For every one self-serving post, share four pieces of useful content and one re-share of someone else's post, so that an account gives far more than it asks.
Marketers state it as a posting ratio: for each self-serving tweet, post or update, a brand should share four pieces of useful content and one re-share, so six items in all. The wording of tweets and retweets points to Twitter, but it was a marketers' guideline and never a platform rule. A February 2012 Contently article, the earliest source found, credits the term to Andrew Davis of Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute, and attributes the explanation to Business Insider; it gives no date or document for the coinage. Sources disagree on what the four are. Kleber and Associates limits them to other people's content, a For Dummies guide allows the brand's own educational material, and a Semrush guide reads the rule as four curated posts, one original post and one promotional post. The ratio has many cousins. The 80/20 rule gives eighty per cent of posts to useful or entertaining material and twenty to the brand, echoing the proportions of the Pareto Principle. The 70-20-10 rule splits posts into value, curated and promotional in those shares, and borrows its name from the unrelated leadership-development model associated with Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger. The 5-3-2 rule asks, in every ten posts, for five curated, three original and two personal. The rule of thirds gives one third to promotion, one third to other people's content and one third to direct engagement with the audience, and a 3-1 version asks for three engagement posts per promotional one. None of the sources reviewed names an experiment behind its numbers. They differ mainly in how generously they treat the personal and the promotional.
In practice
- A software company posts one product announcement for every four industry articles and one re-shared customer story.
- A local charity schedules one fundraising appeal for every four items of news from its field and one re-share from a partner organisation.
- Attributed to
- Attributed to Andrew Davis & Joe Pulizzi
- Also called
- 4:1:1 rule; 4-1-1 ratio; four-one-one
- Possible explanations
- The rationale is reciprocity: an account that gives value repeatedly earns a hearing on the occasions when it asks for something, which is the logic of Cialdini's Reciprocity Principle. The re-share adds a second argument, that crediting others builds relationships and fills a calendar cheaply. The numbers themselves have no derivation. Four is a memorable ratio that is plainly more giving than asking.
- In its favour
- A Sprout Social survey of 1,011 consumers in February 2019 found that 35 per cent unfollow brands for too many promotional posts, behind poor customer service at 56 per cent, irrelevant content at 51 per cent and too many ads at 43 per cent, so fatigue with promotion is real. The broader principle that a feed should offer more than it asks is consistent with the Reciprocity Principle and with the Attention Economy.
- Against it
- No source reviewed offers a test of the ratio itself. The Semrush guide and others cite no data for any ratio, and the survey figure supports giving value rather than the number four. The categories are also ambiguous, since a post can be useful and promotional at once and the sources disagree on what counts as which. Feeds rank individual posts by how people respond to them rather than by an account's mix, so the rule is a guess about audience patience more than about reach.
- Standing
- Often described as an X or Twitter rule, but it is a marketers' convention. Compare the Reciprocity Principle (Cialdini), the Rule of Seven and the Pareto Principle.
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