This post is written by Mirna Bard, a blogger, speaker and consultant. She serves as the social-media chairwoman of the Orange County (Calif.) chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, and she teaches social media at the University of California at Irvine.
SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social-media practices and issues.
Last week’s poll question: What causes you to unfollow an individual or a business on social networks?
- Their over-communication gets overwhelming — 44.81%
- The don’t add value to my day with their irrelevant postings — 36.79%
- They only talk about themselves or act irresponsibly toward their audience — 9.91%
- They are not open to feedback, two-way dialogue or user-generated content — 5.19%
- They under-communicate or may not be active for weeks/months at a time — 3.30%
We all can see how popular Facebook business pages have become and how quickly businesses on Twitter find followers. Nonetheless, it does it take huge effort and dedication to grow an online community with real staying power. Similar to anything else in business, it is difficult for you to get to the top with social networking, but it is even harder to say there. Thus, the main challenge is not growing followers, but to keep your followers loyal on social networks.
There is no arguing that social networking has turned out to be a high-performance loyalty tool because it builds a community around a brand. However, can overdoing a good thing cause your brand-loyalty efforts to flop? Too much of anything can backfire, as the above poll stats show, but the results were also a little shocking.
I must admit that, like 82% of our poll respondents, I have either hid or unfollowed a person or a business because they were over-communicating and posting irrelevant information that had absolutely no value to me. But I’ve also unfollowed or left Facebook pages because the owners were under-communicating and showed lack of dialogue — no real engagement or commitment to me as a follower. How can you provide value or build stronger relationships if you simply do not dedicate time for ongoing engagement and openness with followers? So, it was shocking to see that only 3% said they unfollowed someone because of under-communication or inactivity.
Without a doubt, over-communicating and under-communicating are equally important on social-networking sites. We shouldn’t overwhelm our followers with too much information or useless content. On the other hand, we should not neglect our audience by inactivity, hoping they will still be there when we decide to engage with them on our own terms.
The best social-networking strategy is to learn what makes your customers tick by asking them the right questions and creating dialogue. To nurture and leverage relationships with our audience, we must find the perfect balance between valuable content, relevant postings, timely promotions, and ongoing dialogue without overkill.
Do you feel like you are over-communicating or under-communicating with your audience? How do you ensure a loyal following on social networks?
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But how much is too much, and how little is too little? I think that's the key question here. And there are no clear answers, because every person's tolerance is likely to be different. I am fine with businesses that update several times a day, but I know other people think once a week is enough. Is this a "know thy audience" issue, or something that just requires trial and error?
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I agree with you on tolerance levels Erika. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to understand our audience, and I don't think there is anything wrong with asking your audience on how much is too much for them. We have created a follow-up poll asking people what their tolerance levels are. The blog will be posted next weeks.
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I have unfollowed people for tweeting incessantly, or for running feeds through their timeline without regard for limits, and even for unfollowing me. But I cannot understand why anyone would ever consider unfollowing someone because they’re too quiet.
Unfollow someone because they weren’t tweeting enough implies that I demand a certain level of participation from them. That strikes me as obnoxious, high-handed and futile since it’s not my place to demand a message or broadcast from someone.
Does the author participate on any online forums for work or a pastime? If so, does the author troll through the list of forum members and send nasty notes to the ones who haven’t posted in, say, six months? Ludicrous.
Everyone is free to follow me. If you don’t like my message, you are free to unfollow. If I don’t like your message, I am free to block you. But it strikes me as wasted energy to worry about what someone is *not* saying.
My thoughts exactly… Just started with twitter, not terribly interested in gathering followers, if they follow they follow that is my position. Have unfollowed somone who tweeted sales pitch after sales pitch.
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You are correct, no one should be demanding engagement; however, isn't that what social networking is about? Do you keep following someone that has not been active for several months or even a year? What is the point of following them at this point? My two cents…
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I mostly unfollow users on twitter because they post too much. If they are spinning articles and retweeting just to get attention in a particular field, that raises a red flag for me. I try not to follow too many people on twitter, only friends, relevant companies, associates, or just people who I have found and can have a good social networking experience with.
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I agree with you about the importance of balancing over-communicating and under-communicating. However, based on the research and data I don't think you can say that they are 'equally' important. It sounds like one is more important than the other.
I unfollow people mostly if I don't think there is a valid relationship there. I appreciate the need to connect and to have a connection as a mean to maintain it, but sometimes it doesn't seem right to me. As for the over-tweeters, if it feels robotic then yes I may let them go.
One of my challenges is understanding why people unfollow me. I wonder if there is any credence to the idea that when you follow someone and they don't follow you back quickly, then you unfollow them?
Hi Bobby. Yes based on the data they are not equally important, but I feel they are equally important when deciding whether to follow someone or when I've been invited to "Like" a Facebook page. If they have never tweeted or rarely tweet, I prefer to follow someone that does engage. Also, Facebook allows you to like so many pages, so you will have to pick and choose when you have reached your limit. I've unliked all the pages that are not active on Facebook to make room for others.
Funny, if not communicating enough is good cause for un-following, you'd think I'd have been un-followed more often as I'd be the first to admit I don't tweet often enough. On the other hand, I don't have a huge quantity of followers to start with so it's probably not an accurate sample. Personally, I rarely un-follow someone for fear of hurting their feelings (which is dumb, I realize) and I've never unfriended anyone.
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I think the duration between tweets is less important than the content of each tweet. As long as you keep each tweet fresh and relevant, followers will be less concerned about frequency and can focus on what matters: communicating a message.
All this is making me dizzy and nauseated. Social Media should be fun (it used to be). Now there is too much junk, and little interaction.
I follow, Like and Plus people I find interesting and I like what they have to say.
Everything else is pointless.