You'd never accept "it's trending" as analysis of the market. So why accept "the post did well"?
Most organisations hold a double standard of evidence.
Pointed outward, they get serious. Real systems watch the field, compare new developments against what they already understand, and decide what deserves an interruption. Hard engineering, honest ambition.
Pointed at their own ideas, all of that goes soft. Publish on a calendar. Jump on whatever's hot. Then read the likes like a scoreboard.
A like count is an observation with no labels on it. It doesn't say which idea landed, in what framing, with which audience, at what moment, or how many people even saw it. So it can't separate four very different outcomes:
A strong idea, badly framed.
A weak idea carried by a good format.
A strong idea that met the wrong week.
A weak idea that simply didn't travel.
Two of those are wins and two are warnings. One number can't tell you which you got.
The damage is quiet. You keep the packaging that performed and retire the thinking that didn't. Over time the ideas that were hard to hear, often the ones most worth saying, disappear first. Your intelligence system turns into a mirror with a content calendar.
Engagement isn't useless. A flat response doesn't disprove an idea, and a spike doesn't prove one. Both are a reason to look closer, once you've recorded what was actually tested.
If your team wouldn't let a headline count tell them what's true about the market, why let a like count tell them what's true about your thinking?
Discover more from Leverage AI for your business
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.