Social media fatigue is the tendency of social network users to stop or reduce the time they spend on social platforms over time. This is most commonly in response to being overwhelmed with online activity from friends, followers, and other connections.
Besides spending less time on the platform, users may start unfollowing or blocking pages to reduce the noise. If your brand is seen as part of the problem, you might not make the cut. As a result, you lose access to potential customers and the number of actively engaged users on your page dwindles.
Social media fatigue can affect business owners as well as consumers.
It is easy to feel under pressure to emulate the biggest brands in your industry. These businesses often have entire teams with large budgets dedicated to social media. This means they can put out a constant stream of videos, posts, and contests.
Unless you are in the same position, trying to match this is unrealistic. Less than 30% of SMEs have a marketing manager, let alone a whole team just for social media. Don’t stress yourself out by trying to do everything at once. Instead, take the time to focus on quality over quantity. This helps both you and your audience avoid social media fatigue.
SPOTTING SOCIAL MEDIA FATIGUE
There are a few clues that tell you your audience is losing interest. If you see any of these, it is time to act:
Fewer Comments and Interactions
People need a good reason to engage with your posts, from education or entertainment value to more tangible rewards. Without this, your page is yet more distracting noise in the eyes of users suffering from social media fatigue.
34% of people say that finding entertaining content is one of the main reasons they use social media, while only 27% say they use it to find businesses and products. In other words, your followers are mainly here for fun. Your social media posts should reflect this priority.
Tracking user interactions helps you know when your content is getting stale. If you see reduced engagement on the kind of posts that used to do well on your page, this is a strong sign that users are getting bored and want to see some fresh ideas.
Negative Comments
A rise in critical or rude comments on your page can be both a sign and a cause of social media fatigue. People who are feeling overwhelmed or unhappy with their social media usage are more likely to lash out in the comments section. Don’t take it personally – your post may just have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Arguing publicly with a user or getting defensive can be the worst way to respond. Having an argument in front of hundreds of your followers only adds to the feeling of being overwhelmed by online interactions. It is easy for the ego to get involved and both you and your follower dig your heels in.
A better approach is often to leave a reply saying only that you want to talk about the issue in private messages. This lets you deal with critics in a more direct and human way, and removes the feeling there is an audience watching to decide who ‘won’.
Your followers don’t want their feed clogged up by arguments. If you let these kinds of comments take over your page, fewer people will keep returning to your page.
If users think you are removing negative feedback, they may start to wonder what your business is hiding. As long as you are actively responding to negative comments, they can actually increase conversions by 85%.
People Stop Watching Your Videos
If the majority of a video’s viewers disappear after the first few seconds, what went wrong?
All of your content must clearly communicate why it is worth your audience’s time before they lose interest.
Go through your past videos and ask yourself how you could get the key points across more clearly. Getting straight to the point makes your videos easier to share, increasing their potential reach.
Your Audience Has Stopped Growing
Social media fatigue can lead to slow audience growth, as your users stop sharing your content and increasing your page’s visibility by interacting with it.
If your content is repetitive or lacks entertainment value, users won’t have any reason to share it. This makes expanding your audience harder than it needs to be.
Fewer Click-Throughs
A bored or frustrated social media audience is unlikely to follow links to your site or store. One of the main reasons for this is of course that someone who is ignoring your content just won’t see the links you share.
Those who do see it may be resistant to clicking it. Social media users are bombarded with daily demands to click this, check out that sale, or try this service. They only have so much time and attention to give. Calls-to-action work, but they work best in moderation. Not everything you post has to push users for a sale or other commitment.
It is important to ensure your goals match the content you are posting, or you could see low conversions even on popular posts.
HOW SOCIAL MEDIA FATIGUE AFFECTS YOUR BUSINESS
Social media fatigue impacts you as well as your business. If you don’t get a handle on it, you might feel like you are struggling to keep the followers you have and can’t attract more:
Reduced Motivation
It is hard to keep your enthusiasm up when you aren’t seeing progress. The stress and loss of motivation caused by social media fatigue can carry over into other areas of your business. This is especially true when you are doing everything yourself.
Wasting Time
Productivity is hard to maintain when you feel like you are fighting a losing battle. This can lead you to spend too much time managing your social media. Furthermore, if your work on social media is getting no results, it is costing time that could be spent elsewhere.
Negative Brand Perception
If social media users start to associate your brand with constant spam and low-quality content, their opinion of your business will suffer. This is especially dangerous on social media, where complaints and backlash against brands can spread rapidly.
Losing Followers
Users respond to social media fatigue by stepping away from social media entirely or clearing their feed of the content they are tired of. This could mean un-following your page or blocking your posts from appearing in their feed. Either way, you lose the ability to reach that customer through social media.
Losing Customers
It sounds unlikely that a customer would stop buying from you only because of your social media posts but this can happen. When you can no longer reach a customer through social media, you may have lost your only means of contacting that person.
As a result, they may not hear of the deal that would have convinced them to buy from you. It also opens the door for a competitor to provide the content people used to get from you, making them less likely to return.
IMPROVE CUSTOMER STICKINESS WITH THESE 5 RULES
Don’t Get Stuck in A Rut
If it isn’t broken then don’t fix it, right?
For social media, this is not exactly the case. Trends and interests move quickly and without new ideas and content formats, it is a matter of time before your audience moves on.
When social media users were asked what makes them unfollow a brand, repetitive content was the most common answer.
There is no reason to throw out proven content ideas. It can be useful to edit and re-use posts when the topic is relevant.
Doing this too much can make your social media posts feel repetitive, however. Try out new styles and formats of posting to keep things fresh. Make testing new ideas part of your social media routine, and don’t wait for your audience to lose interest before you mix things up.
Provide Engagement Incentives
More users will like, share, or comment on your posts if you give them a reason. This can be as simple as remembering to engage with the posts and comments on your page. Reply and have fun with your commenters. Social media users want two-way conversation as well as great content.
Offering rewards for sharing or engaging with posts can also get results. Common examples of this are giving a free gift to the first 100 people to respond or share a discount code with users who tag their friends.
Contests involving user-generated content create a fun experience anyone can take part in. 85% of consumers find user-generated content more influential than brand posts, making this is a great way to attract attention.
Post Less
Just because social media lets you communicate with your audience 24/7, doesn’t mean you should. Social media users don’t want you to clog up their feeds with constant marketing and will block your page if your posts are getting on their nerves.
You should prioritize quality over quantity, and share posts that offer value to your audience.
When you want to share in-depth info with your followers, link them to your blog or video channel. Social media users often only have a few minutes to kill. A 20-minute video will be lost in their feed if users can’t watch it right now. On the other hand, once followers know you have a video tutorial series they can check it out at a time that suits them.
Promote Other Channels
Social media is great at letting people know about your brand and building their interest. It’s not always the best avenue for selling however.
Social media users are online mainly for fun, not to shop around for the best services and deals. As a result, you need to convert social media leads while maintaining a focus on the content people visit your page for.
- Bridging the gap between social media and email marketing is a great way to avoid trying to sell on social media. Bringing your audience to a personalized channel like email lets you focus on content created for specific personas. This works both ways, as it can also bring email subscribers to your social channels.
- Once you have their attention, bring those followers to other channels such as your business text messaging. This means your social media stays focused on attracting and engaging followers, but you still get the opportunity to convert those leads.
Post Unique Content on Each Platform
Avoid sharing the same posts on every social media platform. Each platform has its own expectations for content. Copy-pasting your posts from one platform to the next doesn’t account for this.
Your content will look out of place if it wasn’t made or customized for the platform you post it on. On top of that, users won’t follow you across platforms just to see the same posts again.
Instead, tailor your content according to the strengths of each platform and its audience.
For example, lengthy posts and links to your blog can work well on a site like Facebook where users expect to read a lot of text, but won’t get a lot of attention on Instagram, where users want to see images and short videos, while Twitter users use the platform mainly to keep up with current events.
Your content should always take into account why users are on your chosen social media platforms in the first place.
Plan Ahead
Scheduling at least a month in advance makes social media more manageable. Planning your posts lets you line up a variety of posts and gives you time to come up with fresh ideas. It also helps keep your posting frequency under control.
Focus your content on your marketing goals, and create a long-term social media marketing strategy. For example, if you have an upcoming event or product launch, planning posts to tease your audience with new details can help build interest and excitement.
It is a good idea to leave a few gaps in your posting schedule too. You can’t predict every trend or event, and this gives you room to talk about the latest news and updates.
CONCLUSION
While you don’t need to post every day to have an effective social media presence, introducing new and varied content is key to avoiding social media fatigue in your audience.
Make sure your content always gives users a compelling reason to engage with posts, and stay alert for signs your audience is getting bored. It is important to take note of negative responses and plan future content using that information.
Author’s bio:
Alexa Lemzy is a professional digital marketer and dedicated business blogger at TextMagic. She writes mainly about strategies for business growth, mobile marketing and online communication.
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