WHY LIKES DON’T MEAN SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
"The post has a lot of likes, so it performed well." "The post has few likes, so we probably did something wrong."
When evaluating social media results, this is one of the most straightforward and common mental shortcuts. The number of likes is visible, easy for everyone to understand, and simple to compare against competitor pages. That is precisely why it often becomes the first and sometimes the only metric businesses use to measure their success.
However, a like shows only one thing: a person tapped the reaction button on a specific piece of content. It doesn't tell you whether they read the message, remembered the brand, visited the website, sent a message, filled out a form, or ultimately bought the product. This doesn't mean likes are completely useless. It simply means they are just one small piece of the full picture.
Goals First, Metrics Second There is no single metric in social media that matters equally to every business and every campaign. If your goal is to build brand awareness for a new startup, measuring success solely by the number of sales might be premature. If an online store’s advertising campaign aims to drive purchases, high reach and engagement are not enough. And if you run a professional services business, a single high-quality inquiry can be worth more than hundreds of accidental likes.
Therefore, performance evaluation must begin with a single question: "What, specifically, were we trying to achieve?" The goal determines which number you should look at.
_"Evaluating a campaign’s performance based on likes is only correct if the goal was to accumulate interactions and even then, likes are just one metric alongside comments, shares, and post saves. Campaigns can be launched with many different objectives. For instance, if the primary target is driving users to the website, generating leads, or securing conversions, evaluating the campaign purely by likes is definitely the wrong approach."
"When a client says a post 'performed well' or 'did poorly,' it is crucial to understand whether they factored in the objective behind the ad campaign when evaluating it. The size of the target audience and who those audience members actually are also play a massive role."_
Alexander Dabrundashvili, Digital Advertising Manager at "Burtula"
If the Goal is Awareness The objective of an awareness campaign is to ensure that the right people see and remember your brand as much as possible. In such cases, the key metrics might include:
- Reach: How many unique people were served the content;
- CPM: How much it cost to have the content appear on 1,000 screens;
- Impressions: How many total times the content appeared on screens;
- Frequency: The average number of times a single person saw the ad;
- Video Views: How many people started watching the video;
- Watch Time & Completion Rate: How long they watched and what percentage watched the video to the end;
- Brand Search or Profile Visits: Whether the audience felt compelled to learn more about the brand.
Even here, a large number doesn't automatically mean a good result. High reach might look impressive, but if the content hit the wrong audience or was forgotten so quickly that no next step was taken, its value to the business remains limited.
What matters is not just how many people saw you, but who saw you, how often, and what stayed with them after that encounter.
If the Goal is Interest and Engagement
A like is one form of engagement, but not all reactions require the same level of effort and intent. Liking a post takes a split second; saving it might mean the user will need the information later; sharing it shows that the content was valuable, useful, or relatable enough to send to someone else; and comments are sometimes a sign of genuine interest, a question, or the start of a conversation.
At this stage, pay attention to:
- Saves: How many people saved the content;
- Shares: How many times it was shared or forwarded to others;
- Comments: How many and what kind of comments the post received;
- Profile Visits: How many wanted to get to know the brand better;
- Engagement Rate: What share of the audience expressed any type of interaction;
- Direct Messages: Whether the interest turned into direct communication.
The quality of comments and messages matters just as much. Ten genuine questions about a product can be far more valuable than a hundred generic emojis.
If the Goal is Website Traffic Sometimes the role of social media doesn’t stop at interaction with a post. Its task is to take the user to the next stage to a website, product page, blog, registration form, or another necessary space.
In this case, more informative metrics are:
- Link Clicks: How many times the link was tapped;
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): What percentage of people clicked the link after seeing it;
- Cost Per Click (CPC): The average cost of a single click;
- Landing Page Views: How many users actually opened the page;
- Engaged Sessions: How many visits turned into real interaction with the website;
- Average Engagement Time: How long users stayed on the page.
Simply tracking link clicks isn't always enough either. A user might click the link but bounce before the page loads, or land on the website only to find that it doesn't deliver what the ad promised.
If the CTR is high but conversions are low, the problem might not be the ad itself, but rather website speed, the offer, pricing, form complexity, or a mismatch between the ad and the landing page.
"During traffic ad campaigns, CTR is a vital metric. It shows whether the ad is targeted to the right audience and how effectively the content drives people from the platform to the website. However, the raw number of clicks doesn't tell you how many people actually made it to your site. In certain cases, clicks can be accidental, especially when an ad runs on a large audience with a big budget. Landing page views tell you the exact number of users who actually made it to the website."
_"If a campaign was run with a conversion objective rather than just traffic, and you have a high CTR, clicks, and landing page views, but low conversions, this can be caused by many factors. For example, if the ad was shown to a cold or warm audience, you shouldn't expect high conversions. Cold and warm audiences consist of people who know little to nothing about you. Conversion-type campaigns are primarily meant for retargeting and are designed for users who have already seen your content multiple times and interacted with it previously."
"Additionally, low conversions can be caused by a clunky website that loads slowly, isn't mobile-friendly (making it hard to use on a phone compared to a laptop), or makes it difficult for the user to find the product."_ Alexander
If the Goal is Inquiries or Sales If a campaign was created for a specific business outcome, evaluation must lead directly to that outcome.
Important indicators include:
- Conversions: How many people completed the desired action;
- Conversion Rate: What share of visitors turned into leads or buyers;
- Leads: How many genuine inquiries the business received;
- Cost Per Lead (CPL): What it cost to acquire a single inquiry;
- Cost Per Acquisition/Action (CPA): What it cost to gain a customer or completed action;
- Revenue: How much income the campaign generated;
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): How much revenue was returned for every unit of currency spent on ads.
For example, a post might have only 40 likes, but bring in 15 high-quality inquiries. Meanwhile, another post might gather 2,000 likes and zero sales. Which one was successful? The answer depends on the campaign goal, but for a sales-driven business, the choice is obvious.
Here, the quality of leads matters too. A cheap inquiry is not always a good inquiry. If people arrive with the wrong expectations, aren't ready to buy, or don't fit the business's target audience at all, a low CPL might look like success only on the surface.
Organic and Paid Content Shouldn't Be Measured by the Same Yardstick Organic content and paid ad campaigns often serve different functions.
Organic content frequently builds brand character, strengthens trust, answers customer questions, and builds long-term relationships with the audience. Its impact cannot always be tied to an immediate sale.
Paid advertising, on the other hand, operates based on a pre-defined goal, budget, and optimization. Here, the cost per result, clicks, conversions, or return on ad spend can be evaluated much more clearly.
This doesn't mean organic content can't be measured; it simply means you shouldn't always expect an immediate sale from it. Sometimes a post builds trust today, and the sale happens weeks later driven by another ad, a search, or a direct visit.
A Single Metric Can't Tell the Full Story Numbers must be looked at in context:
High Reach and Low Engagement might mean many people saw you, but the message wasn't interesting enough;
High Engagement and Low CTR means people like the content, but the next step is unclear or the offer isn't compelling;
High CTR and Low Conversion Rate means the ad generated interest, but the issue might lie within the website or the offer itself;
High CPC and Poor Leads means clicks are cheap, but the ad might be attracting the wrong audience;
High CPA and High Order Value can still be profitable if the revenue generated justifies the expense.
That's why a social media report shouldn't just be a list of numbers. A good analysis explains why we got a specific result, where the customer journey drops off, and what needs to change for the next phase.
"For instance, right now I’m running a campaign for a client that has accumulated very few likes relative to the budget spent. At first glance, you might assume it underperformed compared to others. However, the campaign's goal is not to rack up reactions, but to drive app downloads and encourage active usage. The campaign has generated a remarkably high number of clicks and actual conversions." Alexander
How to Choose the Right Metrics? Before launching a campaign, outline:
- What is our business goal?
- What action do we want from the user?
- Which indicator will show us whether this action was completed?
- What does a single result like this cost us?
- Do we have a technically sound tracking system in place?
Once you have these, pick one primary KPI and a few supporting indicators. For instance, the main KPI for a sales campaign might be ROAS, while CTR, CPC, and Conversion Rate help you understand why you got those results.
You don't need to dump every available figure into a single report. The data that matters is the data that helps you make decisions.
Ultimately, What Does a "Good Result" Mean? A good result isn't what looks most impressive on a screen. A good result is what serves the pre-defined goal and creates real value for the business. Sometimes that will be massive reach; other times plenty of saves and shares; sometimes quality website traffic; and occasionally just a few inquiries that turned into actual sales. Likes can be a useful signal, but they are not the final answer.
At "Burtula," we don't view social media results as isolated numbers. We start with the business goal, select the metrics that match it, and then track the user’s entire journey from the first view to the actual action. Because the goal isn't just to create content people will like. The goal is for the content to do its job.
If you need a partner along the way, get in touch with us.