Social Media - Bah! Humbug!

As we have survived the Christmas season and now turn back to our 'normal' lives - albeit likely a few pounds heavier - I have to continue my thoughts on social media, as they remain confused and conflicted.

Over the past months, I have read the blog of my friend Michael Martineau, www.ehealthmusings.com. Mike is the most passionate person I know about the use of social media in health care, coming back to it frequently especially the idea of blogging.  In all honesty (sorry Mike), I'm not convinced.

Before I go into why I think the value of social media and particularly blogging is limited, let me talk about my use of it. My favourite blog is www.booooooom.com - an absolutely amazing visual arts blog that I love and that in my mind is an example of a successful blog.  Almost no text, just images from three or four different artists every day.  I visit the site everyday as well as following on Twitter and Facebook. How successful is the site? Well, let's get it from Jeff Hamada who runs the site:

Our monthly traffic now tops 3.2 million pageviews with visitors coming from more than 200 different countries. More than 27,000 of you follow Booooooom on Twitter, and our Facebookfamily has grown to nearly 42,000!


Those are some pretty amazing numbers.  And yet...

If you look at any of the signs of engagement or conversation, they are very limited for such huge numbers of visitors.  Most postings of new work have a handful of responses.  Jeff also makes it a point of engaging his audience through contests and requests for comments, e.g. choosing a name for his cactus.  He often gets dozens of responses, but again the percentage is limited.

So my point is this.  Social media and blogging work well when a community of interest already exists, but their success in creating new ones is limited.  Mike's eHealth blog is followed by hundreds of people - but they were already interested in eHealth before and again, the amount of feedback on his fine musings is minimal.  People come to read but not participate.  Booooooom is very successful in its own way, but within limits.  So if there is not an already existing community of interest, social media and blogs in particular are not going to create or sustain a community of interest or conversation.  They can help establish a meeting place, but their sustainability and passion come from somewhere else.

Well, thanks for reading.  My thoughts on this matter are still a work in progress and I am sure will develop and change over the coming months.