Are you irritating your audience into unliking or unfollowing you?

Social media is about building relationships with people and nobody likes to be in a relationship with someone who is pushy or who irritates them. But what irritates people online? How do we avoid frustrating our audience?

We asked our networks what irritates them from brands online and what pushes them to unfollow or unlike a page and we got a lot of great answers.

Here are some highlights, grouped by theme.

Don’t be too pushy

This was definitely the thing that came up the most. People don’t like to feel like you’re constantly trying to sell to them. Avoid being too repetitive, using catch phrases too much or just posting too much content (2-3 times a day is a good number to start with. Experiment and watch your insights to see what works best with your audience though, it could be more.)

Here are reasons people gave for unfollowing a page:

“Posting too often”

“Repetition, especially of tag lines or catch phrases.”

“Posting too often, or posting the same thing several times a day, or linkbombing a feed.”

“Posting 100 times a day, one after the other. Just unfollowed a page for that.”

“Posting mainly for the purpose of selling (one post after another … buy this, buy this, buy this) without sharing any useful content … same with newsletters.”

“Post only about themselves/services.”

“Too much pleading for liking, sharing, help us win this contest, etc. I’ll happily share good content without anyone asking; begging tells me your content is not that good. Also posting a whole bunch of times in a row on a regular basis. “

Social media needs to be a two-way conversation

When you have a presence online, people expect you to be there to have conversations.  If you post information but never answer questions or respond or acknowledge those that engage with you, people will get irritated and leave.

Reasons people gave for unliking a page for lack of engagement:

“When they don’t reply to questions on their own posts. Example: Joe’s Diner, “Come on in for great lunch specials today!” Me, “What are your specials today?” No reply. Unlike.”

“A page that doesn’t post/engage regularly.”

Your attitude matters

The way you interact with your audience is extremely important.  Make sure that you are aware that the tone you use is important and that what you are saying stays in line with what your audience expects of you.

People definitely don’t like it when brands get too political or religious:

“Overly critical, negative or bullying tones. Strong religious or political views that don’t illustrate willingness to be open to other views. Offensive, overly sexual content. “

“Anything with too aggressive or strong political or religious views one way or another or anything very negative.”

So what DO I say?

Be useful and give value to your customers. 

Remember it’s about them, not about you.

Be present and authentic.

Never stop checking in with your audience, either with questions or through analytics, to see if what you’re doing is working.

What makes you unfollow or unlike a brand? And what makes you stay? Leave a comment and let us know!

Is your content useful?

Lara and I make an effort to attend at least two conferences a year each - not including the one we organize. Last week, I went down to Toronto to attend Mesh Marketing 2013. It was one of the best conferences I’ve attended for learning, with an engaged and really smart audience that added a lot to what the speakers talked about with their comments on social media. Everything I learned through the day is useful to any business that uses content marketing, however, the day ended with one of the best and most important messages.

Jay Baer - our closing keynote speaker - is the author of the marketing blog, Convince and Convert, as well as the recent book, Youtility. Youtility is about creating something useful. (It isn’t necessarily about targeting a particular audience, but it needs to be relevant to your business.)

There are a number of ways that you can create useful content. Sharing tips, asking questions, and knowing the needs of your customers is a good start. But how can you take it a step further? How do you extend your reach? 

Be useful. Be helpful.

One of the social media examples Jay shared was the @HiltonSuggests twitter account. This is what they do:

This twitter account doesn’t sell. It doesn’t do anything but help people by answering questions. And helping goes a long way. There’s not a great deal of effort required for any one person. This account is manned by employees all over the world. That’s pretty amazing. And what are the chances that someone who’s already travelling might remember the help they received and book with Hilton the next time they’re off on a trip? Probably significantly better than if @HiltonSuggests didn’t exist.

Most businesses don’t have the need or the resources for this kind of social media activity. But here are a few ways that you can create your own Youtility:

1) Answer common questions.

If your customers are asking you questions, verbally or in emails, you can bet many more are asking the same questions on google. Does your website answer the most frequently asked questions? Instead of building a FAQ page, start blogging those answers. We have semi-regular “how to” posts on our blog so that if someone wants to know how to sign up for twitter, they can find that information on our website.

2) Share indirect, but relevant information.

Every business has crossover with related businesses. We get asked for referrals to web designers/developers, graphic designers, and more. Neither of those disciplines is directly related to the work that we do. However, it’s absolutely relevant because it’s part of creating an effective web presence. I can share quality graphic and web design articles to help our audience learn more about something that is not in their area of expertise.

3) Promote your community. 

We talk to a lot of social media users that don’t want to share personal information about themselves online. Sometimes, the reason is privacy; others it’s about keeping business and personal separate. We encourage being personable over being personal when the comfort level with sharing is low. When you don’t want to share things about yourself, you can build and encourage community by being a source of information about your area. (Community can mean a geographic area of any size or a common interest group - define it the way that works best for you.)

Committing to creating content that qualifies as “useful” can open the door for some really creative ideas that will serve your audience and grow your business. If you’re eager to learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of Youtility!

Do you have any examples of brands providing really useful information or services?  Tell us in the comments!

Storytelling and social media: Humans of New York

Have you ever tried to convey a concept with technical terms and jargon? Perhaps you noticed (or maybe you didn’t) the blank stares and glazed eyes as you give a thorough and well-meaning explanation. (I’m looking in the mirror as I type this out, because you are not alone.)

The solution to this problem is so simple: turn it into a story. I get so many questions about social media every week, but I’ve been getting them for years now. I’ve seen and heard so many things that people do, think, feel or misunderstand. I haven’t seen and heard it all by any stretch, but definitely a lot. It isn’t that hard to come up with a story, a metaphor or an analogy. 

I’ve always loved a good story. So much so that I have lost count of the number of nights I have stayed up to find out how a story resolves. When the fifth Harry Potter book came out, I knew when it would be delivered. I planned to be home for that entire weekend because I would finish that book before I had to return to work. 

Stories draw people in like nothing else can.

In addition to loving stories, I’ve always had an interest in photography. I’ve taken thousands of shots; half a dozen or so make the throwaways worth it. After all, a photo is another medium for telling a story. 

Several months ago, I became aware of what has become my all-time favourite Facebook page: Humans of New York. The posts from this page reminded me so much of my friend Kym’s 100 strangers project, Le Mien. (Lara and I were part of the group that was stranger #38 way back in October 2010.) Kym’s ability to capture the essence of a person with succint, yet poignant, captions was so brilliant. In the months I’ve followed Brandon Stanton’s work on HONY, I see that same ability in him. 

As I’ve found out now that I have the newly released HONY book in my hands, this project has had major evolutions over time. There were two changes that - in his introduction - Brandon credits with leading to his success (and a book deal):

1) He joined Facebook.

HONY started out as a website. Searchable by neighborhood, but not particularly popular. Then a friend finally convinced Brandon to set up a Facebook page. A little over a year later, a half a million people were connected to Brandon’s images.

2) He started telling stories.

Well, actually, his introduction says he started interviewing his subjects and sharing their stories. Some of the stories that accompany the photos are as short as one word. Others are lengthy, as with the recent photo of Duane, whose story led many to help him realize his dream of a brother for his daughter.

These two changes are listed here in chronological order, however, without the stories the page’s growth may not have happened as fast as it did. The photos are gorgeous and many times they tell tell a story without any words at all, but the incredible insight into the human condition that Brandon reveals with each one is appealing on a deeper level, particularly when you see or read about hard-earned wisdom, full circle moments, affection, parental concern, geekdom, hope, microfashion, and so many more.

Short or long, the stories drew me in. They are why I follow HONY on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

What stories can you share with your audience that will draw them in? How your business got started? Challenges you’ve faced? Funny office moments? What about your clients and customers? 

Are you giving your audience value?

There are several phrases I use over and over again because they are key to online success. Today I’m focusing on one of them  - give value to your audience.

We’ve talked about the importance of understanding your brand and how important it is to be thoughtful in what you post, but there is something else you need to keep in mind. If you go too far off course from your brand, values, and promises, you will bore or irritate your audience into un-following you.

How do you figure out if you’re sharing content people who follow you value? Let’s break it down:

Who is your audience?

Can you describe your audience? Every audience is different and you need to take the time to really figure out who your audience is. Understanding who makes up that audience, what they like, what they don’t like and what they would like from you is critical in creating the kind of content that can help you build relationships that turn that audience into customers.

Once you’ve figured that out, creating and sharing content that can connect with your audience becomes a lot easier.

What do they value?

Not every audience is looking for the same kind of information. Make sure that everything you share has some kind of connection back to who you are and who your audience is. 

Think about why they followed you in the first place. What would people expect the content to look like coming from your brand? Make sure your content doesn’t go too far off from that.

Things that people value tend to fall into three main categories:

1. You’re teaching them something,
2. You’re entertaining them, or
3. You’re giving them tools and knowledge. 

What don’t they want?

Nobody likes to follow a brand that is only trying to sell to them. That’s valuable to the brand, not to the audience. Make sure that you’re giving your audience something they want or can use so that when you do post some sales posts - and you definitely should - they think so highly of you they’re far more inclined to make the buy.

People don’t want information that has nothing to do with them or that they can’t relate to.

Let’s look at some examples

• If your main audience is young women about to get married, interesting articles about retirement don’t make sense. 
• If your main audience is men who want to home-brew their own beer, then funny cartoons about being a new mom don’t make sense.
• If you promised tips and tricks to help them do something better, just sharing things you’re selling isn’t going to convince them of anything other than that you’re pushy and too sales-y.
• If you sell hammers, make sure that you talk about the hammers, and the things you can do with the hammers. 

Spend some time thinking about your content and what you’re giving to your audience that they would value. Then share some examples (good and bad) of what you’ve seen or done that relates to giving an audience value.

What to do when you get writer's block

Lately every time I sit down to write a blog post I hit a wall.  I can usually get a paragraph or two out but then it just won’t come any more.

I’ve started blog posts on why small businesses need to use social media, on Facebook ads, about personality in your writing…. they’re all saved and closed because getting them finished seemed impossible.

We all hit walls

We are constantly encouraging people to write a lot of content.  Content for their blogs, websites, newsletters, Facebook, Twitter and sometimes more!  We know it isn’t always easy.  Even when we know what we want to say, sometimes the words just don’t come out.

What can we do?

I decided that instead of hitting my head against my desk because I couldn’t complete a number of posts even though I knew what I wanted to say I was going to write a post about overcoming writer’s block (hoping that the change of subject would help me overcome my own).

I googled and I read all kinds of articles and I’m going to share some of the tips that struck me most.  Oh, and one of them I saw repeatedly was “Write about something else” so this totally wasn’t procrastinating!   

Free writing

Just write.  Write anything that comes into your head.  Do you remember stream of consciousness exercises?  Do that.  In my opinion, it would be even better with a pen and paper, but wherever you write, just let your brain throw anything it wants out. Write until it doesn’t seem difficult anymore.

This quote from Maya Angelou really made me smile too.  Irritate your muse into getting back into action:

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’”

Mind mapping

What are you trying to say?  Map out the entire thing. 

I know that I have a tendency to have an idea and think “I know where I’m going to go with this” and then wonder why I’m sitting halfway through not knowing what to say next.  Break it down.  

• What are you writing about?
• Why are you writing about it?
• Who are you writing it for?
• What are you telling them?
• Are you making suggestions?
• Breaking down the steps on how to do something?
• How will you conclude what you had to say? 
• What was the key thing they should have taken from all you wrote?
• And finally, what do you want them to do next?

Now that every part of what you wanted to say is down on paper, it may be a lot easier to tie it all together into the style of writing you’re looking for.

Tell someone else

I loved this piece of advice from John Steinbeck because I could immediately see how it would work for me.  If I had someone ask me to tell them why social media for business was important, I would have no problem doing it.  Writing it as an article is an entirely different proposition.

“Many years ago, I met John Steinbeck at a party in Sag Harbor, and told him that I had writer’s block. And he said something which I’ve always remembered, and which works. He said, “Pretend that you’re writing not to your editor or to an audience or to a readership, but to someone close, like your sister, or your mother, or someone that you like.” And at the time I was enamored of Jean Seberg, the actress, and I had to write an article about taking Marianne Moore to a baseball game, and I started it off, “Dear Jean … ,” and wrote this piece with some ease, I must say. And to my astonishment that’s the way it appeared in Harper’s Magazine. “Dear Jean …” Which surprised her, I think, and me, and very likely Marianne Moore.”

— John Steinbeck by way of George Plimpton

Go write something

Next time you’re stuck on a piece of writing, try one of the above tricks or check out some of these resources with other tips.  And if you have a really great way you battle through writer’s block, leave a comment below.

Quick note: I think this is the longest post I’ve written in months, so maybe (just maybe) I broke down some of those writer’s block walls!

More posts on writer’s block:

• http://flavorwire.com/343207/13-famous-writers-on-overcoming-writers-block/
• http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/10-ways-to-combat-writers-block.html
• http://www.wikihow.com/Prevent-Writer’s-Block

Do you have any tried and true writer’s-block-busting tricks? Tell us in the comments!