Have you ever came across the 80 20 rule for more effective and efficient blogging? If not the 80 20 rule, you might have heard of the Pareto principle or the Pareto law or the principle of Imbalance.
No matter what you name it. If you want to actually grow your blog, you need to know and implement the 80 20 blogging rule to make a significant difference in the blogging journey. Once you get a good hold on the Pareto principle, you can grow your blog substantially and can reach much greater heights easily while blogging more efficiently.
Wait! Can you really achieve so much with just a rule or principle?
Indeed it can be achieved, and the only thing you need to do here is that you make sure that you do it right.
For that, we first need to understand what the Pareto principle is.
The Pareto Principle
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was an economist who noticed and ascertained that almost 80% of the wealth in the economy is retained, produced and controlled by just 20% of the population. This was the birth point of the 80 20 rule.
Although this was first devised and observed for the economy and wealth later, it was noticed that this rule is applicable for more than just economics.
From agriculture to marketing, health to banking, you can see the 80 20 blogging rule everywhere.
This rule is so widely applicable, it found its way to blogging as well!
In a nutshell, 80 20 rule says that 80% of your results come from just 20% of your activities and efforts.
We are already busy with blogging and writing articles apart from other things. Every blogger is busy as a bee, but having a good understanding of where most of your money and returns comes from is the real key here.
We all want to start making money today and not months or years from now! I am sure you do too but to make that happen, you need to plan out and understand which action of your is bringing you money and which one does not cost you money instead.
This rule will definitely not make you a millionaire overnight. The application of this on your blogging goal will help you understand what is working for you and what is not.
Let’s see how this can help you.
Role of 80 20 Rule in Blogging
When we start taking blogging seriously, it leads to a feeling of being overworked, exhausted, drained, and helpless. The rule of 80 20 tells us that we can make more time by doing more of what is working and is effective for us and reducing what is costing us time.
The application of the 80 20 rule will you make more time by working less and thinking more. Working a lot and being overworked only leads to driving out the thought process out of a person.
It is often noticed that hard-working people are often too busy to see what is really important.
Life is too short to miss out on important opportunities while exhausting yourself by working a lot and draining yourself.
Observation of 80 20 Rule in Blogging
On a typical blog, we see a common pattern which is applicable on almost all of the blogs out there. Some of those patterns are:
- 80% of the results arise from just 20 % of your actions.
- More or less than 80% of the website traffic comes from 20% of your blog posts.
- 80% of the criticisms come from 20% of your clients and viewers.
- Almost 80% of the earnings come from 20% of the earning sources.
- 80% of the income flows in from 20% of the blog posts.
- 80% of your leads and conversions come from 20% of your budget.
These don’t need to be the exact ratio for you as well, but it is often seen that the ratio is often close 70/30, 80/20/85/15, etc.
The ideology behind this ratio is simple, a smaller, more valuable input can outweigh a heavy invaluable input.
When this rule is applied to a blog or a blogger, it can be extremely beneficial. The 80 20 rule says that you need to focus on the 20% of the efforts which brings the greatest results and avoid the rest 80% of the tiring and less important tasks which bogs down your time and efforts.
Application of the 80 20 Blogging Rule
The application may vary blogger to blogger a little bit, but overall, it stays the same for most of the bloggers.
A typical blogger’s life revolves around writing, promotion, social media, site maintenance, networking, accounting, research, etc.
If you too are a blogger I am sure you know which parts of the blogging require more attention and that usually constitutes to around 20% of the time. The general rule here is that you focus on the things that matter more and minimize the trivial things.
For example, if 20% of your clients are bringing in around 80% of the income, you should let go of the remaining 80 percent of the clients. Surely this will create a bump as you will be earning 20% less than what you were earning before, but this will definitely add up to the long run.
Since now you will have more time on your hands, you can look for more work which offers you good returns, or you can take more work from the good 20% of the clients.
Ascertaining the Top 20%
The goal here should be to identify what really matters to you. Identify the things that give you the greatest reward and yields more to you.
It might be difficult to do at first, but once you start seeing the things that really matter, you will open a door that will help you achieve more from fewer efforts.
Most of the bloggers nowadays spend most of their time on unimportant tasks and even go ahead and avoid the important 20% of the tasks which is actually needed in the success of their blog. This usually happens because while it is less work, it is often the most difficult part of the blogging journey, and we tend to take up the easier tasks first and then move towards the difficult ones.
So, to make it huge in blogging, we need to focus on the top 20%, but there is a little challenge to that.
How to identify the vital 20% and the remaining 80% of the tasks?
To begin with, you need to start listing down everything that you do while you blog. I am serious! You need to see first what all you do so that you can pick up the vital ones and can separate the “less vital” ones.
This is not just another option for you. You really need to sit down and list all your tasks. I mean it.
You can even take a break from reading and bookmark this article and list down all the things you do while blogging.
Do you have your list ready? Cool!
If you do not have your list in front of you, take a break and do it right now!
The ones with the list, I am sure you must be able to see through where all you are wasting your time.
See what can you do to improve this list and eliminate unnecessary tasks. What are your most important tasks and what can you do to improve your time investment.
Make sure you are thorough with your end goals as well. You should have a clear picture of where you are headed and what is your destination. If you have no end goal towards this, what is the point of doing all this, right?
Now since we are clear with how you can apply the 80 20 rule, let’s see some of the common blogging activities which can be improved with the application of 80 20 rule.
Also Read: Things you need to know about Blogging
Common Blogging Tasks and Application of 80 20 Rule
You often do things while blogging, which most of the other bloggers do and you need to do them as well. These activities may differ from person to person, but as I said earlier, some of the activities will stay the same for not all, but most of the bloggers.
Remember that when a task comes under the 80% category, it does not mean that it is not an important task. It simply means that you can pay attention to it when you are done with the vital 20% of the tasks. Once you are done with 20% of the tasks, you can go ahead and take care of the remaining 80% of the tasks.
Here are some of the tasks a normal blogger do and how you can improve your efficiency as well.
Blogging and Content Strategy
Some blog posts work like a charm, while others struggle to even appear on Google search results. Some bring in traffic forever while others do good for some time and then disappear in the vastness of the internet.
You need to focus more on the blogs which fall under the category of evergreen and keep bringing you traffic. You can bifurcate your existing blogs in 80 and 20 percent as well. Just head over to analytics and see the engagement on these blogs. You will see clearly which blog is doing good and which one is not working out for you.
Also, while choosing a blog topic, (if you have not done that yet) lookout for the topics that are attracting most of the visitors and are generating good income. If you are going for the topic that is not popular enough, it will only lead you to more difficulty in making it big in the blogging industry.
I, too, have made the mistake of starting a blog on a non-popular blog, and I also remember the difficulty I faced to rank it and build authority.
Once you have a good blog topic, you also need to apply the 80 20 blogging rule while writing a blog as well.
Writing a Blog with the 80 20 Rule in Mind
Content is king. There is no doubt in that, and you should always keep writing a blog post in the 20% category.
Content is the key to any blog, and you need to push as many blogs as you can, right?
No! Your focus here should not be on how many blogs you are publishing. There is no formula behind the number of blogs you should publish but if you are focusing on the quantity and not the quality, your blog will only become mediocre and will end up falling in the 80% of all the internet’s content.
If you want to take time to write a blog, take it!
Write a good and stealer blog that make it big by taking more time rather than doing the opposite. Remember, one good post is a lot better than 10 mediocre or dull ones.
When you are writing, drive all of your attention to the blogging writing part only. Promotion is also an important job, but if your blog is not worth reading, chances are even if you promote your blog well and bring people to your blog, they will leave, and that is something which only harms the blog.
Parts of a Blog Post
A blog has many parts, and all these do not carry equal weight at all. One of the parts might be a little more difficult than the other one or might be more important than the other one. You need to see through which parts require more time and how important it is.
Generally speaking, almost everything except the writing part falls under the 80 percent or secondary category.
You don’t need to follow the same ratio for all the blogs, in fact, you need to improvise as you move ahead.
For example, if you are working on a blog or an aticle listing all the offers that are currently running, you might want to go give more time in promoting that blog rather than writing as you want to attract as many people as you want in the time being. On the other hand, if you are crunching a blog which covers a topic in detail, you need to focus more on what content you are putting up and how much value it brings to the reader. In this case, giving more time on blogging rather than promoting will make more sense.
Here are the parts of writing a blog and how you can make yourself efficient in doing these tasks.
Research
This is one of the most important parts of writing a blog or any piece of content. You need to make sure that you are aware of all the information required to write that blog before you start writing.
While this is one of the important aspects of any blog, you need to make sure you are not giving much time on this. If the article requires a deeper understanding of any topic, you are free to read as much as you want about it but make sure you are not giving more time than required.
Writing
Now, this is the most important one of them all. You can take as much time as you want and you should make this your highest priority as this will decide how good your content is going to be and good content always attract readers no matter if you promote it or not.
Graphics and Visual Data
To make any blog interesting, you need to add images and other visual data. While this is another important aspect, you should not be taking much time here.
I agree that having a well-presented blog is needed and hardly some reads blogs which is nothing but all text and they too eventually lose interest while reading. But giving this part most of your time will not yield you a lot. So, divide your time accordingly.
SEO
SEO is a quite tricky one to place. You need SEO to grow your blog, but it is not the first thing you need to worry about. SEO works only when you have good content on your website. So, the first thing you need to worry about is your content and then how you can make that content more optimized for search engines.
Also Read: Does Blogging Help SEO? Blog SEO Tips
Podcasts and Videos
If you are blogging and not vlogging, video creation and content creation is something that will fall in the 80% category for you. You can check which mode is bringing you more traffic and on what is working for you.
For example, an English literature content will work much better when it is being blogged about, and on the other hand, a travel blog will be able to gain more popularity with vlog content.
So, in a nutshell, it totally depends on what is your niche. If you have worked with video content earlier, you can see if that is working for you or not. If it is not working out for you, you can keep that in the 80% category.
Product and Service Creation
Yes, this definitely falls in the 20% category. All the things that you do and provide to your readers that help you grow to like, ebooks, tutorials, freebies, etc. are counted as your product, and it is highly required that you pay attention to these.
These makeup as the USP of your blog so you should not be keeping this in the 80% category.
Email Management.
Statistically, an average person gets more than 120 emails in a single day. Chances are you are getting more (or less) emails than that.
Going through all these emails can be a real waste of time. So you need to understand which emails fall in the 80% category and which are the important ones and fall in the 20% category.
Tips for handling emails:
- Refrain yourself from subscribing to unnecessary newsletters and unsubscribe from all the mediocre emails.
- Do not respond to emails unless it is really required. We waste a lot more time writing back an email than we actually can afford.
- Schedule time every day for checking emails and going through your inbox.
- Do not pick checking emails as the first thing in the morning or whenever you start your day. This will create an ongoing task of handling emails back and forth all day.
- Make your vital 20% tasks a priority over the emails. You can schedule 5 minutes every hour to check on your emails.
Blog Promotion
Promotion takes up a lot of time for any blogger, but this must not be a part of the 20% at all. The basic ideology behind this is that you need to create good content first, and then only you should go ahead and promote it.
Once you are done with the content creation, you can go ahead and promote your blogs on different channels.
For effective blog promotion on social media, you can start employing a social media promotion tool like Buffer or Social Pilot. This will reduce the time you invest in your social media promotion.
Also read: How to Promote your Blog on Social Media
Also, while promoting on social media, make sure you are not wasting time looking for what others are doing and what they are up to. I used to make the same mistake in the beginning and called it “market research.” Do not make such silly mistakes and pay more attention to how you spend your time on social media.
Use Google Analytics to Identify the Vital 20%
One of the best ways to identify which task falls under the vital category and which falls under the remaining 80% is by looking at what is working for you.
For this, Google Analytics will work like a charm for you. You can see which blog is bringing in traffic and which blog is helping you bring in more traffic.
This tool is free to use, and it is an invaluable tool for any blogger, which almost every blogger uses in their blogging journey.
Here are some of the vital statistics regarding your blog where you can check with Google Analytics.
- Which posts and pages rank the most on your website.
- See which posts are performing the worst and if they can be improved or not.
- Check which region/country is most interested in reading your blog.
- Learn which affiliate programs are working the best for your blog
- Determine where your visitors are coming from.
- Which keywords are working the best for you?
- Which social media platforms are the most beneficial for you.
- Know how long your users are staying on the website.
Keep Reviewing Focus
You must keep on working on your 80 20 blogging rule. It is very easy to get distracted and lose focus while blogging. Like any other blogger, there might be moments where you get sidetracked and forget what you were blogging about, but this is something that you should try to avoid as much as you can so that your 20% does not become 40% as you will be taking more time to do the vital tasks.
Try to keep track of how your day goes by and how much you achieved in a day. You can also try and see how much more productive you are while blogging and are you satisfied with the amount of work you are getting done in a day.
You can also use time and activity tracking for self-monitoring so that you can see where all you are lacking and how you can improve that.
Remember, this is all about doing more in less time by doing more effective things first. You should be tackling the productive things first, and then you should be moving on to what’s less important.
It is all about being more effective!
I would like you to comment down the things that take up a lot of your time, and you think that these belong to the 80%.
Read Next: 7 Common Blogging Problems & How To Deal With Them
Also, do let me know your thoughts on this piece of content, and if this is something that helped you, share it with others as well!
