Exact Target released a report last week that reiterates what we already knew about brands and companies testing the consumer’s patience with non-stop promotional material. It fails.

Apparently, the #1 reason across all three platforms – email, Facebook and Twitter – for folks unfollowing brands is too many postings or updates. Just like with any person to person engagement on social platforms.

Interestingly, this was also in line with Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing post (wow! how long ago was that in social media years). For e.g. when Seth launched his Permission marketing book, here’s what he had to say about it:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

Social networking sites are the very epitome of how Permission based marketing works. And, yet what do marketers do? They treat it like traditional email marketing and push messages non-stop and end up driving away the same consumers who opted-in to following your brand.

The study actually interviewed folks about email marketing, Facebook and Twitter marketing and it’s nice to see how in all three mediums, the #1 reason you drive away your “fans” is by bombarding them relentlessly with useless promotional content.

What can your brand learn from it?

I think Seth Godin said it best.

In order to get permission, you make a promise. You say, “I will do x, y and z, I hope you will give me permission by listening.” And then, this is the hard part, that’s all you do. You don’t assume you can do more. You can promise a newsletter and talk to me for years, you can promise a daily RSS feed and talk to me every three minutes, you can promise a sales pitch every day. But the promise is the promise until both sides agree to change it.

So, what is the type of content and the frequency with which you update your Facebook and Twitter pages? If your company has a social media business page on Facebook or Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment.