Every social report we inherit leads with reach and likes, and every client we inherit has learned to distrust it — because the numbers went up and the phone did not ring. That is not a measurement problem. It is measuring the wrong thing carefully.
Likes measure scrolling, not interest
A like costs nothing and means almost nothing. Saves and shares cost something — a save means someone expects to need this later, a share means they were willing to attach their own name to it. Those two move with enquiries in a way likes never do.
Watch the message, not the metric
The most useful number on most accounts is direct messages, and it is the one least often reported. If a month of content produced four serious conversations, that is the result. Ten thousand impressions that produced none is a story about the algorithm, not the business.
Give it long enough to mean something
Week-to-week social numbers are mostly noise. Compare a month against the month before it and the picture stabilises. Anything shorter and you will end up redesigning a strategy because one post underperformed on a public holiday.