TL;DR: Likes don’t matter; trust and conversions are the new KPI.
The most important KPI of the next era of social media is trust.
Let’s start with a funeral. A quiet one. No hashtags. No tributes. No audience engagement strategy.
Just a headstone: Likes (2007–2024). You were easy. You were cheap. You were meaningless.
In the early years of the social web, likes were the digital equivalent of applause. But at some point, probably around the 17th filter added to Instagram Stories, we all realized: the like button was just a participation trophy. Anyone could tap it. Bots could fake it. Brands could buy it.
Then came AI.
It made content creation cheap, fast, and endless. That Instagram quote card your intern used to take an hour to make? ChatGPT + Canva = 30 seconds. And with every “content strategist” now armed with a content bazooka, the market became flooded with beautifully useless pixels.
The result?
An attention market that’s saturated, audiences that are numb, and marketers still pointing at engagement charts like they mean something.
Likes, views, follower count - vanity metrics.
They don’t.
If Content Is Cheap, Trust Is the Luxury Good
In economics, when a good becomes abundant, its value collapses. That’s what’s happened with content. AI democratize content creation, but more importantly, it commoditized it.
The new scarcity isn’t content. It’s credibility.
Not who can post. But who can persuade.
That’s why, in this AI-saturated media landscape, the only metric that matters now is trust.
Let me define that: trust is your ability to get your audience to do something because they believe you — not because you gamed an algorithm or offered 20% off.
When a creator says, “I use this,” and 500 people buy without hesitation , don’t just call it influence. That’s belief. That’s trust capital being spent.
And it’s worth more than 5 million views. Every time.
But Can You Measure It?
You can. And you should.
We’re not talking fuzzy “brand love” here. Trust shows up in hard metrics:
Saves and shares — the high-intent cousins of likes.
Comments that ask questions, not just say “🔥.”
Click-to-conversion rates — because interest without action is just noise.
Repeat purchases and referrals — trust’s version of compound interest.
Sentiment — People saw your content, but do they feel closer to you?
Marketers are finally waking up.
Impressions are out. Impressionability is in.
Brands want you to drive value.
In 2024, About You (yes, that’s a real brand name, not a narcissist’s startup) cut its cost-per-acquisition by 49% by shifting from big-following influencers to mid-tier creators with higher conversion per follower. Translation: they stopped paying for eyeballs and started paying for belief.
Why Likes Became a 'Lie'
Vanity metrics have always been a confidence game. They look good in a deck. They get passed around in Slack. But they’ve never told the whole story.
The emperor was naked. Now AI is handing out invisible clothes at scale.
Does your audience trust you.
Here’s the dirty little secret no influencer manager wants to admit: Anyone can get views. Want more likes? Pay $5 to boost your reel. Want more impressions? Post three times a day and hire someone in Manila to comment “stunning” on your behalf. Want more reach? Add a trending song and the word “unhinged” to your caption.
AI has commoditize content.
But can you get someone to spend money because you told them to? Can you get someone to change their behavior because they trust you? That’s the metric brands are paying attention to now.
The Trust Index Is Your New Resume
In this new world, follower count is a resume line. But trust metrics? They’re your references.
The smart creators are already adapting. Their pitch decks don’t say “I have 200K followers.” They say, “My average link click-to-purchase conversion is 6.2%. My last campaign drove 1,100 first-time buyers and a 30% repeat rate.”
They talk in revenue per follower. In saved posts per 1,000 impressions. In measurable belief. It’s not sexy. But it sells.
The Big Shift: From Attention to Affinity
We’ve crossed a line. What used to matter: Who saw it? What matters now: Who believed it — and did something?
Likes are dead. Trust is the new KPI.
The smartest brands aren’t buying reach anymore. They want to resonate. Not impressions. Impressionability. Not content. Credibility.
If you’re still showing brands a big bar chart of impressions, you’re on borrowed time.
In Conclusion: RIP Likes
They were good to us. They taught us the dopamine rush of validation. They helped social media platforms harvest user data and print money. But they never told us who mattered.
In a world of cheap content and infinite reach, the only thing left that’s expensive is trust.
P.S. DM me if if you want the Trust Scorecard and the full report we've built to better help Massif and Kroo clients connect with brands and partners.
