Back when organic reach was 'bigger' I ran two of the 5 biggest, and THE most engaged, FB pages in the UK and to explore their value we looked at 6+ months of linked sales data AND brand tracking and yeah... the value was literally (statistically) insignficant. Where as paid

Sure, one of the products (Wispa) was argubaly only brought back because of social pressure and campaigning so PR works, and social became a huge part of our strategy... but neither the fans themselves nor regular and highly engaged posting without media drove a meaningful impact

Yet the magic thing was when we focussed on churning out less content, but amplifying it to significantly larger audiences with paid media, it had an immediately recogniseable sales impact... so yes, social done right works and I've spent 10 years persuading companies to do it