What can we learn from Wetherspoons leaving behind their ‘social’ media?

Unless you’ve been under a rock, or have deleted your Facebook profile for fear of the world seeing the actual contents of your brain, you’ll have noted pint-pulling Wetherspoon’s very public break-up with ‘social’ media. The chairman’s announcement has sparked conversations about the pros and cons of brands having a social presence in the digital age, but let us forget that argument for now. Instead, let’s focus on the most important word in this story: ‘social’.

Social media was set up to do exactly what it says on the tin; to allow people to be social. The target audience of social media was never originally brands, but merely us chatty individuals. Brands have become an integral part of the evolutionary process of social media and some, like J D Wetherspoon, have become somewhat lost along the way.

In the world of marketing, we are constantly trying to ‘cut through the noise’. But amongst a sea of brands trying to connect with their audience, how many of them actually manage to do that? Think of the last time you actually liked a brand’s post. Was it because the photo was aesthetically pleasing? Or was it because the caption was ‘a bit of you’?

Without appealing on a personal level, brands’ content often washes over us, thus not encouraging interactions. The coveted engagement rates of social media posts are never going to be high if a brand’s presence is stuffy, boring or the worst of all - try-hard. Brands showing a genuine, human personality have become increasingly popular. The fact of the matter is that if you want your brand to leave a lasting impression on your online social spaces, then you’re probably going to have to ramp up your familiarity factor too.

Wetherspoons no longer feels the need to connect to its customers over social media, but perhaps they never got it right in the first place. Simply jumping aboard the social bandwagon without making things ‘social’ just won’t cut it. Brands joining the world of social media need to give their followers a reason to hit the ‘follow’ button.

Many of us want to follow our favourite fashion brands on social channels because they keep us up to date with what’s fresh off the catwalk and has just dropped online in time for pay day. But what makes us decide to follow our favourite brand of tea that we’ve happily sipped on for decades? It’s most certainly not to see what’s hot off the press in the world of hot beverage fashion. Did people follow Wetherspoon pubs to see what was going on down their local boozer? Get involved in a conversation about the price of pints? Perhaps not. And maybe that’s why we’re raising a glass to the end of their social media presence.