Today sees the launch of our new trend report on Unliking and Unfollowing behaviors across Facebook and Twitter.
What’s clear from our research is that brand following is pretty volatile. If we look at Facebook, for example, some 29% of active users might have followed a new brand last month but almost as many – 24% – stopped following one. It’s a similar situation on Twitter: nearly a quarter followed a new product or brand last month but some 15% clicked the unfollow button.
Facebookers and Tweeters who have unliked or unfollowed a brand are among the most prolific users of both networks, being considerably ahead of the average active user for metrics such as visit frequency and number of behaviors undertaken.
Perhaps most importantly, those who have unliked/unfollowed a brand have not necessarily grown tired of this activity per se; 54% of this group on both Facebook and Twitter say that they have also liked/followed a new brand over the same period. For at least half of this group, then, they’re unfollowing brands in order to improve the relevance and appeal of the interactions they’re having on social networks; some brands are being cast aside, but others are taking their places.
