Who really understands social media?

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand social media very well. I’ve studied it for the better part of three years. I’ve read the papers, listened to the experts, embraced–at times–the shorter is better philosophy. When people at the Jimmy Fund Walk told me people who raise the most money use social media, I jumped on board.

It’s not much, but it’s all I have today.

I watched where the money came from for my Jimmy Fund Walk. I watched where the money came from for our Relay for Life team. What social media created was insignificant. Yes, it brought in a few dollars we might not have gotten otherwise. But the amount was not worth the time and effort compared to a simple fundraising letter sent out by direct mail.

Certainly not me

Clearly, I’m doing some things wrong. I don’t put a picture or graphic on every post. My posts are too long or too frequent. They don’t say the right kinds of things. I need more pictures of kittens or babies or puppies. Maybe the people who get my posts are the wrong kind of people.

What social media created was insignificant.

Or maybe, what we think we know about social media is entirely wrong. It took marketers about 200 years to figure out how to create newspaper advertising that worked with any consistency and about 40 years to really get television commercials to work. I’m not entirely convinced we’ve figured out radio even after 100 years. Social media, things like Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest, is still in its infancy–and while we understand marketing better than when TV started, it is still terra incognito.

A medium in its infancy

People have worked for 20 years to try to sell things using the Internet. Some folks have begun to succeed–but only in the last handful of years have a small number of companies begun to show investors any return on their money in terms of actual profits. Most are seeing profits only from the increase in stock prices.

…it is still terra incognito.

Someone asked this week if they could advertise on walkingwithjane.org. They offered us $15-$25 for every “guest article” we let them place on our page. They also offered to pay us for “banner ads,” though we didn’t get to what they would pay us for those. They sent me a couple of “sample articles” and a link to the kinds of “banner ads” they would use.

What the pros are doing is uninspiring

I actually seriously entertained the notion for a few minutes. Then I looked at the sample articles. They had told me the samples would not be good for our site and said they would write things our readers would find useful. But the writing was pathetic–and demonstrated pretty conclusively they would not be able to handle the subject of carcinoid/NETs in a way that would be useful.

Someone asked this week if they could advertise on walkingwithjane.org.

The site they were using for their samples had endless pop-up ads that jumped annoyingly into the midst of the text I was trying to get through. The article clearly existed as a way to get people to look at their pop-ups. I was not amused.

The scent of desperation

I tell this story not to be critical of the company but to demonstrate how badly people are failing at marketing to audiences in social media. This website, walkingwithjane.org, generates about 40 views a day in a good month. We’ll average a little over 1000 views a month for the current calendar year.

The site they were using for their samples had endless pop-up ads…

Our Walking with Jane Faceboook page reaches, on a good week, about 800 people. But less than 10 percent of those “reached” have any actual interaction with the posts and links we put there. We have 135 followers on twitter. Only five of them regularly interact with what we post there. Our tumblr following is even smaller and it is rare anyone interacts with it. We won’t discuss Google+, which makes our tumblr activity look dynamic.

The truth about social media

And yet, someone is willing to pay us $15 to place “guest articles” on our site, even promising to make sure they deal with carcinoid/NETs despite the fact those articles will likely be of little use to them beyond walkingwithjane.org. Think, for a moment, about the level of desperation that fact evidences.

We have 135 followers on twitter.

Here is the dirty little secret of social media: Facebook alone claims to have over one billion subscribers. But even the most popular item I have ever posted there has never been seen by more than 1500 people except on the two occasions I decided to pay to boost the post. And boosting the post only means you get your post into more people’s news feeds. It does not mean they actually read it–or even really registered it was there.

The reality of the niche

Walking with Jane’s Facebook page has 760 likes. That does not mean that what we post there is seen by 760 people though. Yesterday, for example, I put out a request for photos and stories for our November NET Cancer Awareness Campaign. I shared it with five other groups claiming memberships of over 2000 people combined–on top of those who like the Walking with Jane page. So far, 348 have “seen” that post, but only 25 have responded in any way. And that post was three times more successful than what we average for original content.

Here is the dirty little secret of social media…

When we look at the Internet in general, and social media in particular, we see a huge potential audience. But that audience is divided into tiny niches both by their interests and by the people running those media. Yes, occasionally something goes viral and gains a much larger part of the potential audience. But that is rare and almost never involves something not related to grumpy cats, puppies, the antics of small children, or videos of people in compromising positions.

Looking for answers

The problem we face, then, in marketing carcinoid/NETs through social media, is substantial. We need to figure out how we can consistently break out of our niche of NET cancer patients and into the mainstream. Honestly, I have no idea how to do that. Worse, I’m not sure anyone else does either.

…we see a huge potential audience.

That doesn’t mean we give up. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the depression that the government had to try everything it could think of to put people back to work. If something worked, keep doing it. If something didn’t, try something else. That’s what we need to do here.

Something to try

And I do have an idea we can try. If each of us simply shared everything we produce through all the venues we are connected to, maybe we would collectively reach a big enough group to gain some traction. I know that the more groups and pages I can share an item on the more broadly the various social media share it beyond those groups. It’s not much, but it’s all I have today.

(Editor’s Note: This is the ninth in a series of pieces that will approach the problem of carcinoid/NETs not as a medical problem but as a marketing problem. If we are going to increase funding for the disease, we have to think of it as something other than a medical issue. We need to make it a human issue for the general public. In my next post in the series, we’ll look at why creating a family feeling rather than a group matters.)