BlackOutDesign

A Change to Instagram

If you have been keeping an eye on some of the social media developments over the last few weeks, you quite possibly came across a new buzzword. “Demetrication” has actually be an interesting topic for most of 2019, but most recently we are renewing the conversation with the extension of Instagram’s test of removing “Likes” in parts of the U.S. starting next week. 

The topic has a number of interesting implications not only to Instagram users but to businesses and brands across the tool. Likes have been a quick reference to see where your content is trending with not only your existing audience but new audiences across various hashtags. In reality, there is growing research that Likes are creating a less-than-comfortable experience online for younger users. As part of the discussion around this test, the Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said, “the platform will not impact the whole U.S. at once but is intended to ‘depressurize’ the platform, particularly for younger users.”

Using Likes as a metric for content as a quick temperature check of audience engagement is great but if we end up losing that we still have options. When there was a growing surge around selling product via IG and no apparent quick fix, we started seeing the growth of LikeShop. In practice, this tool eliminated the need for users to constantly update their bio link every time they wanted to drive traffic out of IG to a specific product or page. A content page was created on the business or brand site and with a quick gallery layout we had a landing page application that allowed your audience to find the piece of IG content and travel to that specific landing page. Typically housing 9 – 12 pieces of curated content, this approach not only has grown in adoption across IG for “off IG transactions”, but it also gives us a vehicle to insulate our data from on-platform changes like the removal or hiding of Likes since we will be able to track usage through our websites analytics package. In short, if the content is resonating and we are calling out a transaction, we will see those users end up in our funnel on the IG gallery page on our own site.

We are going to keep an eye on how the data and metrics toolbox is shifting, but in the meantime, this is probably a good time to take a look at how you are going to be measuring your Instagram successes into the first quarter of 2020.

If you’d like to see the hand off between Instagram and our content visit our IG @blackoutdesigninc and follow the link in our bio.