Why do people ‘Unfollow’ on Social Media and how is it impacting your business?

After working so hard to gain followers on social media it can feel like a bit of a slap in the face when people unfollow you. Whether its a personal or business account it’s like someone breaking up with you and not giving a reason. What if you did know the reason though? It might not take the sting out but it would certainly help in preventing more ‘breakups’. Buzzstream and Fractl got together to survey close to 900 people to understand why they unfollow brands on social media and here are the results…

One thing that the infographic didn’t mention was the importance of knowing your audience. So if your audience does happen to be the 3% of people who love White Papers then keep posting that good stuff! Gaining followers for too many businesses seems to be about the number of followers versus the quality, which defeats the point a little and will almost ensure you do have alot of ‘unfollows’. Your goal as a business should be to find (and keep) raving fans of your product or service rather than just a bunch of luke-warm sheep.

What the infographic really did drive home though was that content shouldn’t be ‘repetitive and boring’. Remember that the foundation of these networks is social sharing, and people want to share things they find interesting, engaging, helpful or things that make them laugh. It’s a balancing act for sure, but well worth the time and investment to get it right.

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