Have you ever refrained yourself from uploading a picture on Instagram because it was a little blur, or you were looking elsewhere and it wasn’t as good as the previous post that fetched you the maximum likes?
Because of this increasing stress in teens and young adults for the number of likes, Instagram has been testing a feature in many countries that hides the number of likes received by an individual on a post by- Brad Esposito
The main goal of Instagram was to create a platform where people could share pictures with others and not create a competitive environment of likes and aesthetic feeds. With this new feature coming in, people can now be liberal to share more authentic posts without thinking twice.
A person can check who liked their post and count it if they wish to, but no one can check someone else’s likes anymore.
This is considered as a great step for an individual’s mental health, but what does this really mean for brands, creators and influencers?
- Instagram Stories can be a new push
Stories are usually the ‘in-between’ moments caught and posted without much filter. If this is the main aim that Instagram is looking at, then it is surely going to give more push and newer updates or prioritising it with its algorithm.
So if you’re not investing much into stories as a marketer, its time you do it soon!
- Reduction of marketing money with fewer metrics
If there is no spread of analytics and successful metrics, brands would not invest as much in an advertisement in the respective media platform. If likes, comments and other engagements are hidden, creators/users might start looking elsewhere to allocate their marketing budgets.
CTR on Instagram is abysmal, which makes most marketers think about it as a brand awareness platform but against viable sales engine.
- User experience
Though we say that ‘brands speak for themselves’, in reality- ‘likes speak for brands’. People often jump in the bandwagon. Nobody actually has the time to sit and go through various content to distinguish good from bad; so people would just go with the number of likes and comments-as a shortcut.
The audience/brand would be unable to know who has liked a creator/influencer’s post or if likes are genuine with right engagements or just random. This does not really act in favour of anyone.
At the same time, this could be a good move for the entrepreneurs and the deserving brands as now people would actually read the content and not go by likes.
“I actually think it’s the best idea that Instagram’s put forward in a long time. Sometimes, it feels like a piece of content on Instagram is now only as good as the amount of engagements it gets. And for a social networking app that prides itself on the creativity of its users, that’s the complete opposite of what should be happening. This app should be about high-quality content that inspires, uplifts, motivates or brings awareness. Everything else to that core idea is secondary — including the amount of ‘likes’ a specific post gets.”
Contrary to what people might think, I actually think (hiding ‘likes’) would vastly increase my opportunities for business and brand partnerships. Brands would have to take a look at the actual content that creators are putting out there to determine best fits for campaigns, rather than just basing decisions on metrics.” – Matt Benfield : @mr.benfield, 80.4k followers
If as an influencer/brand, you know how true you are, hidden likes shouldn’t be much of an issue; rather more creative ways could come out in order to stand-out!
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