A recent study has shown why people decide to unfollow or unlike companies on social media, with boring content that and keeps on repeating itself touted as the biggest turn off.

The researchers also found that Facebook leads the way in this trend, with the  highest rate of people turning away from their social feeds.

The survey, which was conducted by Buzzstream and Fractl, showed that the unfollow rate for Facebook users was 25%. Twitter was second, but some considerable way behind, at 12%.

The reason given for Facebook users unfollowing a firm was because they found its content to be boring or repetitive, with 19% stating this. Across all sites, boring and repetitive posts were a turn off for 21%.

Too frequently posting updates was also likely to have 6% of Facebook users unliking a feed.

Twitter followers, meanwhile, clearly need to be loved, with 8% saying that they stopped following a brand’s tweets because of a lack of customer engagement. However, over a quarter, 27%, of respondents also stated that they could not see the level of engagement increasing if they followed a company’s profile on Facebook.

The study also found that a big reason for customers to follow a feed on Twitter is because of the perceived engagement with a firm that it will bring. The survey also revealed that 36% of people on the microblogging site think that brands will have real-time conversations with them.

Other interesting findings from the study showed that 86% did not want to see news about the company only, with 22% of social media users preferring still images. Meanwhile, 15% favoured video content and just 7% had any interest in e-books or white papers.

The survey asked social media users across a number of platforms, with around 900 people responding.

Richard Bell

Richard has a First in English Literature and Creative Writing, and has experience writing fiction and short stories (which he has published both online and in magazines).