Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are applications widely used by companies to promote and sell their products and services today via social media marketing. From Facebook likes and shares to Twitter’s retweets and favorite and even Instagram feedbacks and regrams, these brands now have empirical evidence of how their pages are received by audiences. But even when companies do everything to gather likes and shares on their social media pages, there are still some people who lose interest in these brands and end up unfollowing them. Why is that?

Why people follow

In a survey by BuzzStream and Fractl, they analyzed why people follow a certain brand over its competitors based on their social media accounts. Here are the significant results of their survey:

16% of respondents said they will follow a brand because they like the brand.

15% said they follow brands to be notified of special offers / promotions.

12% said they follow brands to learn about new products and services.

The survey also shows that the respondents follow brands that have up to date social media pages, where an interaction between the brand and the consumer is continuous. Feedback from the users is also an aspect why they follow a certain page, an affirmation from someone who already consumes the product and services of the brand means that it can be trusted and effective.

Why people UNfollow

Content in social media pages plays a big role in gaining and losing followers. Based on the survey by BuzzStream and Fractl, the main reason why a social media page loses its followers is excessive self-promotion. As a company, promoting yourself to the target market is the main goal why there’s a social media page, but there are different ways of selling the brand without posting self-serving content.

Consumers now use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with brands and companies because they believe that their concern will reach them in no time. The survey showed that 30% of the respondents unfollow brands that send out automated messages to their followers who inquire from their social media page. Communication with followers is labeled as ‘new content’ and ‘brand content’ because of the way they accommodate their followers also says something about their brand.

Hashtags have been very useful for consumers because it filters out each post and content, placing it on a specific category, but poor use of hashtags and too many hashtags can be a reason why they unfollow a brand’s page. The company should know which hashtags their post must have before publishing it for the convenience of their followers.

There are pros and cons in using social media, especially if you want to market your brand or your company to the public. If you consistently produce interesting and useful content for your followers, your social media pages will eventually reach more than your target m