LIKES ARE GONE! WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO NOW?!?!

As a business owner, I know right about now you think this should be your que to freak out… but don’t run for the hills just yet! I am here to tell you that likes going away isn’t actually the end of the world, and why it actually might be a good thing for your social media marketing strategy. 

If you live internationally you may have been without likes for several months – while some of you may have not even noticed that they’re gone!

Either way, if you are freaking out because your number one way of people engaging with you is gone… HEAR ME OUT on why I’m super stoked on the removal of likes from Instagram!

NUMBER of LIKES REMOVED BUT LIKES ARE NOT GONE

Likes are still there people! You can still see your posts’ likes and people can still like your photo. The only thing changing is the NUMBER of likes per post is no longer seen by your followers. It will just say “so and so and other’s liked this photo”

Your main focus now should be shifting the priority to more engaging content. Look – likes are the LEAST valuable form of engagement on Instagram. Whether you still have the number of likes on a post available publicly or not – likes are a VERY passive form of engagement and requires extremely little intention on the part of your follower.

If you are trying to get new customers from social media, I can tell you right now – just trying to get a client to like a post enough times to become a customer is a failing strategy.  

If I’m a betting woman, I’m going to say the majority of the likes you get on your photos tend to consist of industry people, brands, and spammy followers – not potential customers.

Think about the action someone takes to like a photo. People mindlessly scroll through their feed and throw out likes left and right. That doesn’t mean they read your caption or anything about you. Hell, if you’re anything like me, you even accidentally like things all the time!

Likes don’t necessarily mean that the content is relevant or valuable to the follower. And PS – if you are getting likes by larger accounts on a frequent basis, like some larger lash brands or influencers, I can almost guarantee they’re using a bot that is liking their followers posts, their competitors followers posts, and posts with specific hashtags. 

 COMMENTS – SHARES – SAVES

Now we’re getting to the good stuff! Comments, shares, and saves – now that takes some intention behind the action! (yes I believe there are some comment bots out there – but they usually leave weird comments that aren’t relevant to your post or just emojis so you’ll know the difference).

How much more valuable is it to you as a business owner if a potential customer comments on your post? What about if she shared it with a friend or saved it to reference later? How might creating posts that get comments, shares or saves change how you show up on social media? Wouldn’t that give you more data (ahem and motivation) to post more valuable content? Wouldn’t that be more exciting to use the platform knowing potential customers were actually interacting with you in meaningful and intentional ways?

I go over Instagram in depth inside of the Lashpreneur society – my group business coaching
program for lash artists and you can get on the waitlist to be notified of when we open the doors
to the society again in 2020 at www.thelashpreneur.com/society. But I want to hear what questions YOU HAVE about how to prioritize comments, shares and saves in your posts and what you’re struggling with to get clients off of social media and into your business. You can share your questions and struggles with me at
www.thelashpreneur.com/coffeechat

Happy business building!

Have a good day! 

The Lashpreneur