For a while, I was promoting Tincan on Instagram. Packaging up digestible tidbits, tagging people I mentioned, putting myself out there. It drove some clicks to itstincan.com. Not a ton, but some — though it almost never resulted in a single new subscriber, my clearest signal for actual business growth.
Willa Köerner, creator of the indie newsletter Dark Properties, put this conundrum well. In her experience working at an editorial publication, they'd promote their newsletter content to hundreds of thousands of social followers and still only get about 300 reads per article. Roughly 98% of people who saw — and even liked — the content never clicked through. If 98% of your audience isn't doing the one thing that creates measurable impact, it's hard not to ask: what's the point?
And yet. Every once in a while, someone emails me about a project and mentions a post that made them think. I recently reconnected with someone I'd cold-called years ago and who I’ve stayed in loose touch with through social, and we might be working on something big together later this year. I can't point to a single post and say that was the one that made the difference — but something clearly added up.
So I want to know: what are the moments that made your efforts on social feel worthwhile? I set up a Google Form below where you can drop your thoughts, plus a few quantifiable questions so we can, for once, get some data on something we’re all feeling.
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