Instagram is Removing Likes: What That Means For You

You might have heard by now, or you are experiencing it for yourself, Instagram will begin hiding their likes.

Wait, what? Hiding their likes? Isn’t the purpose of the platform to share content and gain likes and followers? Isn’t that why businesses (including yours) have built their social strategies around using likes and hashtags to attract customers?

Well, yes. But, that doesn’t mean that your entire strategy is tanked. This is a concept that IG is currently testing in some other countries. The goal is to make the environment more open to people who want to post freely and not compare themselves to others.

So, you might be wondering how this changes your digital marketing strategy. Read on to see how Instagram is removing likes and what that means for you.

Likes Will Still Be Seen, Just Not Publicly Available

Ok, so maybe we were a little scary with the language above. Let’s start again; the likes aren’t completely gone, you’ll still be able to see them on your own photos, just not posts from others. And, you can’t see all the names of the people who liked someone else’s post.

For you, you’ll still be able to measure your metrics each week, so you can still pull reports and see your reach. But, you can’t rely on someone liking your post and then one of their friends seeing it. You’ll need to figure out a strategy to reach as many eyeballs as possible with the right hashtags.

It Will Be Harder to See If an Influencer’s Followers are Real or Paid For

Yes. Usually, you can tell if an influencer built their following organically or through paid lists. How? The paid lists usually aren’t vetted and loaded with duplicate and spam profiles, and these accounts aren’t active. So, if an account has over 3,000 followers but only 30 or less likes per post, chances are those followers were paid for. These are the accounts you want to avoid.

Only now, you can’t see those likes. This makes it more difficult for you to know who you can trust when trying to partner with an influencer. You’ll need to do some serious homework and see if this person has a good track record before you try to sponsor them to sell or advertise your products.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The game is still essentially the same, only the playbook and strategy are different. But the use of hashtags and understanding of your audience just changed, now you’ll need to do more digging before you put up a post.

It will require a little more elbow grease on your part, but it’s nothing that can’t be done.

Luckily, We Can Help

Social media strategy is one of the many things that we’ve learned to navigate successfully for many businesses like yours. Give us a call so we can sit down with you, rework your strategy and make sure that you don’t miss a beat.