Are likes and shares more important than sales?

According to eMarketer, yes, "finally"!

While Likes, clickthroughts and retweets seem to be the most popular metrics for effectiveness of the social media content, only 5% of respondents uses cost per sale and 18% cost per conversion.

Another thing to notice in the Association of National Advertisers reports is that sales seem to no longer be a popular metric, both to measure effectiveness and success

• 24% of respondents state they use sales as a metric to measure the effectiveness of their social media content
• 42.1% of respondents state they use “conversions, sales” as a metric to measure content marketing success.

Finally, a last interesting conclusion is that social metrics are no longer measuring content on the social platforms but used to measure marketing success overall.

Main source:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Finally-Most-Brands-Measuring-Social-Content-Effectiveness/1010961