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Pareto Content

Summary

"Pareto Content” is the idea that a small fraction of articles or content pieces generate the majority of the traffic or results, while the majority have a marginal impact.

Many content marketers work on the assumption that ever article is generally as important as every other. This is not the case.

If you're a content marketer generating 100k pageviews from a library of 100 articles, it would seem logical to expect those pageviews to be—roughly—evenly distributed. Each article should, on average, account for around 1,000 pageviews.

Plotting that graphically:

Deep dive

But this hypothetical distribution is just that—hypothetical. In the real world, many blogs generate the bulk of their traffic from a handful of hyper-successful articles—each generating, say, 10-20k pageviews apiece—while the remainder account for a relative trickle of visitors.

This is the Pareto principle in action, so named for Vilfredo Pareto's discovery that 80% of Italy's wealth was distributed amongst 20% of its people. Most results come from a handful of activities. This applies to wealth distribution, website traffic, blog posts, you name it.

The obvious implication is that most of the articles you write each day will have a small, marginal impact. By treating every article with the same effort and attention, you're grossly mis-allocating resources *away* from articles with the potential for huge returns and *towards* articles that will have little impact. You're building a portfolio of articles that trend towards mediocrity.

Your job is to evaluate every article as an investment. to be willing to shift focus away from articles when diminishing returns set in.