Services
TAYA

They Ask, You Answer Mastery

A coaching & training program that drives unmatched sales & marketing results.

Sales

Sales Performance Mastery

Improve the competencies and close rates of your sales organization.

Web design

Website Mastery

Web design, development & training for your team.

HubSpot

HubSpot Mastery

Everything you need to get the most from HubSpot.

AI Mastery

AI Enablement Mastery

Unlock the power of AI in all aspects of your revenue operations.

Discover how IMPACT’s services can help take your business to the next level. Book a free 30-minute coaching session Book a free 30-minute coaching session
Learning Center
Learning Center

Learning Center

Free resources to help you improve the way you market, sell and grow your business.

Discover how IMPACT’s services can help take your business to the next level. Book a free 30-minute coaching session Book a free 30-minute coaching session

Free Assessment: How does your sales & marketing measure up?

Get Started
Close

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.
Get Started
News  |   Instagram Marketing

Do Social Media “Like” Metrics Influence Negative Audience Behavior? Instagram Conducts Test.

Kaitlyn Petro

By Kaitlyn Petro

Apr 25, 2019

Do Social Media “Like” Metrics Influence Negative Audience Behavior? Instagram Conducts Test.

For most of us in today’s world, social media is just another thing we don’t think twice about.

It’s become a part of a daily routine. We often find ourselves mindlessly scrolling through our feeds to pass the time and relieve some boredom.

Beyond the basic, personal use we’re familiar with, social media has also found its place in business strategies -- specifically marketing and sales campaigns.

It’s great for creating and maintaining relationships, as well as distributing news and other useful content, among other things.

Regardless of who or how we use them, however, social media platforms have always had one thing in common: the ability to “like” posts, images, or actions of others.

Despite this commonality, Instagram has decided to change the game.

As a result, Instagram is experimenting with the removal of like counts from posts, giving only the creator the ability to see their total number of likes.

What Is Instagram Trying to Accomplish?

For many, “likes” are a vanity metric. They can be perceived as being approved or well-liked by others, and this has somewhat taken a negative stance in regards to what is deemed “popular,” rather than effective.

According to Instagram’s test explanation, they tell us that they “...want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get.”

The catalyst behind this is a goal of taking attention away from posting images that portray “perfection” or the definition of what “beautiful” is.

Instagram believes that the current focus on unrealistic body shapes can lead to potential issues and concerns in its majority of users (most being under 34 years old). What’s more, a 2017 survey revealed that Instagram is “the worst social media network for mental health and wellbeing.”

Because of this, they want to test the effect of hiding the amount of likes to see if it could put emphasis on more positive interaction with images.

How Will This Affect My Instagram Experience?

As far as we know, this test may not be rolled out for every user.

Some people may be experiencing it right now, some may experience it later, and some may not experience it at all.

If you are one of the lucky ones, you might see something like the images below (sourced from Jane Manchun Wong):

Instagram-Hiding-Likes

Image from: SocialMediaToday

As you can see, other users will be able to note that people have liked your images, but they won’t know how many. However, you, the poster, will have full visibility into the number of people who liked your posts, as well as who they are -- no change there.

Interestingly, this test will not affect your Instagram feeds in general.

TechCrunch noted that the social media platform uses engagement and likes as part of their algorithm to display certain posts in people’s feeds based on popularity.

This will still be the case, even though the number of likes will not actually be visible.

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

While the main purpose of this test is more of a personal-type action to downplay the fact that people often take likes as a sign of popularity, marketers should be aware that this could also affect social proof.

As we all know, marketers use social proof to their advantage, knowing that people tend to see brands and companies as more credible if their posts have a lot of likes.

However, what’s important to note is that these types of numbers are simply vanity metrics, and they aren’t necessarily indicative of anything you need to worry about.

Because we really don’t know what the future of the social media likes feature holds, it makes sense to continue to focus on clicks and comments, rather than just likes themselves.

Focusing on click-throughs, shares, comments, and other types of user engagement will show what types of content your audience actually responds to and values from your brand.

By paying attention to these, rather than like numbers, you’ll be able to make informed decisions about what to post on Instagram and other social media platforms moving forward, therefore creating more engagement opportunities and organic followers.

This seems to just be the start of these kinds of tests to see how they affect audience behavior, so we always need to be ready for what’s to come.

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.

Related Articles

INBOUND 2021 Recap: Takeaways, Speakers, and Lessons Learned

October 25, 2021
John Becker John Becker

Drift report on pandemic fallout reveals seismic shift in marketing strategy

September 9, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google Shares New Tools to Audit Website User Experience

August 12, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google: Website Content Quality More Important Than Quantity

August 10, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

New HubSpot CMS Hub Starter Tier Released for Growing Businesses

August 6, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Why most marketing 'news' doesn't matter to inbound marketers

August 3, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Gartner: Slashed 2021 marketing budgets increases in-house ownership

July 30, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

How to Optimize Videos On Your Business Website for Search

July 23, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Data: 'Funny' seniors imagery is not only demeaning, it's inaccurate

July 21, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google: 'Here's how to prepare for the future private web'

July 16, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

How Facebook's news feed algorithm works and prioritizes content

July 14, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Too many internal links in content can confuse Google about site structure

July 9, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Data: Facebook is No. 1 in revenue value for publishers, Twitter is a bust

July 7, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google July 2021 core update rolling out over next 2 weeks

July 2, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google punts third-party cookie ban to 2023 for 'responsible planning'

June 25, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Finally, Google page experience core update is rolling out

June 18, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Apple Mail privacy news spooks email marketers, newsletter creators

June 16, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google June 2021 core update live, July core update coming

June 4, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

You can boost LinkedIn posts and promote events, marketers

May 28, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google's June page experience core update will be mobile first, then desktop

May 21, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Best times to post on social media in 2021 (new data)

May 19, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Deeper content engagement is up on desktop (new pandemic data)

May 7, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Google confirms demise of Q&A search feature, Question Hub lives on

April 26, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

What is the new HubSpot Operations Hub?

April 23, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro

Big Google algorithm update moved to June with new performance report

April 21, 2021
Kaitlyn Petro Kaitlyn Petro