Did you know more than 50% users on Twitter unfollow a brand on Twitter because of boring or repetitive tweets? A study titled “The Social Breakup” conducted by ExactTarget and CoTweet revealed insights on why people unfollow brands on twitter.
41% people on Twitter complained that their tweet streams are filled with unwanted marketing messages. As a result, most decided to unfollow brands that spam. Almost a similar number of people (39%) also said that excessive tweeting by brands put them off too.1 out every 5 Twitter users (27%) followed to unfollow the brands just for their one-time offer deal. In other words, brands should expect a significant drop in followers after their one-time Twitter promotions are over. Around 20% of the people stated that either the brand tweets were too promotional or they were too chit-chatty. The following chart provides you with a summary of the report findings:
What to tweet?: Content is king, but what content should be in placed? What should a brand tweet? From the findings, it seems that a brand has to: (1) Post regularly but not spam, (2) Can’t be too promotional, (3) Must offer enough deals, (4) Can’t be repetitive… If you realized, some points are even conflicting. The points conflict because there isn’t a standardized content mix that brands should follow.
There are, however, general rules: Spam and over repeating tweets are definitely killers. The rest of a brand’s communication mix has to be catered for the people who follow the brand. For example, @PennOlson tweets about Asian tech content and also occasionally interact with followers. Interestingly, we do receive complains when we interact too much. We value these feedback as they are important to help us achieve the right mix of content on Twitter.
Spamming is not even the last resort: As a brand, you will never want to flood your followers’ timeline. It just speaks poorly of the brand, especially when tweets are repetitive. Note that spam and high frequency tweeting aren’t exactly the same. Our friend (and also a passionate Twitter user) @AskAaronLee tweets at high frequency and is achieving great success on Twitter. His followers understand and share the same passion. If you were to follow his tweets, his Twitter stream contains a mixture of content and conversation tweets. He tweets a lot but adds value to his community. If you’re interested to learn more, you may want to catch his Twitter story and tips here.
To some extent, being successful on Twitter is more of an art than science. We could use analytics to track which tweets are successful, but essentially, it still boils down to the user’s personality. An impatient person would spam tweet while a connector takes time to understand and build relationships with the community. If we were to follow this logic, does it mean it takes a sociable person to manage social accounts well? I believe the answer is a yes.
by Sahiel Shah on March 4, 2011 in Business
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