Social media has changed a great deal over the years. What used to be a place to simply connect with friends has now evolved into a place where businesses are interacting with followers, promoting their brand and expanding sales.
Social media has also become a lot more competitive with millions of businesses competing for the spotlight and trying to get their voices heard. If like many other businesses you have set up social media profiles on your selected platforms, there’s no doubt that you’ve increased your following with every tweet and status update that you’ve shared.
However at some point you may notice those numbers dropping as people change their minds and start unfollowing your account.
Why is this the case? Read on to find out…
Not being personal enough
Social media is all about engaging with your followers. Even though you don’t personally know most of them you still need to make them feel valued and respected.
If your account gives the impression that it’s being run by robots, then people will eventually end up leaving because they don’t feel like they’re engaging with an actual human. Your followers expect to be treated like valued individuals, meaning you need to respond to them when they comment on your posts and engage in conversations with them where possible. A personalised ‘thank you for following me’ message when someone follows your page has been proven to boost engagement levels and has a much bigger impact when compared with receiving an automated message.
Overdoing the self-promotion
Many businesses make the mistake of using their social media accounts to continually self-promote. Although self-promotion every now and then is not a bad thing (and the main reason you are on social media in the first place), too much self-promotion will harm your brand and lead people to unfollow you.
Instead, you need to focus on content that provides value to your readers, that is interesting, thought-provoking, useful and shareable. This will lead people to respect your brand and view it as knowledgeable and informative, so that when you do publish a promotional post every now and then, they are willing to accept it.
Incorrectly using hashtags
Some businesses have struggled to use hashtags properly, either using too many within a single status update or using hashtags that don’t make any sense. Traditionally, it was okay to use as many hashtags as you wanted on Twitter, but today, a maximum of three should be used per tweet, while each hashtag should be 11 characters or less.
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to retain your followers and even grow your following on a daily basis, but by adopting the above points you run the risk of losing followers and wasting valuable marketing time.
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