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Despite all your efforts creating stunning content, telling wonderful stories, posting content when your fans are most active and picking up decent engagement… you are still losing followers. Why!?
It’s not unusual for people to cull some of the accounts they follow once in a while. Either in an attempt to make themselves look more popular (by following fewer people than follow them) or simply to get rid of accounts that no longer provide value to them.
Here are the top four reasons you might be losing followers that you may have not considered.
It’s one way traffic
Imagine sitting with your friend at lunch and all they did was talk about themselves, without responding to your comments or asking you any questions. You’d get pretty bored of listening to them after a while!
The same goes for the communication you have with your fans. Sometimes you need to take a breath and engage back. It is unacceptable for comments to go without a reply.
It’s also nice to follow back now and again. If you have an advocate of your brand, after a while they might get pretty miffed if you don't follow back, just like any of your friends would, and rightly so! It’s not a one way relationship of them loving you, - you have to love your fans back.
A brand that is well known for having great community management in place is ASOS. They reply to every communication sent to their main social account (@ASOS) despite having a designated @ASOS_Heretohelp account. This drives tons more engagement and makes each and every fan feel loved. Winner.
Too much repetition
Paying attention to the content that gets the most engagement and replicating that is great, and a good tactic to use, but be careful not to overdo it. There is a fine balance between variation of content and posting what works.
MissGuided post a great variation of content. On any given day they can post up to 6 different types of content on both Instagram and Twitter. This ensures that they meet the needs of all their target demographic by entertaining, informing and promoting in many different ways. Alternating between video and image content is a great way to see what you fans interact with and enjoy the most.
You are too promotional
This ties into both points, but is probably the most important. Audiences will switch off if you just sell, sell, sell to them.You have to have the correct ratio of promotional content to engagement content. As a starting point, the 80/20 rule in favour of engagement is a good baseline. Some accounts such as Nike never directly promote their products. They tell stories and, although products they sell feature in these stories, they are never the actual focus of the story. The sole purpose of the account is to engage their audience with the brand.
The purpose of setting up a social media account should not be to use the platforms to hard sell to potential customers. No one likes a hard sell and this is the quick road to disengaging followers and losing them altogether before they have even properly looked into what you have to offer them. Instead you should focus on delighting, entertaining and engaging them with content so they grow to love what the brand is all about.
You haven’t found your posting sweetspot yet
Posting too much can annoy your fans and lead to them unfollowing you, but not posting enough can also lead to them switching off from you as well. It can be a struggle to come up with consistently great content each and everyday, so try planning the bulk of your content weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly, and schedule this in advance so you don’t have to worry about consistency.
Making these simple changes can not only stop you from losing followers, but may improve your engagement and even put you in a position where new potential fans can see you're content too. Check out this article to see even more ways you could be annoying your customers.
