Hidden Likes and the Business Account

Likes you can see and others cannot

Since yesterday, some Instagram users in Canada no longer see how many likes a post has. Instagram announced the test on Tuesday and chose Canada to start it.

The account that posted still sees the count. Everybody else sees that the post was liked by somebody they follow and others, with no total.

For a business account, nothing about your own reporting has changed. What has changed is what your followers see, and what you can see of anybody else's posts.

Which makes this a sensible week to ask what the count was ever telling you.

What still counts

• Saves, when somebody bookmarks a post to come back to.
• Messages, including replies to Stories, that ask about buying.
• Profile visits, from people curious enough to look further.
• Website taps, from the link in your profile.
• Calls, emails and directions, from the buttons on a business profile.

The second is the closest thing to a sale that Instagram can show. A message asking whether you have a date free in June is worth more than any number of likes from people who will never buy.

Why likes were always weak

A like costs nothing. It takes a double tap while scrolling, and plenty of people give them to almost everything they see.

They come from anywhere: other businesses in your trade, people in other countries, accounts that like everything in a hashtag. None of those is a customer.

They also reward spectacle over substance. The most dramatic photograph collects the most likes, whether or not it shows anything you sell.

So a count of likes measured attention, loosely, and almost never intention. It was easy to report, which is why it was reported.

What changes for a business

Two things change if the test spreads. Visitors to your profile lose the social proof of a large count, and you lose the ability to compare your counts with a competitor's.

Neither was worth much. A large count on a post said little about whether a business was good, and a competitor's likes said nothing about their sales.

Comments stay visible to everybody, and they say more than a count ever did. A question answered under a post reassures the next person who reads it.

What you can measure about your own account has not changed. It is a matter of looking at the right numbers.

Where the better numbers are

A business profile on Instagram comes with Insights. Each post shows its saves, the profile visits it led to, and how many accounts it reached.

The account overview shows profile visits, website taps and presses of the call, email and directions buttons, week by week.

Messages are counted by hand, which is no bad thing. Reading them weekly shows which posts people were responding to when they wrote.

If the link in your profile carries campaign tags, visits from it also show up separately in Analytics, along with whatever those visitors did next.

A worked example

A custom cake maker working from a commercial kitchen posts most days. The elaborate wedding cakes collected by far the most likes, many from other bakers and from accounts in other countries.

The orders, though, were mostly birthday cakes and small celebration cakes, booked through direct messages a few weeks ahead.

For a month she kept a simple tally: each week, how many messages asked about ordering, which posts had gone up in the days before, and the saves on each post.

The pattern was plain. Posts showing a birthday cake with a price range and the booking lead time drew few likes but many saves, and the messages followed them. The wedding cakes had prompted almost none.

She now posts more of what customers actually order, with the price range and the lead time in the caption. The wedding cakes still go up, less often.

A weekly tally

The tally takes five minutes on a Monday. A simple sheet with one row a week is enough.

Record the number of messages asking to buy or book, profile visits, website taps, and the saves on that week's posts. Add a line saying which posts seemed to prompt the messages.

After a couple of months, the sheet says more about what Instagram does for the business than a year of like counts did.

Stories count too

Stories never showed likes in the first place, which makes them a fair model for what the feed may become.

Their insights show how many accounts saw each frame, how many tapped forward or left, and how many replied.

Replies arrive as direct messages. A Story showing this week's openings, with a line asking people to message, is measured the same way as any post.

Posting for the measures that matter

Saves and messages come from posts people can use: prices from, lead times, what is available this week, how to order, and the things customers actually buy.

A plain line at the end of the caption helps: message us to check a date, or tap the link in our profile to order.

And the account should point somewhere you control. Instagram changes its rules when it chooses, as this week shows, and the website and the email list do not.

The counter-case

Likes were not entirely useless.

For a business opening a new location or promoting an event, broad attention matters, and likes were a rough sign of it. Reach and impressions in Insights measure that better, and they are still there.

The test may also change, spread or end, and Instagram has said little about what comes after it.

Either way, a business account is better judged on saves, messages, profile visits and website taps than on a number that was always mostly applause.

Starting Monday

1. Switch to a business profile if you have not.
2. Open Insights for your last ten posts.
3. Note saves and profile visits for each.
4. Count buying messages every week.
5. Tag the link in your profile.
6. Post more of what people message about.
7. Stop reporting likes as results.

Step four is the one that ties the account to the business. A message asking to buy is the measure no test can hide, and it is the only one that pays the bills.

Why the account should never be your only storefront is covered in the day Facebook and Instagram went down.

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West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.