Instagram Could Hide Like Counts… And It Is Great News!

//Instagram Could Hide Like Counts… And It Is Great News!

Instagram Could Hide Like Counts… And It Is Great News!

Who doesn’t like getting more likes on a post? The answer, very few people. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. Linked to everything from encouraging people to only react to content that’s already popular to creating unhealthy comparisons where likes are used as a metric to determine value, Instagram’s like counter is not without its drawbacks. Instagram might be about to make these negative side effects a thing of the past by hiding the like counter to users.

The test roll out in Canada has seen likes become invisible in feeds leaving the publisher as the only person that can see how many likes a post has.

This isn’t Instagram’s only update to tackle possible negative side effects of the platform, other notable changes include the “You’re all caught up” feature which gives you a little notification when you scroll past where you last left your feed. This update was designed to stop people over spending time on the platform needlessly scrolling through posts they had already seen.

With all that being said, here at Online Influx we are marketers not psychologists so for a more in-depth look at the mental health implications of this change to Instagram we recommend this article from Forbes (don’t worry you won’t need a psychology text book at hand): https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicabaron/2019/04/19/would-it-be-so-bad-if-instagram-hid-the-number-of-likes-on-posts/#155e5e8ba5da

If you are here for marketing news, however, keep reading.

What It Means For Influencers, Marketers And Businesses

Prioritise Top Quality Content

There is no confusion that courtesy of platforms such as Instagram people are becoming their own PR agent, show casing their best life and nothing else, often doing things simply for the #instaselfie. Instagram’s users understand that much like the posts they publish on the platform the posts they like say a lot about them and so will often look to the popularity of a post before committing to double tapping it and giving it a heart. By removing the like counter Instagram may reduce the need to fit in and have social approval i.e a large volume of people giving you the thumbs up to say you like a post. With a larger focus on whether or not you like a post and less on whether other people do the aim is to make high quality content and content that deeply appeals to an audience (no matter how small) priority number one.

This will also help the best content gain traction and stop people rigging the system by jumpstarting a posts run in the feed with likes from bots.

With likes earned based purely on the content itself and not on the existing number of likes newer accounts won’t feel so far away from bigger accounts as existing post likes will no longer be a factor in someone’s decision to like your post or not. You don’t need a large audience to start the snowball effect of people liking because its already popular rather you aim to individually appeal to each member of your audience and earn each like (and comment) on the merit of the post. Comments, which are typically a deeper form of interaction, will almost certainly take a bigger role and hold more merit among users, both those who post, those that just consume content and of course those that pay for sponsorship deals.

Influencers And Influencer Marketing

This change will put a clear emphasis on quality content and will hopefully reduce the number of fake influencers that use bots and organised groups to gain and trade likes. Weeding out these fake influencers will help course correct the “this doesn’t work” mentality of companies unfortunate enough to be scammed out of money by these fake like-buying “influencers”. However as this drives better results for marketers the market place will start to fill up with companies even quicker. In other words they’ll be fewer “influencers” and more marketing money in the system undoubtedly increasing the rate of influencer marketing price increases. Sure, there will be more influencers that build audience on the platform but I’m doubtful it will out-pace the rate at which companies start putting money into the platform once we reach a certain tipping point and the removal of the like counter could give the whole process a jumpstart, speedily taking us to that tipping point of company marketing spend being directed towards Instagram influencers.

The potential full-roll out of this update could be a great step in a positive direction for Instagram. Not only could it work to better serve its users mental health but it will reward good content and those that build real communities rather than those that fake their way to the top which can have wider spreads benefits to the influence marketing industry weeding out bad “influencers” leaving more money in the system for people with genuine influence and leading to better results for those that use influencer marketing for their business.

By |2019-05-28T09:34:11+01:00May 28th, 2019|Uncategorised|0 Comments

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