What is “social proof”? If you’re a duck hunter, it is the reason you put hundreds of decoys around your blind instead of just one—people (and ducks) like a crowd and want to be where the action is. In the social marketing world, the concept suggests that if a brand can prove a large group of people are making purchases or “liking” it on Facebook, they will attract even more people. While this is a flashy concept for brands, it misses the real power of social media completely. Social media connects people through active engagement in conversations, not passive agreement of ambiguous behaviors.

Social media platforms have recently attempted to add more contexts to this phenomenon. Both Facebook’s new “Talking About This” counter and its sponsored stories (premium advertisements) encourage users—and marketers—to focus on conversations rather than “likes.” This represents a fundamental shift in the use of the platform, and one all marketers should be excited about. In the past, brands created content calendars that focused on passive user engagement (likes, shares, views, etc.); today, leading brands develop conversation calendars designed to elicit more active engagement (comments, posts, uploads, etc.).

It’s not just Facebook. Google is using Google+ to enhance its overall suite of services by integrating elements of conversational social proof across its platform. The “One” and “+1” buttons show social proof while users are searching on Google. Google has attempted to incorporate actual conversations about a particular subject into the buttons (they appear to be testing multiple options).

Just as decoys might pique the interest of ducks in flight, lots of “likes” will attract attention for your brand. But actually putting dinner on the table also depends on the skills of an experienced duck caller—with ducks and with social media, it’s not just the crowd, but the conversation, too, that matters. Peer-to-peer recommendations have always been at the heart of many purchasing decisions, and the more that brands focus on the content within those recommendations, rather than the number of mentions or passive engagements, the more results they will see.