The social media app Instagram is always coming up with new and innovative updates to keep itself at the number one spot. While some Instagram updates have made our lives easy, especially for the influencers for whom marketing brands and products on the social media platforms is the biggest earning source. And some updates have not done well with everyone. Like giving the reel button prominence in the status tab, last didn’t go down well with many people as they didn’t want Instagram to go the Tik-Tok way. In order to fight the competition as the app was gaining popularity with the younger generation world-over, they had to get into Reels.
Same way, this year, keeping in mind the pandemic situation and how it is affecting the mental health of everyone, the latest Instagram update 2021 will not show the number of likes a particular post has garnered.
Why is the influencer not happy?
The same update was proposed in 2019, too, as the likes number is an important tool for any celebrity or influencer to get bigger and better marketing deals. Many influencers didn’t accept this new update. As it is an important algorithm to keep track of engagement on the post, and removing it will impact how users react to the post, the influencer community is not happy with this development.
Why Instagram did what it did?
How does it affect the influencer?
The more the number of likes, the more the post will be pushed forward by the algorithms. Hence with hiding these numbers, the influencer is already experiencing a fall in the number of likes on their posts, which makes it difficult for the posts to reach new audiences.
This also creates problems for brands, advertising, and marketing agencies who can not see the numbers to judge the efficacy of the post and the clout of the influencer. They may have to ask for regular updates from the influencer, which before was just a matter of keeping track of the number of likes on the posts.
To Shift base to other social media apps
The rising popularity of Tik-Toks will push the influencer to shift their base to the new app. The guys at Tik-Tok are already providing a platform to them to make content and market their brand association as they generate an audience for them.
What's next?
Likes are not the only measure in the algorithms of Instagram; there is the number of followers, engagement rate, comments, and insights about save and reach will give them a better outlook about posts. Although this update may not be acceptable to many, it does create other avenues to check and gauge the popularity of a post.