As you are probably aware, Instagram is now hiding likes on individual posts. Instagram has decided to hide the like count of all posts in 7 different countries – Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
You are now unable to see how many people have liked others people’s posts.
You can still see how many people have liked your own posts, it just isn’t made public for everyone to see.
This change has caused confusion and in some cases, anger, from many marketers and business owners who have had huge growth and success using Instagram. Many are panicking, thinking that that without the obvious like count, their account will no longer be viewed as being “successful”.
You may be asking why has Instagram made this change?
Mia Garlick, Facebook Australia and New Zealand director of policy, said in a statement: “We hope this test will remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive, so you can focus on sharing the things you love,” the goal, she adds, is to see “whether this change can help people focus less on likes and more on telling their story”.
It’s clear Instagram has taken a keen interest in ending the toxic environment that has resulted due to the pressures of keeping up with major influencers and larger brands on Instagram. They want to banish the mindset that your photos aren’t ‘worthy’ without a ton of likes.
Here are my thoughts.
I don’t think Instagram has done it for mental health reasons. If you can still see how many likes you are getting on your own posts and you are obsessed with the numbers you are still going to look. But here is my advice – don’t be obsessed by the numbers!! They don’t mean anything if they aren’t attracting the right eyeballs to your posts.
Personally I think Instagram knows that there are so many people profiting from using the platform – ie. influencers and they are concerned they aren’t getting a piece of the action so they want to do something about it.
Instagram is a business after-all.
I think this is the start of other changes to come.
As the “owner” of an Instagram profile, you can still see the like count for your posts so you can still determine what posts are performing and getting the most reach and likes.
As for the public, they can still click on the “liked by” text and see a list of accounts who liked the post, just not the total number. That means (if they had the time to waste) they could manually count the likes. If it’s of importance to someone, a quick scroll through the ‘liked by’ screen will show if the post got very few likes or a lot.
Other than this small visual change, Instagram will look and perform the same as we’re used to.
My advice, don’t base your business success around a platform that you do not control. Sure, use these platforms as they are available to you, but have a back-up plan. If one platform suddenly became unavailable to use, whether that be Instagram, Facebook or any other platform, would your business still survive?
Have multiple channels that you are using to get leads and sales in your business. And make sure you have data that you own that contains a continual supply of leads – ie your website and your email database.
I would love to hear your thoughts...