Tweets & Likes

Offlate I have come across many debates/articles/discussions about "The Power of Social Media" be it in the name of a Facebook or a Twitter or a My Space or a Linkedin. Everybody is gung ho about the concept and number of tweets or the likes on their twitter or facebook page respectively.

Reading all this, always gives me a feeling that I belong to the traditional lot of marketers, who is either ignorant about the new age media or do not understand power of social media or may be I'm still not confident of this media, whether it delivers or not. Because all I see/hear/read about the number of tweets or the likes but do not know if it is actually gets converted in the revenue for the respective companies.

Which leads me to another debate, that social media engages consumers with brands, allows brands to communicate to its target audience, and thus should not be looked or measured from purely sales or ROI perspective. I understand creating a brand or marketing a brand is not always linked to the sales or we don't always give into ROI. But at the same time, I'm also inquisitive about all the "Likes" we generate on Facebook. All those people who just simply click on "Like" do they really take so much of pain to go through the entire set of discussion?

I would like readers to comment and enlighten me with the Gyan on Social Media....