Social Media Guide for Wattpad

Social Strategy, Part 2

The Rule of Thirds

The standard social media Rule of Thirds is as follows –

1.       Spend a third of your time promoting

2.        A third of your time amplifying content from thought leaders and

3.       The final third should be personal interactions 

I would suggest to you to modify it as follows –

1.       Spend a third of your time promoting

2.        A third of your time amplifying content from friends and other writers and

3.       The final third should be personal interactions 

The difference is in #2 but let’s talk about all three.

·         Promotions – this is links to your works, it is requests to read or review; that sort of thing.

·       Amplifying others’ content – link to your followers’ works, or to the people you are following. Write a short blurb about what you like about it or just the fact that you like it.

·      Personal interactions – no one wants to read about you endlessly complaining about the weather, but do spend some time on personal interactions. Ask people how they are. Post a silly picture of yourself. Participate in #throwbackThursday. 

If you perform social media activities six days/week, you can split them up by devoting two days to each third. Or if you perform social media activities every day, just split each day by thirds, or do the two day per third dance and then have one day where you perform a number of interactions that is divisible by three and just split it that way.

How do I do it?

I promote my own work with blog posts, tweets, etc. We’ll get into blog specifics later. I amplify others’ content by also writing a book review blog. Or I tweet about others’ works or retweet and share. I reblog on Tumblr and repin on Pinterest all the time. I participate in #FollowFriday on Twitter. As for personal interactions, I visit the forums here, I post favorite music on Facebook, and I change avatars and put forth all kinds of personal content that isn’t promoting my work. It isn’t strictly divided into thirds, but it’s fairly close. 

The link is to Hoot Suite’s take on the Rule of Thirds. The image mentions Twitter but it is good advice for any social network. The video is Uptown Studios’ take on the rule. As you can see, there are some variations even on the professional end of things. 

Did this chapter help you? Did it hold your interest? Do you want to see more? Then please vote! You know the puppy wants you to. ;) Share in the comments below some examples of Twitter streams or Facebook pages that you think follow these rules well. These can be amateur pages, professional ones, or government ones, whatever. I leave it to your imagination – but don’t post the links. Just post the titles and site names (e. g. Widget Company on Pinterest), okay? Let us Google and find them.