Getting People to Take Action Online is Not Easy

How many people on Facebook and Twitter would have to see an invitation to participate in a cause-driven campaign in order to get just 10 people to take action?

I highly recommend Tom Webster’s blog for data-driven insights on social media. Recently he attempted to get his friends and followers online to help out a friend of his by recording a short message of encouragement to people in Christchurch affected by the earthquakes.

Here’s the data on the reach of his promotion:

“First, the simple reach of my message was enormous. I used Tweetreach to gauge the reach of my message, as propagated by some seriously influential Twitter users, and to approximate the gross number of “impressions” my message enjoyed. So far, though I published this post over a “quiet” weekend, the reach of my message easily exceeded 600,000 – in fact (again, according to Tweetreach) the potential reach of my specific Twitter message alone was well over 300,000 and the actual number of “impressions” (from multiple retweets) exceeded 400,000.”

This is the most interesting data from his effort:

“From those 400,000 impressions (and again, in reality far more – I only tracked my own original link through Argyle Social) and 389 clicks I got exactly 10 submissions. As in ten.”

400,000 impressions

389 clicks

10 submissions

Certainly Facebook and Twitter allow us to reach out and expose many people to a message. But Tom’s data shows that most people use social media to CONSUME, not respond to information.

This is not at all a call to stop using these tools, but to be aware of the usage patterns in order to maximize their potential. Clearly offline is the place where most people take action. Instead of trying to fight upstream, think about using social media to enhance these offline interactions.

If you are in full time ministry and raise your financial support, before you call a person to ask for support check facebook and see what they have been up to. Or after you meet someone new find them on facebook and add them as a friend.

If you have time Tom’s entire post is worth the read. Click here to head over and check it out.

 

photo courtesy of spunter