Should You Show Your “Like Count” on Instagram?

Should You Show Your “Like Count” on Instagram? 

It’s 2022, which means Instagram is a long shot away from its original iteration. What was once a simple app to showcase photos of food, friends, and dogs has become fluid—changing shape with its features as time moves forward to fulfill as many user needs as technologically possible. 

One of those features it’s been grappling with is, as you’re probably already aware, like count. It’s a tricky situation for the platform, which has experimented with showing likes pretty extensively over the past couple of years. This came after the general public began to force Instagram to acknowledge that the individual need to chase the approval of peers (or fans) can be harmful to mental health. 

Like count has been the bane of the existence of thousands and thousands of brands and their social media managers for years—most of whom have certainly felt dragged around by the back-and-forth of whether or not IG would decide to keep it permanently. 

The results of their years of research came in last year, when they decided to shift the onus on the user to decide whether or not to leave like count on. And now that it’s been around for a while, it’s time for us to judge whether or not that’s a good idea. 

Having said all of that, here are some pros and cons for having like count visible. 

Pros

Understanding Performance

The biggest pro of keeping like count on is that it provides useful information that can help you guide your presence online.

Like count tells you about your content’s engagement—that is, how effective it is at driving people toward your brand. It’s vital information for determining your brand voice and overarching strategy; if a piece of content that leans a little edgier than your usual tone flops, for example, it’s probably a sign to pull back on the tone shift. 

Brand partnerships 

When it comes to brand partnerships, the companies who might want to work with you will probably need to know some things about your digital footprint—like count (i.e. engagement) being second to follower count. If your brand strategy leans heavily on partnerships and collaborations, there’s a good chance you’ll need to keep your likes publicly visible. 

Cons

Mental Health

As we mentioned before, a  huge factor for IG in experimenting with pulling like count from the platform in the first place was the effects of “chasing likes” on our mental health. On a societal level, it would almost certainly be better for our brains if we couldn’t see how many people liked our content, but we’re not talking about humanitarianism here, we’re talking about marketing. 

The simple fact of the matter is that we need like count to promote our brands—especially influencers, whose line between personal and brand is so blurred.

Hiding Performance

Another argument against showing likes is that it hides the performance of your posts. If your company is just getting started and has a low follower count, or you’re still trying to figure out some ways to up your engagement but haven’t actually posted anything that veers from your current strategy, you can hide behind your undisclosed like count for a while, at least. This isn’t a respectable response to the problem, but it does put a bandaid on it. 

Use Cases

In an internal poll of social marketing professionals, more than half of respondents (about 60%) said it was best for brands to keep likes on. 20% said like count is no longer necessary, with the remaining 20% stating that it depends on the brand and its goals for social. 

What we can glean from this is that while most brands should have their like count visible to help measure performance, gain and maintain partnerships, and drive your overarching strategy, there are a couple of demographics that may not need to. 

For example, if your brand—especially if it’s a personal brand—is tied to mental health, keeping your like count off almost becomes a sign of solidarity for all who feel the pressure of maintaining the guise of perfection online. 

Another group that might not care so much about like count are brands or organizations that don’t drive conversions through social. This is a niche group that includes established nonprofits and startups at their earliest stages (if you have an IG handle with your startup’s name but don’t have a marketing team or even a social media manager yet, you can get away with it).

So generally, we do recommend showing like count. If you’re considering turning yours off because you’re self-conscious about the performance of your content, shoot us a message because, hey, that’s what we do.