Cracking the Code on Social Media ROI

Your sales team has it easy. They either hit their number or they don’t. Product teams? The feature ships, or it doesn’t. But marketers? We live in the gray. “Marketing is so freaking hard to measure,” says Emeric Ernoult, CEO and co-founder of Agorapulse. “It’s never black and white. And social media is no different.”

Emeric has been building in social media since before “social media” was even a term. A lawyer-turned-entrepreneur, he launched his first community product in 2001, pivoted more times than he can count, and eventually built Agorapulse into one of the leading social media management platforms. His perspective is a rare mix of hard-won humility (“I totally missed TikTok”) and sharp clarity about what it really takes to prove the value of social.

Social Media Isn’t Going Anywhere

First, let’s kill the myth that social media is ephemeral and a tactic based on trend. Emeric expands the definition of social to include forums, review sites, even Reddit threads all qualify. The form of social will evolve—think Vine into TikTok—and the function expands with it.

“If you think about social media as people expressing themselves on the web with tools, then it’s going to last forever.”

That means marketers can’t afford to sit out and shouldn’t ignore new platforms but pursue curiosity about the evolving definition of social. The platforms may change, but the need to capture attention and build community online only intensifies.

The Two Legs of Marketing

To make sense of the chaos, Emeric breaks marketing into two “legs”:

1. Brand awareness – getting on the shortlist before a customer is even in-market.
2. Demand generation – driving leads, signups, or direct business.

“You need to do both. If you’re smart, the same marketing activity should deliver both at the same time.”

The trap is treating brand work as “soft.” In Emeric’s view, brand memory is the hardest metric there is. 

“The most successful businesses on the planet are the ones you know. The ones you don’t? There’s a reason why.”

Vanity Metrics Are Signals, Not Goals

Follower counts and likes may be derided as vanity metrics, but Emeric reframes them as useful signals. Low engagement isn’t meaningless—it’s feedback.

“Lower engagement tells you people don’t care. So what do you do? Produce more crap, or change your strategy?”

The bigger challenge isn’t distribution algorithms—it’s competition. Just like movies at the box office, good content rises because it’s genuinely useful, entertaining, or inspiring. 

“There’s no shortcut. The common pattern in success stories is an incredible amount of work, for an incredible amount of time, with an incredibly useful content strategy.”

AI: Multiplier of Crap—or of Genius

Emeric is clear-eyed about the difference between hype and how new tech, like AI agents for marketing, can actually work.

“AI is a multiplier. If what you’re doing is crappy, AI will make it more crappy. If what you’re doing is great, AI will multiply the greatness.”

For him, the biggest near-term win is workflow. From automating social inbox responses to surfacing insights hidden in dashboards, AI can cut out hours of low-value work. But the long-term promise of AI lies in leveraging content. Imagine every podcast, webinar, or ebook atomized into dozens of high-value clips and distributed across channels—without the human grind. “It all starts with content that’s so valuable people want to buy from you, and AI just helps you shine more.”

Actionable Takeaways

• Be prepared for the waves. Stay aware of trends and aim to have a presence where your audience is present.
• Balance the two legs. Every campaign should drive both awareness and demand.
• Use vanity metrics as diagnostics. Engagement is a signal, not a scoreboard.
• Invest in content worth remembering. No AI hack will save weak ideas.
• Let AI handle the boring stuff. Free up your team’s time to focus on strategy and creativity.

The Human Edge

For all the dashboards and marketing data visualizations, algorithms, and AI hype, Emeric comes back to a simple truth: the brands people remember are the ones that win. 

“At the end of the day, you do business with the businesses you know.”

That’s the real ROI of social—not just clicks or conversions, but memory, trust, and presence. 

Everything else is just tactics.

‍

Listen now: Spotify | YouTube | Apple

Connect with Emeric: LinkedIn | Website

Subscribe to What Gets Measured for more conversations like this.

‍