If you bought a round of drinks at Bacaro, you’d be popular for the night. But would anyone call you tomorrow? So what does this mean for your social media performance?
That is the problem with likes. They are easy to give, they feel good to receive, but they rarely tell you much about loyalty or depth of connection. In the Cayman Islands, where our community is small, diverse, and closely connected, it is worth asking: what do likes really measure, and what are we missing if we stop there?
Why Likes Are Not Enough
Likes are not meaningless. They do tell you something. But they are a very limited measure. Think of them like applause at the end of a show.
- If there is no applause at all, the artist knows something is wrong. The show has not landed, and it is time to rethink the performance.
- If the applause is polite but brief, the audience had a “nice” evening, but they are going home quietly. They are not telling their friends to buy tickets.
- If the applause is a standing ovation, people are leaving the theatre saying, “You must go see this.” They are not just clapping, they are carrying the message out into the world.
- And if those same people come back the next night, you know you are not just entertaining them, you are creating loyalty.
Likes work in the same way. They are signals, but they are shallow ones unless supported by deeper evidence of understanding and behaviour. A post with 200 likes but no conversation tells you something quite different to a post with 50 likes and 20 thoughtful comments. One is applause. The other is connection.
Gestures and Behaviours Together
The real value comes when you read gestures and behaviours alongside each other.
High likes, low engagement. This usually means your content was pleasant or easy to approve of, but not powerful enough to spark conversation. People noticed, but they did not care enough to act. It is surface-level success.
Low likes, high engagement. This means a smaller but more committed group is interacting with you. That can be a powerful sign of loyalty, but it also raises a question. Is their behaviour really being driven by your content? Sometimes, offline factors such as word-of-mouth, other campaigns, or even community gossip can drive engagement that appears linked to a post but is not actually sparked by it.
High likes, high engagement. This is the sweet spot. Your content is being seen, understood, and acted upon. You are winning gestures and behaviour together, which is the truest sign that your message has landed.
When we treat likes and behaviours as parts of a system rather than isolated metrics, we gain a more honest view of how well social media is working.
Looking Through a Wider Lens
Here at Grow Social, we much prefer to assess social media results through the lens of our core principle: Be Present. Be Seen. Be Understood. Be Frequent. Be Meaningful.
- Be Present. Likes may suggest people noticed you, but presence is also about showing up consistently in the right places.
- Be Seen. Visibility matters, and likes are one signal of that. But visibility without resonance is like polite applause that is quickly forgotten.
- Be Understood. This is where comments and thoughtful responses matter. They reveal whether people grasped your message.
- Be Frequent. Results build over time. Likes may spike, but real value comes from sustained presence.
- Be Meaningful. The real test is whether your content leads to conversations, community trust, or outcomes in the real world.
Likes alone can never capture all five. They belong in the picture, but they are not the picture.
A Cayman Example
Consider how this could play out across Cayman’s districts, for instance. A post might receive 200 likes scattered broadly, but only 5 generic comments. Another might receive 50 likes, but spark 20 thoughtful discussions in say West Bay and Bodden Town.
Which one has more value? The second. It shows depth and resonance with a community. And in Cayman, when content resonates, it travels beyond the platform. It shows up in WhatsApp groups, staffroom conversations, and family dinners. That is the kind of impact likes alone can never reveal.
Why It Matters Locally
In bigger countries, a brand can chase likes and still thrive because the sheer scale of the audience hides the superficiality. In Cayman, scale works against you. The same people see your posts across multiple feeds. If your content is designed purely to rack up likes, people notice the hollowness. It feels needy. It’s more about you than your audience.
Worse, copy-and-paste repetition across channels amplifies the problem. A message that was shallow on one platform looks even weaker when repeated everywhere else. People conclude that you are more concerned with filling space than creating value.
That is the real risk of chasing likes. It is not just wasted time, but damaged trust.
A Better Way to Measure Results
So, what really matters? A balanced approach:
- Likes as signals. They show presence and visibility, the equivalent of applause.
- Engagement as depth. Comments, conversations, and shares prove that people understood and valued the content.
- Outcomes as proof. Visits, donations, sign-ups, or reputation gains demonstrate that social media is creating impact in the real world.
Together, these layers tell a richer story. Separately, they mislead.
Final Thought
In Cayman, social media is not a popularity contest. It is about being noticed, understood, and remembered in a community that is both small and diverse. Likes have their place, but without engagement and outcomes, they are just noise.
The real measure of success is when gestures and behaviours align. When people like what you say, talk about it with others, and act on it, you know your message has landed. That is how reputation is built. And in Cayman, reputation is everything.
