You've worked hard to gain each follower you have on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. That's why you love checking how many new followers you've gained every week. It makes you smile because what you're doing is clearly working.

But once users find your brand and join your community, do they stay? When was the last time you checked how many people are unfollowing you each week? It's a number that can be just as telling (or even more so) than your new follower count.

Recently, a new Sprout Social survey detailed exactly what causes social media users to stop following brands. Read on to see the top three reasons people may be unfollowing your brand — and what you can do to fix it.

1. Too much promotional content

This is a tricky line to walk. 58.8 percent of people follow a brand because they're interested in promotions. But the top reason they unfollow is because they see too many promotional posts.

Solution: When planning your social editorial calendar, you want to get this ratio just right. Try using the 80/20 rule. In essence, you spend 20 percent of your time on social sharing your brand's content with call-to-actions. The other 80 percent of the time, you should be curating, creating and sharing content that provides value and interest to your followers and target demographic.

2. Irrelevant information

41.1 percent of people unfollow a brand if they post information that's not relevant.

The people and brands we follow impacts our daily life in a big way. On average, people spend just under two hours (116 minutes to be exact) on social media every day.

If you're not adding value, you're adding to the noise. After the same person scrolls over yet another post that doesn't hit the mark, they're going to hit unfollow.

Solution: Determine beyond your brand's product or service what brings your community together. Patagonia is a great example of this. They share a ton of user-generated content that illustrates what their products do in the wild. They post strictly informational videos and posts on hiking and the environment. They ask questions. They engage.

If you're feeling stuck, do a quick quiz to ask your audience what else they're interested in. Or, take a peek at your audience's interests in Google Analytics.

3. Tweeting too much

34.9 percent of people unfollow a brand if they tweet too much.

On Twitter, brands can (and do) post much, much more frequently than on other platforms. After all, the half-life of a tweet is only 24 minutes. Meaning, after that 24 minutes is over, your tweet's engagement and reach have peaked. That's why some brands tweet up to 50 times in a single day.

Solution: This one is easy. While it's tempting to tweet a lot to get your message out, don't. Research from Buffer Social found that you should be tweeting between three and five times a day. After that, engagement drops off.