It is a common saying that 80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts – this is what they mean by the 80:20 rule.

This is why a/b testing, evaluating what gets you traction, and reviewing what have been doing matters. As authors, we want to be spending as much of our time as possible writing or promoting our books. If you can eliminate much as you can of the low return work that you do, you can do more with less effort. In other words, work smarter instead of working harder.

Outsource time-consuming but minor tasks

Some activities eat up a lot of your time but do not do much to contribute towards your actual success. If you can, find other people willing to do these things for you.

Outsource (delegating) might mean paying someone to do these things or having them done less often. As long as you can offer to pay and, so long as this does not put roadblocks in your way, that might be the best idea.

The more you can do to free yourself up for the efforts that yield results, the more results you will get.

Track everything: The 80:20 rule of traffic

You will probably find that 80% of your traffic goes to 20% of your content. That 20% – that’s the big winner. Write more like that if you can.

Put in place some measure of your success. At the very least, use some sort of traffic monitoring. Google Analytics’ or JetPack’s traffic stats are both good starts. Take that data and see which posts get the most traffic over time. Find out which posts resonate with your social media followers. When you know this, you know what to focus on.

Just like with your own efforts, zoom in on the things that get results.

The 80:20 rule of staying on topic

As a general rule of thumb, readers will tolerate wildly off-topic content so long as it is never more than 20% of your content. In other words, for every four posts you put out, the fifth one could be about anything at all.

That last 20% – the one in five posts – is the perfect time to experiment with new ideas, new approaches, and new topics. If you are tracking your traffic, you will know if this new approach resonates with readers.

Talking of only one blog post in five. That’s as frequently as you should ever write about your book. Have you ever had a friend that only wants to talk about one thing all the time? I have. I can tell you that this can get old rather fast.

Rather than trying to drag forth yet another block of three to four hundred words to say “my book still exists”, mix it up a little. You will enjoy your blogging a lot more if you are not as bored writing it as the readers are reading it.