Gaining social media followers is key to reaching and engaging your target audience. Growing this community introduces your brand to many opportunities, including increased visibility, solidified brand image and an overall stellar online presence.
Here lies the problem: Acquiring social media followers is only half of the work – you have to be able to keep them, as well.
According to Good Firms, four out of five people have recently unfollowed a business for various reasons, the most prominent being consumers losing interest in the brand’s offerings.
Unfollowing is a regular occurrence in social media. Brands can’t please everyone all the time. But if you are consistently losing followers, it might signal that something is wrong with your social media strategy, which negatively impacts your lead generation and conversions in the long run.
In this blog, we cover the following topics:
- The importance of a large and engaged social media following
- Follower retention best practices
- Reasons why people unfollow brands on social media
- “Why am I losing followers on Instagram?” – You might be shadow-banned
- How to grow and retain followers the right way
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
The Importance of a Large and Engaged Social Media Following
A high retention rate in social media following indicates that your brand has established a deep connection with your followers. And an engaged and loyal following is one of the best assets your business can have.
Loyal followers act as brand advocates. They rave about your services, recommend you to their friends and make repeated purchases from your brand. For this reason, businesses should prioritize follower retention if they want to reach a bigger audience and increase conversions.
Follower Retention Best Practices
How to grow social media followers and (hopefully) keep them for good? Here are some statistics to guide you in creating strategies for customer retention:
- Eighty-eight percent of consumers won’t purchase from businesses that don’t respond to complaints on social media (Social Media Today).
Responding to all complaints is the best answer to how to get more followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It’s a simple way to prevent being unfollowed on Facebook since it shows your prospects that you care about your clients’ experiences.
- Seventy-one percent of online customers believe that immediate response from your customer service team will improve their shopping experience (Comm100).
If you’re constantly wondering, “Why am I losing followers on Instagram?” then it might be because you don’t respond quickly enough. A late answer will give them the impression that you don’t care about addressing their concerns.
- Ninety-three percent of consumers say that online reviews affect their purchase decisions (Podium).
Having a solid online reputation through quality reviews is the most effective answer to your “How to get more followers on Facebook?” question. If you’re unsure how to collect and manage your business reviews, you can hire a social media expert from one of the top online reputation management companies to do it for you. A social media marketing service ensures that your business attracts the right audience and boosts customer engagement.
- Eighty percent of customers are more likely to buy from a business that provides personalized experiences (Accenture).
Offering personalized experiences is necessary if you want your business to thrive in today’s highly competitive digital marketplace. In fact, 71 percent of consumers feel frustrated when their shopping experience is not tailored to them.
The tens or hundreds of unfollowers Facebook business profiles will inevitably encounter are an unavoidable reality of having a presence on the platform. Quite simply, it comes with the territory. But if you’re serious about learning how to grow social media followers and retain them, keep these practices in mind:
- Address complaints
- Respond promptly
- Manage your online reviews
- Provide tailored experiences to your followers
A social media specialist knows how to get more Facebook followers for your brand. So hiring reputation management services is the next step in growing and retaining your following.
Reasons Why People Unfollow Brands on Social Media
Now that you know what makes a social media page effective, let’s look at it from the other side and see what makes it fail. Knowing why people unfollow brands on social media is necessary to create more effective customer engagement and retention methodologies.
Remember: The unfollowers Facebook, Instagram and Twitter business profiles are rightly concerned about can represent a loss of potential clients. Having too many unfollowers can mean that your social media strategy needs to be upgraded.
Read on to know the most common reasons why people unfollow brands on social media and learn from them:
Incomplete Profile
Top-performing brands have one thing in common: Their social media profiles have complete and comprehensive business details that searchers need. Conversely, an incomplete business profile makes a brand appear unprofessional and careless.
The solution is simple – make sure you have a complete business profile. Circling back to the question of how to increase followers on Facebook and other platforms, putting all the necessary information in your profile is one of the easiest ways around this problem.
Low-Quality Photos
A simple tip on how to grow social media followers? Post high-quality visual content. Visual content is an integral part of an effective social media strategy. Posting low-quality images on your profile has devastating effects on how the audience perceives your brand. For example, a blurry or poorly cropped image as your profile photo or banner sends the message that you are lazy or simply do not care.
Here’s a guide to the correct social media image sizes per network, according to Sprout Social:
- Profile image – 180 x 180 px
- Cover photo – 400 x 150 px
- Shared image – 1,200 x 630 px
- Profile image – 110 x 100 px
- Photo size – 1,080 x 1,080 px
- Instagram stories – 1,080 x 1,920 px
- Profile image – 400 x 400 px
- Header image – 1,500 x 500 px
Too Much Self-Promotion
The primary purpose of being on social media is to gain more customers. But too much promotion is a turn-off for most internet users. A good rule on how to get more Facebook followers and prevent losing Twitter followers is to stick to the 80/20 method of posting content. Eighty percent of your content should increase engagement, while only 20 percent should be promotional posts.
Posting Too Frequently
There’s a common misconception that brands should post often to increase engagement. However, Good Firms reports that 41 percent of social media users unfollow a brand that posts too frequently. You don’t have to spam the feed to keep your followers interested.
Here’s a summary from Hootsuite of the ideal number of times to post for the major platforms:
- Facebook – Once or twice a day
- Instagram – Between three and seven times per week
- Twitter – One to five tweets a day
Unfavorable Customer Reviews
When verifying the credibility of a business online, consumers turn to reviews. According to Invest, 86 percent of people hesitate in doing transactions with businesses that have negative reviews.
If your brand is not proactive in collecting and managing customer reviews, you risk continuously having more unfollowers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which can translate to losing clients.
If you are unsure how to start with review management, you can employ a social media growth service to help you establish your online reputation. Online reputation management companies offer a social media marketing service to build an engaged following for your business. Experts from these agencies are highly knowledgeable in how to increase followers on Facebook and keep them engaged through high-value content.
Why Am I Losing Followers on Instagram? – You Might Be Shadow-Banned
If you notice a sudden drop in followers and engagement on Instagram, this might mean that you are shadow-banned by the platform. Hashtags play a significant role in expanding your reach and getting your content discovered by your target audience. But when you are shadow-banned, your posts won’t appear in anyone’s feed or explore page unless they follow your profile.
If you are also losing Twitter followers, shadow-banning might explain it, as well. Just like in Instagram, a significant increase in Twitter unfollowers could mean that the platform has flagged you.
Although Instagram and Twitter have never officially acknowledged this phenomenon, many users have experienced it firsthand. Luckily, this can be avoided and even reversed. Avoid using bots to automate your follower growth and engagement, and ensure that you don’t use repetitive hashtags on your posts.
Overall, stick to the platforms’ Terms of Service and use ethical practices in running your account to prevent Instagram and Twitter unfollowers from shadow-banning. A social media specialist can help you run a healthy social media account to prevent headaches brought about by a sudden ban.
How To Grow and Retain Your Social Media Following the Right Way
Social media might seem simple, but it’s important to remember that business pages are entirely different from personal profiles. Therefore, your knowledge of various platforms might not be sufficient for your campaigns to see success and profitable outcomes.
This is where a social media specialist will become beneficial. A social media expert knows how to get more Facebook followers, as well as Instagram and Twitter followers, for your brand. They can help you with everything from setting up your brand profile to managing your social posts. Businesses using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have everything to gain from having a social media expert on their side to supercharge their growth strategies and secure their online reputation.
Conclusion
Businesses must understand why people unfollow brands if they hope to address the specific issues causing people to disengage with the business they once trusted. With the correct methodologies in place, you can leverage your loyal following to reach your campaign objectives and goals.
If you’re still pondering how to get more followers on Facebook leveraging positive reviews, partner with a social media marketing expert from Rize. We offer done-for-you services to generate testimonials and reviews that attract more customers to your business pages.
Our social media follower growth service has helped numerous brands achieve success online. Rest assured, the Rize Reviews team knows the best tactics on how to increase followers on Facebook and Instagram and prevent your business from losing Twitter followers. Our social media marketing expert will work closely with your project manager to ensure that your brand retains an engaged following and achieves social media success.
Contact us today and leverage our reputation management services to grow your business.
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