Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram in 2010 as a social networking platform. Later Facebook Inc. acquired Instagram. Now it has billions of users globally, sharing photos and videos of everything they do, see, hear, or feel. Instagram is like a trend in youth however even the older generation is showcasing the same passion for this. The use of Instagram is not just limited to entertainment purposes. Various small businesses across the world are using this platform for promoting their work. Active participation of the general public on Instagram allows businesses to engage the audience and attract them through their marketing strategies. Thus it has become one of the most popular social media platforms across the world. Its several amazing features contribute to its tremendous popularity such as:
Easy photo sharingQuick live video sharing optionsInstant options to create short reelsEnhanced engagement by adding custom captions and titlesPromotional support to small businessesEasy handling through the Instagram app
Instagram Likes: A Form of Social Currency
There have been continuous contradictions in the arguments related to the importance of Instagram likes. However, getting genuine likes for a post on Instagram is not that easy. This is because, in the rush of so many posts and contents, it is very difficult to impress viewers. Grabbing a heart from them takes a lot of effort and thought. The number of likes a post receives represents how much they loved your content. For the general public sharing posts for entertainment, likes count can be a mere excitement. But for businesses, likes are significant criteria for measuring the engagement that a post offers. There is a huge line of businesses in competition on Instagram. As a result, for a business to stand out from the competition, high likes, comments, and shares are a must. Many reasons make Instagram likes a social currency:
Enhances Reach
The Instagram algorithm considers your likes count to carry out a relation between your posts and its users. It observes which users are interested in your posts and of which kind. As a result, IG showcases your posts to more and more people and the likes count increases. This ultimately expands the reach of your posts.
Increases Trust Among Users
It is a fact that the audience here considers likes as a metric of trust. They approach more towards the brands, or influencers having more likes and shares. More people getting attracted to your posts means they somehow are talking about your brand. This enhances brand reputation and thus credibility among the users.
Helps Assess Your Efforts
A high likes count will let you know about the effectiveness of your posts. At the same time, a low likes count will let you know which content users don’t like. It means likes can help you analyze your efforts and know where you need to focus more.
You can Save Money
High likes can eliminate the need of running expensive ads on Instagram for your business. Even if you decide to run ads, these can help you gain more results with lesser spending. As your organic reach will be much broader. Thus you can save more.
Why is there an option to hide Likes on Instagram?
Keeping in view the importance of likes, you would surely be thinking why even such an option is there. This question can be simply answered by saying that it is only for our benefit. Initially, the company experimented with hiding likes count for a few countries. This was to release the pressure of getting more likes from people’s minds. According to a study carried out on 513 teenage girls in Brazil in 2020, it was observed that 78% of them tried to change parts of their body they didn’t like before posting photos. In 2019, 25% of the teens recorded being the victim of cyberbullying. Several studies were carried out to understand the influence of social networking on teens. As a result of the experiment, Instagram concluded that the results were good for some and poor for others. Hence on May 26th, 2021, the company announced an option to hide likes on Instagram and Facebook.
How to Hide Likes on Instagram?
Of course, everyone has their own priority for whether they want to hide likes or keep them public. And if you are interested in hiding likes count but not sure how to do this, here are the steps:
Tap on the menu present in the upper right corner of the profile page. Select “Settings”.Tap on the option “Privacy”.Under Interactions, tap on “Posts”.Now toggle the “Hide Like and View Counts” option to turn it on.
And that’s all. Now you are not going to see the number of likes on any of your own posts.
Turning Off Likes on A Specific Published Post
Select the post for which you want to hide likes.Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner of that post.On the pop-up menu tap on the “Hide Like Count” option.
And the likes count will disappear.
Conclusion
Social media has both positive and negative impacts and it depends upon your own attitude towards it. So, whatever may be the reason you can simply hide the likes count with the above-discussed steps. If you are interested in the social media field, you may look at these social media manager courses.
