The best thing that ever happened to social media marketing was the hacking of the 2016 US election of Donal Trump by the Russians. Why? Because it laid bare what many in social media marketing has known for a long, long time: that social media platforms are a joke, their valuations are based on imaginary users, and their integrity lies somewhere between Lucifer and that guy who eats people's faces in the movies.

For marketing consultants such as myself, recommending existing social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has been increasingly difficult, because -quite frankly- many of us don't trust the metrics.

And why should we? Facebook doesn't.

This is from Facebook's 2017 SEC filing (emphasis mine):

The numbers for our key metrics, which include our daily active users (DAUs), monthly active users (MAUs), and average revenue per user (ARPU), are calculated using internal company data based on the activity of user accounts. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage of our products across large online and mobile populations around the world.
The largest data management company in the world says it doesn't really know if its numbers are accurate. Estimates? What marketing professional wants estimated results after the fact?

It gets worse. Emphasis mine:

In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 10% of our worldwide MAUs. We believe the percentage of duplicate accounts is meaningfully higher in developing markets such as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as compared to more developed markets. In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that false accounts may have represented approximately 3-4% of our worldwide MAUs.
Let that sink in. Facebook is admitting that "approximately" 10% of its monthly active users are fake. Interestingly, they don't mention what percentage of their daily active users are fake.

And that's the problem with social media. You don't know what's real and what's fake anymore.

Social media hasn't been real for a while.

As marketers and advertisers, we pride ourselves on accuracy. In the olden times of marketing and advertising, we obsessed over rating numbers of tv shows,buy 1000 likes for instagram readership for print promotions, and delivery success rates for direct mail.

In all cases, the platforms of the day were heavily audited. You knew, with fair certainty, was the audiences were for any particular medium or channel because there was usually a point of review somewhere for the numbers.

Traditional media such as radio, TV, and print had been around long enough that there were thousands of case studies one could study the success or failures of individual campaigns. Because these mediums were part of the public record, it was easy to work backward to see what mix of media and budget worked and what didn't.

As an industry, we could quickly establish benchmarks for success - not just based on our personal experiences- but in the collective experiences of very clear strategies laid bare for everyone to dissect.