Every social media report I've ever written leads with engagement rate. Likes, comments, shares, clicks. It's the number everyone wants to see go up, and I look at it every day too. But after twenty-plus years in marketing, I think engagement rate is just the receipt. The good stuff happened before anyone tapped the heart. Everyone's shouting People scroll past hundreds of posts a day. Most of them are forgettable. The ones that stop me aren't the ones with the cleverest hash