Social media posting rules: 80/20, 5-3-2, 4-1-1 and the rule of thirds

What are the main social media posting rules?

The best-known posting rules are the 80/20 rule, the 5-3-2 rule, the 4-1-1 rule, the 70-20-10 rule and the social media rule of thirds. Each one sets a ratio between content that serves your audience and content that promotes you. The 5-5-5 rule shares the label but describes a daily engagement habit instead.

The table below gives each rule's split and what we could verify about its origin. "Origin unclear" means we searched and found pages that use the rule but none that credits a person, or a credit we could not confirm from the original.

One thing all of them share: promotion is the smallest bucket, somewhere between a tenth and a third of your posts. If you remember nothing else from this page, remember that.

The 80/20 rule

The 80/20 rule says about 80 percent of your posts should inform, educate or entertain your audience, and about 20 percent can directly promote your brand. Hootsuite and Buffer both recommend it. The name comes from the Pareto principle in economics; nobody we found is credited with first applying it to social media.

The Pareto principle is the observation that roughly 80 percent of consequences come from 20 percent of causes. It is named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted that about 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by about 20 percent of the people, and it was generalized by the quality management consultant Joseph M. Juran.

The social media version borrows the numbers but not the logic. It is not an observation about cause and effect; it is a budget. Hootsuite puts it as "80% of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience" and 20 percent "can directly promote your brand". Buffer's etiquette guide says to entertain and inform your audience first and sell to them second, and notes that Buffer itself once tried the opposite split.

It is the easiest rule to apply because it has only two buckets. If you post five times a week, one of those posts can be a straight pitch.

The 5-3-2 rule

The 5-3-2 rule says that out of every 10 posts, 5 should be curated content from other sources, 3 should be your own content that is relevant to your audience (not a sales pitch), and 2 should be personal posts that show the people behind the brand. It is usually credited to TA McCann.

The rule assumes that sharing other people's good work makes you a useful source, not just a broadcaster. business.com and LYFE Marketing both describe it this way without naming an author. A 2015 LinkedIn post by Della Cornish calls it "The 5:3:2 as proposed by TA McCann" and links a 2011 Heinz Marketing article; that link now redirects elsewhere, so we could not confirm the original wording.

In practice, 5-3-2 suits accounts with a thought leadership angle, such as consultants, B2B companies and newsletters. It suits accounts that live on original visuals (a bakery, a photographer) less well, because curating other people's photos rarely fits their feed.

The 4-1-1 rule

The 4-1-1 rule says that for every self-promotional post, you should share 4 relevant pieces of content written by others and re-share 1 post from someone else. Contently credited the term in 2012 to Andrew Davis of Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute. It began as Twitter advice.

Tippingpoint Labs' own wording was: "Tweet 4 pieces of relevant original content from others and re-tweet 1 relevant tweet for every 1 self-promoting tweet." Contently's 2012 write-up generalized it to "every one self-serving tweet, post, or update".

Of all these rules, 4-1-1 has the clearest paper trail, and its arithmetic is close to 80/20: one promotional post in six is about 17 percent. The difference is that 4-1-1 tells you where the rest should come from (mostly other people), while 80/20 leaves that open.

The 70-20-10 rule (two different rules)

The 70-20-10 rule has two meanings. In one, 70 percent of posts are educational or entertaining, 20 percent are curated from others and 10 percent promote you, as Sprout Social describes it. In the other, from Coca-Cola's Content 2020 strategy, 70 percent is proven content, 20 percent builds on what worked and 10 percent is experiments.

Sprout Social's version is a content mix: "70% of content should be educational or entertaining", 20 percent "curated content from other sources" and 10 percent "direct brand promotion". It is effectively the 80/20 rule with a curation bucket carved out.

The Coca-Cola version, as Social Media Today described it in 2012, is about risk instead of topic: 70 percent low-risk content you know works, 20 percent spin-offs of what has worked, and 10 percent high-risk new ideas. That one is genuinely useful for planning experiments, because it gives new formats a fixed share without letting them take over the feed.

When someone mentions the 70-20-10 rule, check which one they mean. They answer different questions and can be used together.

The social media rule of thirds

The social media rule of thirds splits your posts into three equal parts: one third promotes your business or your own content, one third shares ideas from other people in your industry, and one third is conversation, meaning replies and personal interaction. Orbit Media explains it well, but we found no clear originator.

Andy Crestodina's explanation at Orbit Media frames the three thirds as creation and promotion, curation, and conversation. It is the most generous rule toward promotion (a third rather than a fifth or a tenth), and the only one that counts conversation as content in its own right.

The same article mentions an alternative "golden ratio" attributed to Gabe Bevilacqua: 30 percent your own content, 60 percent curated and 10 percent calls to action. That is one more variation on the same idea: lead with value, keep the asks small.

Where the 5-5-5 rule fits

The 5-5-5 rule is usually not a posting ratio at all. In its most common form, which Hootsuite describes, it is a 15-minute daily engagement habit: 5 minutes liking posts, 5 commenting on other people's posts and 5 replying on your own. It pairs naturally with any of the content mix rules above.

Because the name gets used for several different things, including a 5 curated, 5 original, 5 personal content mix, we gave it a guide of its own that lists every version we found and what we could and could not trace about each.

Which posting rule should you use?

Pick the rule that matches how you create content. If you mostly publish your own material, the 80/20 rule is enough. If curating others' work suits your audience, use 5-3-2 or 4-1-1. If you want room for experiments, add the risk-based 70-20-10. None has been tested in a published study, so measure your own results.

Think of these as guardrails, not formulas. Their shared message is that a feed made only of offers gives people little reason to follow it. Beyond that, the right mix depends on your audience, your platforms and how much original material you can actually produce.

• Small business posting a few times a week: use 80/20 and make sure promotion stays at one post in five or fewer.
• Consultant, B2B brand or newsletter on LinkedIn or X: try 5-3-2 or 4-1-1, because sharing and commenting on others' ideas is how those networks work.
• Brand testing new formats such as Reels or carousels: keep your normal mix and add the risk-based 70-20-10 so experiments get a fixed tenth of your slots.
• Anyone short on time: pick one ratio, tag every post with its bucket, and check the balance once a month instead of on every post.

A two-week schedule that follows several rules at once

You can satisfy several rules with one plan. In ten posts over two weeks, share five curated pieces, publish three original posts (one of them promotional) and add two personal posts. That matches the 5-3-2 split, keeps promotion at one post in ten, well inside 80/20, and leaves room for conversation.

Here is that plan laid out for five posting days a week. Swap the examples for your own topics; the buckets are what matter. If you want a ready-made 30-day version with prompts for your industry, our free content calendar generator rotates five content pillars in a similar way.

How to check that you are following your rule

Label every post with its bucket when you plan it, then count the labels once a month. If you schedule with Postify, tags do this on every plan: tag each post as curated, original, personal or promotional, and the tag report shows how many posts each bucket got and how they performed.

Counting by hand works for a handful of posts a week. Once you post to several networks, the count drifts fast, which is why tagging at the planning stage is worth the extra second.

The more useful number is not the ratio itself but how each bucket performs. If your curated posts get reach and your personal posts get replies, you have learned what each bucket is for on your audience, which is worth more than any ratio on this page.