**Think social media isn't driving revenue? Try turning it off for 6 months.** That's basically what happened to 16 companies with 100,000+ social followers. They stopped posting because they believed organic social wasn't worth the effort. The result? After 6 months: Organic social traffic fell 96%. Revenue fell 6%. And that gap is the interesting part. Social traffic nearly disappeared. Revenue didn't. So someone might look at this and say: "See? Social only drove 6% of revenue." I think that's the wrong conclusion. Because social media doesn't always behave like a last-click channel. Someone sees your post today. They don't buy. Three weeks later they hear your company's name again. They search for you. Read a review. Visit your website. Talk to someone internally. Then eventually buy. Where does that conversion get attributed? Probably not to the social post that introduced them to you. This is the problem with measuring social purely through direct attribution. Awareness doesn't always convert immediately. But awareness changes what happens later. Think about your own buying behavior. How many companies did you first discover on social media... then research somewhere else? How many brands did you see repeatedly before you finally trusted them? How many products did you recognize before you ever visited their website? That's the role social can play. It keeps the brand in the customer's mental inventory. And when the customer is finally ready to buy, you're no longer a stranger. You're familiar. That's valuable. The other lesson here is about consistency. A social account isn't an asset just because you have 100,000 followers. The asset is the relationship you maintain with those followers. Stop publishing and you gradually stop generating new interactions. Fewer people see you. Fewer people remember you. Fewer people share you. Fewer people discover you. And eventually, your organic distribution starts collapsing. This is why I don't think the question should be: "Does social media directly generate enough revenue to justify posting?" The better question is: "What happens to our brand if we disappear from the places where our customers spend their attention?" That's a very different question. And it exposes one of the biggest mistakes in modern marketing: Trying to assign every piece of content a direct dollar value. Some content generates a lead. Some generates a sale. Some creates awareness. Some builds trust. Some keeps an existing customer engaged. Some makes your brand recognizable six months before someone buys. Not everything deserves a last-click attribution label. Sometimes the value of content is simply: People remember you. And in a market where everyone is competing for attention, that matters enormously. So if you're thinking about stopping social because: "Nobody is buying directly from our posts." I'd pause. Look at your branded search. Direct traffic. Returning visitors. Organic conversions. Assisted conversions. Customer surveys. And most importantly: What happens when you stop showing up? Because the easiest way to discover whether social is creating value... may be to look at what disappears when you stop doing it.