Brands Are Getting Dumped on Facebook

During last week's meeting for one of PRowl's accounts, we held a small social media workshop to educate staff members about the various differences between Facebook and Twitter and how to handle those differences accordingly while managing those channels. We discussed how establishing an engaging online presence on Facebook may not be the same way it is created on Twitter and created several strategies and tactics in order to successfully create relationships with all of our users in the most effective ways.

With so much social media on the brain between managing my account and the current social media course I am enrolled in, I have been stalking the internet for interesting articles about the best ways to handle Twitter and Facebook accordingly. I came across this article on Twitter from TWTRCON about a study that was recently conducted by ExactTarget and CoTweet that revealed why Facebook and Twitter users "unlike" or "unfollow" brands, and how the expectations around brand communications differ between the two social media platforms.

Marketing Profs reported the results, and below is a comparison of how Facebook and Twitter users engage with brands, courtesy of TWTRCON:

While Twitter users are less likely to ‘dump’ a brand, they do expect brands to keep it interesting – 52% “unfollow” brands due to boring content. Only 38% of Facebook fans “unliked” a brand because content became boring or repetitive, but a significant majority (63%) “unliked” a brand due to excessive postings – Facebook users don’t want to hear too much from a brand (44%), and want to keep their wall fairly uncluttered (43%).

Additional highlights from the comparison:

• A significant amount – 26% of Facebook users, and 27% of Twitter users – only “liked” a company to take advantage of a one-time offer
• 24% of Facebook users and 27% of Twitter users said the company didn’t offer enough deals
• 24% of Facebook users and 21% of Twitter users said posts/tweets were too promotional
• only 51% of Facebook users expect a “like” will result in marketing communications from brands, vs. a whopping 71% of Twitter users
• 20% of Twitter users have stopped following a company because their tweets were “too chit-chatty”.
• 71% of Facebook fans say they’ve become more selective over the past year about which brands they “like” on Facebook. And even after users have “liked” a brand, 51% of Facebook users claim they rarely (or never) visit the brand’s page again.

The most surprising data was how the decision to ‘unlike’ a brand had relatively little effect on future buying: 63% of Facebook fans say they are as likely or more likely to purchase something from a company after ending their Facebook relationship.

What are your thoughts on these statistics about brand communications via Facebook and Twitter? What are some recommendations that you have for being a successful communicator on both platforms? Let us know!