The 4-1-1, 3-2-1 and 95-5 rules sort posts by type, which suits a brand's content mix. A one-beat desk needs a ration tied to what it actually reported.
A content calendar with nothing to put in the original slot
Picture a Tuesday template for a one-person newsletter on, say, municipal water policy. Four slots say "share someone else's post." One says "original." One says "promote the newsletter." The template came from a LinkedIn ratio rule, and it's tidy. It also tells the writer nothing about the only question that matters on a one-beat desk: did we find anything this week worth saying?
So the original slot gets a take. The four curated slots get reposts from the same trade outlets everyone in the field already follows. And the promo post links to an issue that, read honestly, restates the reposts.
That's the failure this piece is about. The popular posting ratios answer a brand's question, which is how to balance a content mix across products and voices. A solo publisher is short on something else.
Reporting.
What is the 4-1-1 rule on LinkedIn?
The 4-1-1 rule says that for every six posts, four should share other people's content, one should be your own original material and one can be promotional. It's usually traced to Twitter-era content marketing. The term was coined by Andrew Davis of Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 and the Content Marketing Institute (per a Feb 17, 2012 Contently article). (source) LinkedIn advice pages adopted it later, mostly unchanged.
Some versions shuffle the two single slots, and you'll see them described in different ways. The arithmetic stays put. Two-thirds of output is somebody else's work.
For a brand, that's a sensible guard against a feed full of product announcements. But the rule assumes you have a promotional reflex to restrain. Most solo writers have the opposite problem.
What is the 3-2-1 rule on LinkedIn?
The 3-2-1 rule is the least settled of the three. A common version on LinkedIn advice pages splits posts three ways: three that inform or curate, two that are personal or conversational, one that promotes. Other pages keep the same numbers and swap in different buckets. Inc.'s version starts with three pieces of industry-relevant content. None of the versions we found names an originator.
That drift tells you something. When a rule's numbers are stable and its categories wander, the numbers are doing the persuading. Digits feel like method.
What every variant shares is the unit. It counts a post type. Nothing in any version asks whether a post contains something the writer found out.
What is the 95-5 rule?
The 95-5 rule has the oddest history of the three. It comes from John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, published with LinkedIn's B2B Institute in 2021, and it describes buyers: about 5 percent of potential B2B customers are in the market at any given time and 95 percent aren't (Marketing Week). The argument is for patient brand building over short-term lead capture.
Posting-advice pages later turned it into a content ratio, 95 percent value and 5 percent promotion. That version borrowed a buyer-behavior finding's name for a rule the finding never made.
Read either way, it's a brand rule. It tells a company with a sales pipeline how patient to be. A newsletter writer with one beat doesn't have a pipeline to protect. They have a beat to cover.
Check a ratio before you cite it
Advice pages repeat these rules without sources. Before quoting one, find where it was first published and what it originally counted. The 95-5 rule, for one, describes buyers rather than posts.
Where every ratio breaks for a one-person desk
All three rules count the same thing: the kind of post. Curated, original, promotional. That unit works when a team has more content than it can publish and needs a mix policy.
A solo publisher's problem runs the other way. There's rarely too much original material, and there's almost always too little that was checked. The ratios quietly make that worse, because curation is the cheapest slot to fill. Reposts take minutes. One finding from a primary record can take an afternoon.
So a writer who follows 4-1-1 faithfully can hit the ratio every week and never report anything. The rule's satisfied. The beat isn't covered.
There's a fair defense of curation: it builds goodwill, and goodwill gets your one original post seen. We'd keep curating for exactly that reason. We'd stop letting it set the count.
| Rule | What it counts | Built for | Where it breaks for a solo desk |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4-1-1 | Post type: curated, original, promotional | Brand feeds restraining self-promotion | Two-thirds of slots go to other people's work, the cheapest thing to fill |
| 3-2-1 | Post type, with buckets that vary by source | Personal-brand content mixes | Categories drift, so it can't tell you what to publish |
| 95-5 | Originally buyers in or out of market; later reused as value vs. promotion | B2B brand patience | A one-beat writer has no sales pipeline to be patient about |
| Finding Ration | Posts by the reporting behind them | A one-person reporting desk | Requires reporting something each month |
What each ratio counts. The 3-2-1 rule has no documented originator.
The Finding Ration: count what stands behind the post
The Finding Ration sorts posts by what stands behind them, then caps the cheap kinds against the expensive one.
A finding is a checkable claim from a primary source, with the record named or linked. It's the anchor. Commentary is your read on someone else's finding, with their source kept attached. A question is a reporting question tested in public before you've answered it. Promotion points to a newsletter issue.
Three rules hold it together. Commentary never outnumbers findings in a month. Promotion only points to an issue that carries at least one finding. And every finding gets a follow-up decision within the week: expand it in the newsletter, keep reporting, or drop it.
Curation stays uncounted. Share generously. It just doesn't count toward anything.
| Post kind | What must stand behind it | Ration | Newsletter follow-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finding | A primary record you read yourself, named or linked | The anchor. Set a monthly floor you can actually report. | Decide within the week: expand, keep reporting, or drop |
| Commentary | Someone else's finding, with their source attached | No more than your findings that month | Only if it changes what a finding means |
| Question | An open reporting question, stated plainly | Use when a finding stalls | If replies surface a source, it becomes reporting |
| Promotion | An issue that carries at least one finding | One per issue, never for an issue without a finding | It is the follow-up |
| Curation | Nothing required | Uncounted | None |
The Finding Ration worksheet. Ration values are our editorial position, not a measured benchmark.
A month on the ration (hypothetical)
Take the water-policy newsletter from the top of this piece. What follows is a hypothetical month, labeled as one.
In week one, the writer reads a utility's rate filing and posts the single change that matters to residential customers, with the filing linked. That's a finding. Two days later a regional reporter covers a related ruling, and the writer posts a short read on it, source attached. Commentary, one for one.
Week two produces nothing checkable. So the writer posts a question instead: which other utilities in the region have filed similar requests? Replies point to two dockets, and that's next week's reporting.
By month's end there are three findings, three commentary posts, one question and one promotion post pointing to an issue built on the strongest finding. A 4-1-1 audit would flag it for too few reposts. But every original post had a record behind it, and the newsletter got its lead from LinkedIn instead of the other way round.
Where a briefing fits in the ration
The hard part of the Finding Ration is supply. A one-person desk can't read every outlet in its field each morning and still spend an afternoon inside a primary record.
That sorting is what a checked briefing is for. Niche follows a defined niche, merges syndicated copies, drops weak citations and keeps the supporting sources attached, so the writer starts from stories that held up rather than from a raw feed. It doesn't do the reporting and it doesn't write the post. The reader and their assistant do that. What changes is where the afternoon goes: less time triaging coverage, more time in the record a story points to.
Quiet days are useful as well. When the briefing page records a quiet day, that's a good week for a question post or one deeper finding.
Our position is simple. If you publish alone, drop the post-type ratio. Keep one number on the wall, findings this month, and make everything else answer to it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the 4-1-1 rule on LinkedIn?
For every six posts, four share other people's content, one is your own original material and one is promotional. Some versions split the last two slots differently. It's a brand-feed rule meant to restrain self-promotion.
Who created the 3-2-1 rule?
We couldn't pin it to one documented originator, and its categories vary from page to page. Treat any single attribution with caution until you find the first published source.
Is the 95-5 rule about posting?
Its source, John Dawes's work for the LinkedIn B2B Institute, describes buyers: about 95 percent of potential B2B customers are out of the market at any given time. Posting-advice pages later reused the name for a value-versus-promotion ratio. Check the original before citing it.
How should a solo newsletter writer decide what to post on LinkedIn?
Count posts by the reporting behind them. Make checkable findings from primary sources the anchor, keep commentary at or below your findings each month, promote only issues that carry a finding, and decide a newsletter follow-up for every finding.
Does Niche write my LinkedIn posts?
No. Niche delivers a checked briefing for your field with source links and why-it-matters lines. You and your assistant do the reporting decisions and the writing.