Do you struggle with managing your social media content schedule? Are your social media channels nothing more than promotional engines for your products and blog posts?
A lot of businesses make the mistake of only using social media for promotional purposes. But consumers don’t want to follow brands, and they certainly don’t like the state of the internet being one giant advertisement.
This is why it’s best that brands focus some of their time providing value in their niches by creating original content that has no tie-in with their brands or blog content.
In this post, we share a strategy that helps ensure you maintain a balance between the types of content you create on social media.
What is the social media rule of thirds?
The term “rule of thirds” comes from photography. It’s a strategy in which you divide a canvas into a grid by breaking it up into nine equal sections.
The idea is that placing subjects on grid lines creates better compositions. The strategy works best when you feature the subject on the right or left-hand side of the image.
Social media rule of thirds works with a similar line of thinking…
You dedicate a balanced portion of time to the three social media content types that are most likely to lead to success: promotion, engagement and value.
Promotional content is content you create with the sole intention of promoting products, be it your own or someone else’s.
Engaging content can be defined as content that’s meant to earn you a lot of engagements, but it’s more about the conversations you have on social media, including replies to comments, original comments you leave yourself, response videos you make to comments, and even direct messages.
Valuable content is content that’s for your niche, not your brand.
This includes tutorials, guides and trending topics you cover.
Social media influencers have this channel down to a T, but brands and bloggers often make the mistake of creating generic social media content that only promotes themselves.
Following the rule of social media thirds is an easy way to become more mindful about the types of content you create and how often you post each one.
Do you really need to break up your schedule into thirds?
Not necessarily.
You just need to be more mindful about the types of content you create and which types contribute the most to your success.
You then need to create a balance between those types.
So, your “rule of thirds” could be broken up into fifths or more.
For example, ⅖ of your schedule could be taken up by promotional content, another ⅖ by valuable content, and ⅕ by engagements.
The rule of thirds is a baseline to help you get started with approaching your social media schedule with balance.
Change the schedule and amounts as you see fit. You can even add more content types to the mix.
The first third: promotion
Like I said, promotional content is content you publish to promote your products or your brand.
I’m not going to say it’s content you publish to promote your latest blog posts because brands and bloggers that focus on creating blog content need to understand that social media does not serve as a promotional channel for your blog.
It should serve as a promotional channel for your brand.
This means you need to focus on creating original content for social media and less on creating a feed that’s filled with link posts and content that hides important facts behind a “find out more in the link in our bio” message.
Understand that social media users want to stay on social media.
So, while you can still use phrases like “find out more in the link in my bio,” your content should provide everything in one post. Promoting a blog link at the end should only be done for viewers who want more context on the subject.
What promotional content should be is posts you create that showcase your products, a sponsor’s products or affiliate products.
This includes tutorials that require a particular product or posts where a particular product is the feature, such as cleaning your bathtub with a specific tool you found on TikTok Shop.
Promotional content can also be content you post in collaboration with another creator.
While this content doesn’t necessarily promote your products outright, it still promotes your brand by getting your name out to another audience.
Why promotional content is important
No one is going to buy your products if they don’t know they exist.
That’s why it’s important that you spend some of your time on social media creating posts that demonstrate the value your products provide.
Commercials are entertaining, but they do little to convey how a product will actually improve the consumer’s life.
Social media is unique in that it allows you to get more candid with how you promote products.
You can designate one employee to be your spokesperson who appears in all of your social media content. This makes your content more personable.
But as useful as promotional content is, it shouldn’t take up the majority of your feed. That’s why it’s important to create balance with other content types.
The second third: engagement
Let’s talk about an aspect of social media I mentioned in the previous section: personability.
Consumers are used to being marketed to on social media, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily want to follow brands.
They want to connect with creators on a personal level.
This is why you should spend some of your time engaging with your target audience as well as the audience you build on social media.
Spend some of your time on social media replying to comments left on your videos as well as leaving original comments on content related to your niche.
You should also leave your direct messages open and reply to those as well.
Use features that promote engagement.
These include poll and question stickers on Instagram stories and features on TikTok that enable you to stitch other people’s content, duet content and reply to a comment with a video.
You should reply to negative comments consumers leave about your brand. If you stand by your product and its usefulness, don’t be afraid to defend it.
The third third: value
Valuable content is content that educates and informs your audience.
It does not promote your products directly. Instead, it promotes your brand indirectly by helping you become a source of information in your niche.
Here are examples of content that provide value:
- Tutorial that demonstrates how to do something in your niche
- Guide about a specific topic
- Breaking news story related to your niche
- Trending topics
- Resource, such as a list of something in your niche
There will be crossovers here and there. For example, some tutorials may require your product.
But for the most part, valuable content should be more about helping your audience understand or be informed about a certain topic and less about promoting yourself.
How to balance each third effectively
The easiest way to ensure you’re creating balance in your social media schedule is by using a social media management tool.
We use and recommend SocialBee here at Blogging Wizard, but any social media management tool you use will allow you to manage your social media strategy more effectively.
The features that are most important to look for in a social media tool are scheduling and inbox management.
SocialBee’s scheduling tool allows you to create categories for your social media content.
This means you can create different categories for each content type you want to focus on.
The tool also allows you to define a social media posting schedule for each individual category.
Any new draft you create for a particular category will fill the next time slot for that category automatically.
So, if you choose to post promotional content on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but already have a post scheduled for Monday and Wednesday, the next draft you publish will be scheduled for Friday automatically.
SocialBee also has a special dashboard that allows you to manage comments, reply to comments and reply to DMs for all social media platforms from a single location.
It takes quite a bit of time to learn and set up a new tool, but in this case, it’s definitely worth it.
SocialBee has an onboarding wizard as well as AI tools that create content and schedules for you automatically. You can fine tune it as much as you need.
Other types of content you can add to your social media calendar
The rule of thirds strategy for social media is not strict.
Just as you can choose to spend ⅗ of your time posting valuable content, ⅕ posting promotional content and ⅕ engaging with your audience, you can add additional content types to your schedule as needed.
This includes comedic skits you create for your niche, personal content that involves you vlogging or simply speaking to the camera in a candid way, and behind the scenes content that shows your studio and work environment.
Final thoughts
And that’s all there is to it!
By following the rule of thirds, you’ll be able to keep your strategy focused on all of the right things. And it’ll make it easier to take time away from social when you do need to unplug.
Related reading:
- Proven Ways To Build Your Social Media Presence
- Social Media Metrics You Should Consider Tracking
- Social Media Marketing Tips To Level-Up Your Brand
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