Are businesses going off social media marketing?

The cosmetics firm Lush UK recently announced that it will be closing its UK social media accounts. Despite social media being seen as more and more important in terms of marketing, why is the firm quitting? And with the concerns over privacy and mental health on social media, will more businesses follow?

Lush UK’s decision to quit social media was announced on its Twitter account this week. The firm said that the reason behind the move is that it’s “tired of fighting with algorithms”, and that it didn’t want to “pay to appear in newsfeeds”.

Although Lush North America is still active on social media, Lush UK has 423,000 Facebook likes, 202,000 Twitter followers, and 569,000 followers on Instagram. All of these pages will be closed down, as well as  Lush Kitchen, Lush Times, Lush Life, Soapbox, and Gorilla.

In a statement, the company noted: “We don’t want to limit ourselves to holding conversations in one place, we want social to be placed back in the hands of our communities – from our founders to our friends.”

Last year, the well-known British pub chain, Wetherspoons, took a similar approach and removed its social media accounts. It said the reasons behind this were concerns over data misuse, and also about the effects of its customers, like mental health and addiction issues.

In an interview, Wetherspoon chairman and founder Tim Martin said:  “We were concerned that pub managers were being side-tracked from the real job of serving customers. I don’t believe that closing these accounts will affect our business whatsoever.”

Most online marketers believe that social media is essential for sales and customer service. Therefore, quitting will have an impact on profits.

However, 10% of Facebook users have now deleted their accounts over privacy concerns. And in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a lot of users are worried about their privacy and data security.

This could affect the future of social media. Will more businesses follow Lush and quit, though? Only time will tell.