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In light of the recent news that Facebook has lost 6 millions active users in the United States gives me pause to a potential bigger threat... a downward Social Spiral. "Unfriending" is no longer limited to friends. Company Facebook Fan Pages also are at risk of unfriending if their posts are irrelevant, annoying, salesy, etc.
What is your Social Media marketing mix? Are you "social?" How are you engaging your customers?
Should You Adjust Your Marketing Strategy as Facebook Loses 6 Million Users in the U.S.?
Home » Facebook, Social Media » Should You Adjust Your Marketing Strategy as Facebook Loses 6 Million Users in the U.S.?
According to today’s article in Mashable, Facebook has lost 6 million active users in the United States and another 1.5 million in Canada. As this marks the first drop in numbers for Facebook this past year, it will be interesting to see if the trend continues and becomes a long-term pattern.
The data, as gathered and analyzed by Inside Facebook, looks at the number of active users, as opposed to new signups, to gain an understanding of user trends, preferences and overall traffic. Although new signups are still increasing around the globe, user traffic within the U.S. has waned.
Has Facebook reached saturation in the United States? Are users fatigued with the incessant barrage of privacy concerns, phishing, spoofs and virus links? Has the thrill of reconnecting with old friends ended, now that practically everyone has been connected?
In the opinion of the marketing and behavioral science minds at The Brainworm Effect™, Facebook traffic has slowed for a variety of reasons:
The first group of concerns is related to technology, such as privacy, viruses, and spoofs attempting to steal information or hack a user’s account. Plus, Facebook doesn’t seem to be entirely trusted by the masses in regards to sharing their marketing information with third parties.
The second group of concerns is tied into relationships—people meeting people. During Facebook’s rapid ascension to the top of the Social Media food chain, user transparency made it easy and thrilling to discover and reconnect with old friends. Now that everyone has connected, these relationships must be maintained. Quite frankly, most people aren’t up to the task of holding meaningful conversations and maintaining relationships with people they don’t really know. As a result, activity was waned from those users, and some of them likely deactivated their accounts.
Although I do not have a figure at the time of this writing, many of us (myself included) have removed friends that no longer give value—or worse, are downright annoying or creepy. A few might be weird, or stalkers or abusive in their conversations. If a relationship is bad, naturally we end it.
Unfriending is no longer limited to friends. As more and more companies launch business pages on Facebook, their updates appear on users’ Newsfeeds as those pages are “liked.” It is only a matter of time when a user’s Newsfeed is filled with more promotional messages than updates from friends. When this happens, people will begin unliking business pages that have no perceived value. If the trend continues that fewer people are remaining active on Facebook, this will certainly become a larger problem for marketers, businesses and companies as a downward social spiral.
How Will A Downward Social Spiral Affect You?
If trend of eyeballs leaving Facebook continues, how will this affect your marketing? Do you have all of your Social Media eggs in one basket? What social marketing mix do you employ? Are you posting relevant content that will educate, inform and entertain? Are you engaging in meaningful conversations with your fans? After all, this is Social Media. Are you “social?”
Relationships are key in your Social Media marketing efforts. Just as maintaining relationships with your old high school friends, you must continue to engage your consumers and fans. Of course there are other avenues like Twitter and YouTube to help you maintain a presence and they shouldn’t be ignored. Also, regular and consistent blogging for your website can help you remain relevant and help boost your organic search engine ranking.
But most of all remember this… Social Media is about to go through a major change. Just a couple of short years ago, Facebook was the place to be. It’s amazing that a major brand has matured so quickly. It remains to be seen where Facebook will be in the next two years; but we need to be ready.
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