How Marketers Can Adapt to a ‘Likeless’ Instagram
Start preparing for the likeless revolution
We’re all guilty of prioritising and obsessing over the number of likes our content gets. Both brands and regular individuals have long viewed the like count as the ultimate measure of success on a social platform – regardless of whether it’s on our personal accounts or as part of a wider social media marketing strategy.
The likeless age of social media may finally be upon us, forcing marketers to push the vanity metric to one side and search for another quantifiable source for their marketing strategy analysis. Here’s how you can prepare and adapt to an Instagram with hidden like counts.
Utilize Instagram’s Video-Based Features
A likeless Instagram would inevitably push marketers towards the app’s other functionalities where likes don’t apply. Instagram has over 500 million active users on its video-based features such as Stories and IGTV. Their popularity and usage could even outgrow the original feed that first made the photo-based social platform so popular.
As Instagram Stories and IGTV already don’t make use of likes, the features are already in place for a seamless transition for marketers who are still looking for a quantifiable engagement metric. Here, they could simply replace likes with views to gain an insight into how their campaign is progressing.
Diversify Your Influencer Marketing Strategy
Brands target Influencers based on their post engagement rather than by looking solely at their following count – which would be a mistake, considering the availability and prevalence of ‘fake’ followers.
At a glance, influencer engagement is determined by the number of likes or comments that each post receives, meaning the likeless revolution will raise a number of concerns for both parties. A likeless Instagram will force brands to take a more in-depth, and perhaps personal, look at potential social media influencer qualities.
With performance indicators becoming vaguer, the actual content being produced by the influencer will need to increase in quality. Brands should start looking for individuals whose content aligns with their own philosophy, as opposed to looking at pure KPIs.
In our previous article titled, ‘Understanding the Importance of Micro-Influencers on Your Business’, we took a detailed look at how effective the ‘lesser-known’ sub-group of influencers can be.
Micro and Nano-influencers are cost-effective, more authentic and are proven to have higher engagement rates than their counterparts with larger followings. These individuals will see a steady rise in business during the likeless age of Instagram.
Build a Community
The likeless revolution will see a shift from passive engagement (likes) to active engagement (interest-based conversation).
Likes are a simple way to gauge the popularity of a specific post at a glance. Removing this feature will see individuals with a shared interest investing their time into communities and networks of other like-minded individuals who identify and participate in an active conversation.
Brands can effectively infiltrate these groups with a solid community engagement strategy to build stronger relationships with their prospective customers. Comments, direct messages, Facebook groups and Reddit forums are good ways to directly communicate with customers.
Measurement Reset
The likeless revolution is perhaps the best outcome for intensely like-focussed brands that solely use the metric as a key performance indicator.
The removal of likes will force brands and marketers to branch out and utilize other metrics and search for those that truly matter and impact their business.
Measuring the success and ROI of a social media campaign is tricky enough, with marketers having to navigate and implement share and follower count figures into their ambiguous ROI calculations. The difficulty will only increase upon the removal of the like – which is such a simple metric to quantify.
The likeless revolution will see a huge increase in outreach that is conversation and comment-driven as we noted before. Sure, it’s definitely more work, but it’s meaningful work that connects with your customers. Sometimes a measurement reset is all you need to figure out which metrics are actually having a valuable impact on your bottom line.
Wrap Up
You can’t deny that Instagram is taking a brave and innovative step by hiding the like count – a synonymous feature of the brand’s platform since it launched a decade ago. The move will cause a seismic shift in the B2B marketing, advertising and influencer landscape, with more opportunities arising for lesser-known hopefuls. By moving to story-based content, marketing agencies will be well prepared for Instagram’s likeless future.
