Interesting article here. We’re finding things very similar with our clients and their Facebook presence. You can generally get people to “like” your company – especially if you offer something in return, but even if you stay truly active with your page, offering that “good content” that we all assume people are clamoring for, people seem to lose interest fast. I think there are a couple of reasons for that:
1. As much as we all in the branding business like to believe it, people really don’t give a crap about most brands. Certainly there are some people who are serious brand advocates for a very small number of brands, but the other 99.99 percent of your customers just want what they want from you and then want you out of their face fast. (Unless you’re Apple, apparently.)
2. I agree that by far the largest majority of people don’t go to Facebook to do business or engage with businesses or brands. They go there to chat and gossip and just hang out. Having a company/brand insert its face into that time is really kind of annoying to most people.
3. People sense a sort of grim determination among companies to get onto Facebook and get into their face. It’s like they’re screaming “Look! Look how relevant we are! Cutting edge and all that!” And it all seems rather forced.
This could certainly change over time, but with all the brand messaging flying at each of us all day long, I really don’t see people welcoming it much more on their “social networking” site.
Luke Soiseth 