If you’re posting too frequently to Facebook, Twitter or other social networks you may be turning off your fans and followers and turning away new ones according to a new study.
The research, conducted by Lab42, found that newsfeed clutter was the top reason people on social network chose not to follow or otherwise align themselves with a brand profile. And too many updates was the top reason why those who had already chosen to follow a company profile unliked or otherwise cut the tether.
As is almost universally the case with such studies the biggest reason for people to Like a brand is for promotions, discounts and free stuff. A good portion of respondents even said they had no intention of buying anything from that company, they just wanted a free item that was, in my experience, offered as an incentive for people to Like the brand in the first place. Such tactics are widespread as brands seek to bump up their numbers but, as this painfully shows, the actual value of these tactics is dubious at best.
The key finding, the one that deals with frequency and its correlation to abandonment, reinforces the need for social publishing managers to regularly review the programs they’re running and take the temperature of the audience both through quantifiable metrics such as followers/Likes and engagement data as well as through qualifiable metrics like the sentiment of that engagement and the feedback being received.
