Photo: RetailWire
MarketingCharts staff
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, a Watershed Publishing publication providing up-to-to-minute data and research to marketers.
A recent study from Sprout Social shows that brands need to strike a very delicate balance with their social media promotions or risk losing their followers. For instance, posting too many promotions is the most annoying action. But at the same time, consumers say they need to see a product multiple times on social media before they’ll buy it.
Far and away the most annoying action a brand can take is posting too many promotions, cited by 58 percent of respondents to Sprout Social’s survey, which was fielded among more than 1,000 Facebook, Instagram and Twitter users. About one-third or more said it’s annoying when brands use slang and jargon (38 percent), lack personality on their accounts (35 percent) and try to be funny when they’re not (32 percent). Let’s deconstruct that for a second: some of your followers want you to have more personality, but you can’t try too hard and you can’t use certain terms. Good luck with that.
[caption id="attachment_52736" align="alignnone" width="640"]
Source: MarketingCharts - Click for larger view[/caption]
Moving on to the actions that really hurt — unfollows — the survey indicates that overdoing it on promotional messages (46 percent) is the biggest culprit. Tweeting too much (35 percent) is also a complaint, though irrelevant information is a bigger turn-off (41 percent). Just so you’re clear, you also can’t be too quiet either. Almost one in five say this would make them unfollow your brand.
So be active but not overly promotional. And here’s the kicker: some repetition appears to be necessary. About 85 percent of survey respondents said they need to see a product or service multiple times on social media before they purchase it, with most of those (61 percent overall) wanting to see it two to four times.
Other findings from the survey:
Source: MarketingCharts - Click for larger view[/caption]
Moving on to the actions that really hurt — unfollows — the survey indicates that overdoing it on promotional messages (46 percent) is the biggest culprit. Tweeting too much (35 percent) is also a complaint, though irrelevant information is a bigger turn-off (41 percent). Just so you’re clear, you also can’t be too quiet either. Almost one in five say this would make them unfollow your brand.
So be active but not overly promotional. And here’s the kicker: some repetition appears to be necessary. About 85 percent of survey respondents said they need to see a product or service multiple times on social media before they purchase it, with most of those (61 percent overall) wanting to see it two to four times.
Other findings from the survey:
- Fifty-eight percent said they are more likely to buy from a brand that they follow on social media;
- Three-quarters have purchased something because they saw it on social media;
- Almost six in 10 respondents said they follow brands because they’re interested in promotions, trailing only interest in the brand’s product or service (73 percent).