When Community Pages Lose Their Focus

Community pages are created to provide a public forum for like minded followers to engage, share and broaden the message of a particular cause, place, organization or idea. For the most part, these pages are successful in achieving their initial goals and mission.  However, recently I have come across pages which I have followed for some time that have lost their focus. 

The blame for this loss of vision seems to fall on the page administrators, themselves.  Whether it is a lack of understanding of how to best administer the page; miscommunication as to the intended focus of the page; or simple self-promotion on the part of the administrator, many of these pages are falling to the wayside in terms of effective engagement with their remaining followers.

For the argument's sake, let's look at an example of one such page:

XYZ page was created to promote local businesses in a particular area.  It's main objective was to showcase the business through liking and sharing their Facebook statuses.  However, more and more the updates being shared have nothing to do with either the business, the area or both.  A majority of what this page administrator is sharing are:

1. Third-party links that businesses share on their fan page: The original link shows up on XYZ's page without any reference to the local business. This is a clear case of not taking the time to type a reference to the local business' page prior to hitting share. It now appears to XYZ's followers that they are promoting the company affiliated with the shared link and not the local business.  XYZ's followers are probably not interested in an obscure company located 3,000 miles away.  They are following XYZ to keep abreast of the businesses in their immediate area.
2. Outright Self Promotion:  XYZ is there to promote local businesses. Sharing pictures of yourself or your family under the guise of promoting a local business is just that self promotion. Those images should be left to your personal timeline and have no place on a community page.  The same can be said for your personal beliefs. Religious, political and socio-economic rants should clearly be left off any community page unless they have a clear relevance to the page's mission statement.  And even then, it is the administrator's role to maintain a sense of neutrality when it comes to hot button issues.  Yes, you are there to engage your followers; but definitely not to enrage them.
3. Blatant competition with similar community pages: I touched on this subject briefly in my post "When Community Pages Collide" (6/12/13). The Internet and its social media platforms are clearly large enough for multiple community pages promoting the same thing.  When an administrator of a page either blatantly or underhandedly denigrates a fellow administrator or their page; all sense of professionalism is thrown out the window.

Again, the above examples are just that examples and are not isolated to XYZ's community page.  Have you seen a shift by the community pages you follow away from their primary focus?  Have you stop following pages because of this?