How removing ‘Likes' from Instagram is creating a bumpy ride ahead for micro-influencers

Instagram is moving towards being a ‘like-free’ content-sharing platform. This is likely to democratise creativity and will offer an equal opportunity to micro-influencers and to diverse content which did not find its way for the lack of acceptability among masses and without the vulnerability of being judged by the likes.

While the overall sentiment around this change seems positive, micro-influencers are feeling short-changed as they believe that the current trend of gaining followers is driven by likes. They feel that macro-influencers will have an advantage over them as in the absence of likes, the number of followers will emerge as the single-largest parameters to bucket influencers. Particularly for brands and audience that prefers quality over quantity, being judged by the number of followers or comments would not reflect the true reach and appreciation of the story. All mid-tier and macro-influencers love the new feature while this sentiment is completely reverse with micro-influencers who feel the display of likes are the fastest route to grow the following as well as negotiate with the brands by showcasing higher rate of engagement.

According to the Eleve Media and The Mavericks Survey, 64% influencers believe that negotiating deals with brands in the absence of display of likes will get tougher and it may overall compromise their ability to command a premium for delivering better engagement than getting measured by their follower base. Most influencers who believe that the new feature will not impair their ability to negotiate with brands are either macro-influencers in travel, as they have already gathered a good following or the tech influencers, they being very niche and relatively smaller community.

Influencers usually build their subscribers on at least three platforms, which can go up to five depending upon the genres they operate in. Facebook is common to all. Travel influencers usually operate on simultaneous channels, including LinkedIn, Blogs and Twitter while their tech, lifestyle and food counterparts do not generally like to build a community on LinkedIn.

The new feature is unlikely to see any exits from Instagram. However, they are likely to add other platforms to build parallel communities and strengthen their negotiation with the brands they endorse. TikTok is the first preference of food and lifestyle influencers while LinkedIn could be the first preference for technology and parenting influencers.

Chetan Mahajan, Founder and CEO, The Mavericks, said, “The like-less social world is likely to reduce the stress due to self-inflicted pressure of getting public validation to stories posted on Instagram. This practice is likely to be followed by other platforms as platforms take on more responsibility to rid the society from this pressure of performance. The platforms are likely to benefit even more as brands may want to invest more money in advertising rather than hiring influencers who may find it difficult to justify their impact.”

Prince Khanna, CEO of Eleve Media, said, “For content creators, working on branded content is one of the key sources of revenue. And for brands, Instagram likes is one of the key metrics to assess the impact of an influencer. With the recent update that hides likes, influencers can focus on creating quality content rather than chasing likes. Hiding likes is not going to ‘kill’ Instagram influencers; it's just intended to change their mindset.”