Social media is massive right now. Chances are you've clicked on this blog because you're a friend or a friend of a friend on Facebook, or because you've seen me tweet about it. Social media has real power to disseminate a message in a way the mainstream media doesn't, because of the ability to share and engage with it.

That's been the secret behind Sport England's hugely successful #ThisGirlCan campaign.

ThisGirlCan was launched at the start of 2015 with a punchy, clever advert featuring normal women doing sport. They're not 'glamorous', they're not super-skinny or super-toned. They're just normal, having fun.

Since then, the campaign has clearly gained traction with its target audience. Stats I discovered here said the campaign had had, by the end of May, 25 million campaign views, 11 million Facebook and YouTube views in 10 days, and had trended on Twitter.

Its Facebook page currently has over 325,000 likes and searching the #ThisGirlCan hashtag on Twitter gets you a lot of tweets. There's a constant stream of pictures, anecdotes, links to articles, messages from sports clubs and so on, all reinforcing that women can and do play sport and that it's fun. People doing marathons, girls playing rugby, weightlifting, running, they're all there and joining in.

Importantly Sport England actually did some research before they launched the campaign, using the sort of figures I highlighted here to prove the need for something to be done and talking to real women about why they weren't more active.

The key question is: has #ThisGirlCan made a real difference yet? Well, it won an award at the Cannes festival for marketing. It's picked up a lot of mainstream media coverage. It's spawned local spin-offs with a number of local authorities running #ThisGirlCan weeks focused on women's sport. Oh, and Marks & Spencer is selling t-shirts. Sport England has just launched a winter spin-off, aimed at encouraging women to go running in the winter.

To be honest, it's probably too early yet to say for sure that the campaign is getting women exercising. It's certainly struck a chord with many - me included. Negative responses have been few and far between. This Guardian opinion piece is a rare example, and if you read the comments most readers disagreed with the argument of the article, that the campaign objectifies women.

The key test will be the next sports participation survey Sport England does and whether it shows any improvement in female participation.

Meanwhile a new campaign has just been launched. Charity Women in Sport is crowd-funding to support research into the same issues I'm blogging about. Why isn't women's sport better-represented in the media, why isn't it more visible, what can be done? Ultimately it seems as though the organisation wants to run a parallel campaign to #ThisGirlCan, aimed more at the media, under the heading #WhatIf? You can pledge here - they're five days away from their deadline with a long way to go. In this fight, every little will help.

I'm wholly behind #ThisGirlCan. I've used the hashtag when posting links to this blog. #WhatIf has similar laudable aims.

My concern is that while the campaigns have support from women, and #ThisGirlCan had lots of positive press, it was a flash in the pan at launch. It's absolutely fantastic if the campaign has encouraged even a small number of women to get up and put on some trainers and go running, or jump on a bike, or join a sports team. But it doesn't seem to me that as yet it's really normalised women's sport and there certainly isn't the coverage we need in the press or the support we need from corporates yet. So far, it's just a small step in the right direction.