If you have a brand you want to promote on Instagram, likes are one of the crucial stats that you should be concerned about. Along with other important metrics, these little hearts indicate how your content is performing. Even 50 Instagram likes from real people can buy you tons of engagement. In this article we shall discover how likes affect your business, and also share some useful tips for getting more faves.

Why do likes matter after all?

Well, to be completely clear, for the current algorithms that rule the feed on Instagram, likes are only a part of a complex of social signals that determine the success of a certain post. To understand how your content is doing, you need to regard your likes together with saves, shares, and comments that you receive, and in correlation with your follower count. This is the reason why many marketers and brands use paid services to regulate their performance. 

Likes in particular are one of the most visible and easy-to-understand social actions that indicate the acceptance and endorsement of the post. That is in case they are visible to the user. However, even if the user chose to hide them, they still would impact the build-up of their feed – posts from the blog you like the most will appear in your feed more often. 

The main criteria that will work for improving your engagement would be how many active real users are interacting with your post. Thus, bought likes that come from bots and are not relevant to the actual state of things on your account – can only be food for your vanity, and not functional in any way. But today, many users prefer to hide likes – this way they can orient only on their interests and avoid commonly popular trends they are not interested in. For people, hiding likes also helps to preserve a healthy mental state and leave a competitive spirit behind. By hiding like counter, Instagram also fights fake engagement, which caused pressure and unhealthy competition among brands and influencers.

How can the hiding likes affect businesses on Instagram?

In general, it doesn’t affect the process of gaining engagement and interacting with the audience. After thorough research and testing that took place in several countries, the platform authorities have decided to make hiding of likes an individual choice for every user. That was decided due to polarized positions among the public; some users were quite relieved to be free of social pressure caused by like counting, and others were feeling alienated from the main trends that flow through the network. 

However, such an option allows brands to remaster their strategies to make them more humane and intimate, relying on the genuine wish of their audience to interact with the content. Here is how to turn off the visibility of likes:

• Tap three little dots in the upper right corner of your post
• Choose the option “Hide Like Count”

Don’t worry, you will still see how many likes you have gathered. The faves will disappear only for viewers unless it is not a collaboration post. 

How to get more likes on Instagram in 2022?

So, it is obvious that likes still matter for brands, as the indicator and lever for increasing engagement rate and determining the most successful content. But how to gain more likes nowadays, when their meaning for users is not that obvious? Well here are the top tips that will help you to increase the number of small hearts. 

Use relevant hashtags

Hashtags do amazing work when it comes to expanding your reach. Currently, Instagram has an option for users to follow a certain hashtag, so your content, tagged properly, can appear before the eyes of many more people, providing you a serious increase of all stats. Some marketers advise creating an additional comment to bear all hashtags you need, but it is not necessary if you have a great engagement rate.

Pro tip: you can create your unique hashtag, which your customers can apply as they make review posts with your product. Such a technique helps to establish the reputation of your brand and spread the word about you on the platform.

Tag Your Location

This feature allows you to target your content for the closest residents nearby, who are more likely to be interested in your materials. This option is available for posts and stories, thus you can easily create a local community, which can become your customers and promoters of your products.

Also, if you have an offline store, with geotagging you can guide your buyers to it – some brands create special posts that describe how to find it. 

Make your store likable 

Speaking of offline shops, there’s a cool trick that can attract many followers and customers to you. Create a photo zone in it. Even the smallest one, being originally arranged and interchangeable according to the current trends, will stimulate people to take photos with your product and make your store a trendy spot. As you will get more tags, you will inevitably get more likes and shares, as well as organic interest in your product. 

Run a contest

Likes are the best feature to use for entertaining your audience and pushing your growth a little. Besides, organizing a like-based contest is very easy – all you will require for that is a fine prize, which will be interesting for your fans, not just opportunists (so do not use as a prize latest smartphone models, cash or casual trips – unless this is a specific of your brand). You can boost stats on several posts at once: simply make it a contest condition to like three last posts. Don’t forget to increase your engagement organically, by adding following and commenting to the list of requirements for contestants. 

Post relevant memes

Or create new ones yourself. People love a good laugh, so why don’t you provide some fun to your followers with a witty and related meme? The primary goal of Instagram is entertainment, so posting jokes for your audience is an element of building intimate and trustworthy relationships with them.

Conclusion 

There are many more ways you can get more likes on Instagram. But you don’t have to concentrate on this goal. Likes are the component of the system that grows the engagement rate on this platform. So you must regard this task as a natural part of your strategy. Good materials posted properly and for the right audience would generate many likes without much effort from your side. Content is king on Instagram, so you have to work on improving your quality all the time, checking the flow of faves as an indication of your progress.`