Many of the dislikers were fair weather friends in the first place, who don’t understand what the “like” is about in the first place — 49 percent of Facebook users don’t get that “liking” means subscribing to a stream of promotional communications from the brand in question. And that’s a recipe for unlikes. Here’s why they ultimately click unlike, shown as an infographic:
However, not everyone clicks “unlike” when they lose interest in a page’s content — here’s what they do:
- 19 percent just ignore news feed posts from brands that have lost their appeal.
- 38 percent click on the x next to a brand’s post to remove it from the news feed.
- 43 percent go to the brand’s page and click on unlike.
Between the unlikers and the people who ignore posts or remove your brand from their newsfeeds, that doesn’t make Facebook fans sound like trustworthy friends — actually, these relationships are as much a two-way street as offline friendships are. ExactTarget and CoTweet recommend that brands keep their pages fresh and interesting, while limiting the number of postings.
That conclusion isn’t new advice, and it’s slightly disappointing after all of the really harsh statistics on how fickle Facebook fans can get. Speaking of let-downs, the report doesn’t disclose the size of the survey sample, and that bothers me.
What do you think about the advice from the study’s creators?
Source: All Facebook
Tuesday, February 15, 2011