There is a brief article at the IT industry website CIO that claims companies have gotten bogged down in the quest for likes, retweets, and other indicators of social media engagement. It goes on to claim that 2015 will be the year in which many of these same companies realize that there is limited value to those indicators, and start pursuing “demonstrable mission-critical sales goals and other objectives” instead.

 

There’s something to be said for the measurability of those sorts of goals, but at the same time, the article is a little overly cynical about the more general pursuit of social media engagement. If you ask a decent Los Angeles social media company, you’ll find that its employees agree that there is definite value in the likes, retweets, and shares that have dominated the industry, even if the outcomes are not directly measurable. This goes double if that social media company is also a local SEO company and thus understands the value of using social media to build quality content and industry relevance.

 

You own social media strategy should try to avoid both cynicism and excessive optimism, and that means, in part, pursuing both aspects of engagement at the same time. On the one hand, there are the coldly measurable indicators of whether engagement is translating to economic value for your business. But on the other hand, there is the simple question of whether you’re communicating with your customers in a positive way that will keep you at the top of the social media game for a long time to come.