The challenging part of losing followers at your social media platforms is that you, quite often, never really know why. Recently revealed social research tried to zero in on why people are unfollowing certain brands while staying with others. It seems that those companies that are losing followers are all doing the same things.
- Perhaps the most prominent thing that companies are doing to lose followers is constant over promotion. Successful social media marketing strategies have long recognized that social media is not an advertising and promotion platform so much as a conversational one in which engagement and relationship building are valued. Nearly 60% of followers leave if they feel that the brand to too much in their face with constant promotion. The key is to find the right balance between offering promotions and exposing your products and services and bringing engaging and useful information to your followers.
- Trying too hard to be cool or humorous doesn’t sit well out at the platforms especially on Twitter. Almost 40% are gone when this begins to happen. Just be yourself. Allow your brand’s identity to establish itself and shine through. Too much slang and industry specific jargon also does not go over well and, if your persist with it, people are leaving you for your rivals.
- Brands that are posting irrelevant information are losing followers as well. This, too, has to do with the over use of Twitter. Babbling along with useless and irritating tweets are causing early 60% of your followers to eventually leave you. On the other end of things, 20% of your followers have left because you don’t post at regular intervals. If it has been a month since your last social media post, you will be lucky to have any followers left at all.
- Finally, followers are leaving because no one responded to their comments. Again, social media is an engagement and an opportunity to build long lasting relationships. It is also extremely important to note that the research discovered that well over 75% of people who made a purchase did so because of the social media presence of a particular company. Your social media presence affects everything in the buying cycle. People are heavily influenced by what others are thinking about a product or service so your social media following has never been more important than it is right now.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
