Noise cancelling

For a project about three years ago, my nephews' teacher asked his class to ask their extended family and parents' friends to send them postcards.  She wanted to get a collection from across the county and maybe even a few from other countries.  


He asked me to send him one and to ask B (still in OZ at the time) to send him one.


After he left the room, my sister said he would be over the moon if we could do it for him. He wanted to get a lot of postcards and impress the class.


I said I'd ask B and his family & friends and put it out to my network.


I asked a few people directly, then thought, why not put it out there on Twitter and Facebook and see what comes back.  I wrote one post for Facebook and tweeted it once on Twitter ... and I was blown away by the response.


Postcards poured in from almost every state in the US and from Australia, Norway, Thailand, England, Spain, Mexico, Canada, France, Guatemala and on and on.  They all read, "Dear G ... " and made one little boy feel very special and important.


When the teacher asked my sister how G did it, she said, "Oh, that's his aunt. She makes things happen."


That was three years ago, when my SoMe networks were smaller and very few people had even heard of Twitter.  So, when my brother-in-law posted that he was advising a group of fifth graders on their project to use Facebook to create awareness about landmines and asked people to "like" their Facebook page, I thought to myself "self, this sounds like a job for 'Auntie Pam', it's time to take it to the network. Easy peasy lemon squeezey."


I asked people on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to support the students in their project and "like" their page.  I wrote a blog post about it.  Then I sat back and waited for the "likes" to roll in à la the postcard project.


Tick, tick, tick ... then nothing.


What? What went wrong?  Clicking "like" was soooo much easier than buying a postcard, writing a note to a third grader, getting postage and dropping it in the mail.


I have a few theories:
1.  I've put out too much noise to my network and they've stopped "listening" to me.
2.  Too much noise in general dominates the SoMe space and very little actually rises above it.
3.  People have become more skeptical about philanthropic requests coming to them through their social channels.  A consequence of charity burnout.
4.  People are more discerning and more stingy with their "likes".
5. ?


How has your engagement through SoMe changed as general population usage has increased.  What do you do to filter out the noise coming at you to get to the messages you want to receive and don't want to miss?  And how do you rise above the chatter to connect with your audience?