action.

But how does that compare to what marketers actually do in practice?

We pulled the data.

Specifically, we looked at the posting behavior and performance data from all Rallyverse marketers in June 2014.

Here’s what we found:

While not quite 30/ 60/ 10, Rallyverse marketers on average used a strategy that was fairly in line with those ratios, albeit with more promotional content and slightly less curated and owned content.

In terms of Owned Content, when we looked at the details, we saw that content on the marketer’s domain made up 2/3 of their Owned posts, while the remain 1/3 came from distributed social sites (YouTube, etc).

In terms of click volume, Owned signficiantly outperformed its volume of posts, while Curated underperformed.

And, when you look at the detail of where those extra Owned clicks come from, you see that it’s from the Owned domains themselves – and not the social sites and extensions.

Still, while it may slightly outperform Owned and Promotional content on a per-post basis, Curated Content makes up the majority of our marketers’ content strategies.

With that in mind, which publishers are the most popular sources for curated content for Rallyverse marketers?

Some familiar names at the top of the list:

MashableThe GuardianForbesTechcrunchThe New York TimesHuffington Post

But also some surprises (which reflect the objectives of Rallyverse marketers and aren’t representative of marketers as a whole):

The MuseMonsterCareerealism

You might be surprised (or you might not), but Buzzfeed and Upwaorthy didn’t crack the Top 50.

Let’s call it the difference between personal and enterprise curation.

Summary

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If you’re looking for guidance on what the right mix of content is for your business, we recommend:

30/ 60/ 10Owned/ Curated/ Promotional

Of course, as they say,

YMMV(Your Mileage May Vary.)

In practice, marketers are doing a little more Promotional content, a little less Owned content, and a little less Curated content.

Oh, and if you’re looking for a tool to help you manage and deliver against your unique content strategy?

Don’t worry:

Rallyverse can help .

Thank You

info@rallyverse.com@rallyverse