In this Quick Tip episode, we discuss what’s happening with Instagram and removing public likes and what that means for your dental practice.
We’ll dive into:
- Why Instagram is removing likes
- How this shift will impact your marketing approach on Instagram
- How this affects IG influencers
Join us for this Quick Tip episode!
Full Transcript
What do you get when you combine simplified practice marketing, proven ROI strategy, and Vans skate shoes? You get Mark Thackeray, of course. So lace up, grab your green smoothie and get ready because this is Dental Marketing Secrets and this is Mark.
Hello and welcome back my friends to another episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets podcast where we provide actionable tips and tricks that you can apply immediately to grow your practice so you can serve more patients and leave a greater impact because that is what it’s all about. My friends, my name is Mark Thackeray and as always I’m honored to be here with you and share this quick tip. This is something new that we’re implementing, just sharing a quick, very bite-sized tip for you that you can take and run with. And this one in particular is something that is generating a lot of buzz in social media and we’ll certainly have some interesting ramifications moving forward as this gets rolled out entirely.
And what I’m referring to is the recent news that Instagram likes are going away. That’s right. So that the likes are going away. And technically this is something that Instagram announced that they would be doing six months ago. They said they were going to do a test on this. And so they initially started those tests in Canada. Then they move to other countries throughout the world like Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy.
And as of the other day, the United States. Now Adam Mosseri, who’s the CEO of Instagram announced that they will start hiding likes for the U S audiences as this latest step in Instagram’s quote quest to become the safest place on the internet and quote. So that’s their goal. That’s their motivation, is to make it a healthier and safer space to hang out online. Now this doesn’t mean that everyone in the U S will be in that testing group, only a small selection. So if you’re scrolling on Instagram, you’re still likely going to see the number of likes on each post in your feed. Okay? So, but it’s what this means when they do roll it out.
And if you are in that test group, what it means that you’ll still be able to see the likes. They’re not, those aren’t going away entirely. They’ll just be hidden from view. So if it was your post, you’ll be able to tap on, tap on the people that liked it and it will show in a separate screen. It’ll sh it’ll click through and show you who liked your post and then you can go up. You can go through and manually count those up so that you’ll know exactly how many likes you got. It’s just a lot more manual. But the what, what has changed is that the, if it wasn’t your posts, so the outsiders looking in won’t be able to tell how many likes were generated for that specific post. And again, the reasoning behind all of this is, is Instagram’s desire to creating this safer slash healthier place to hang out online, which is, which is really important to everyone’s health.
And as Mosseri said, the CEO said, the idea is to depressurize Instagram and make it a space that’s more focused on connections, on conversations and on community, especially for young people, which I am totally in favor of. And I think most of us out there would raise our hands to that and tip our hats to that because we are seeing way too much negativity and toxicity on Instagram in particular and on Facebook and social media, especially when it comes to our youth, they’re not, a lot of them don’t really know how to handle it. And so it’s, it’s becoming, having a lot of negative repercussions. And I’m frankly, I’m, I’m very excited that they’re rolling this out and there are a few people that are speaking out against it, but it seems like the overwhelming majority are in favor of the move because they’ve all experienced that backlash too.
So even influencers are, are generally positive on this move. And now the big question remains for us is how will this affect my practice? Okay. And personally I think it’s a really positive change. I mentioned some of the, some of those reasons for kids, but I also think that, um, well to give you an example, Instagram stories which have become wildly successful, wildly popular, those don’t have any public metrics, but that hasn’t kept them from exploding in popularity from the user standpoint, from a brand usage, from celebrities, Instagram stories are still extremely popular. And what’s great about the fact that your likes are now absent from that feed from, from the public view, is that it shifts your focus to content rather than a specific number. And it can also allow you to post more freely without worrying about the best time to post. So I can get as many likes as I as I can.
It’s really shifting that mindset to what is going to engage in a conversation to, to generate comments and to, to spark that interaction from your practice to to the viewer. Okay. It’s not just a like, it’s going in one step further, which I think is tremendous because I’ve seen way too many practices become totally enamored with receiving hundreds of likes, while at the same time completely ignoring the fact that those likes did nothing to move the needle for their practice. Okay. They totally disregarded the absence of efficacy of those of those likes, of that time spent on Instagram to help their practice. You know, there’s a lot of people that will claim, okay, this is good. It’s building awareness and yes, to a certain degree, but I think what this shift does is price place a greater emphasis on going deeper with your, with your content, making sure that it’s valuable enough and it will encourage people to share, encourage people to comment, and then in that way you’ll, you’ll be able to identify how well it’s working.
Okay. Now there is for those people that have used influencers in the past, an Instagram influencer, someone who has a huge following and utilize their service to promote your practice per se or PR promote a specific procedure like whitening or a, you know, it could be Invisalign or a smile makeover. This, this will change. It’ll be more difficult if this change is rolled out. It will become more difficult to identify who those influencers are and how to work with them. But there are some companies out there that they keep tabs on, on influencers, say they have their systems in place so that they can identify them, follow their, their feed and all that stuff. So you just have to work through those – My Social Practice is a great company that will help you do that for example. But if you’re trying to do it on your own, it just makes it that much more difficult.
But those are just a few of the changes that we’re likely going to see as Instagram continues to test out this change and eventually roll it out. I think they will in the longterm. So just keep that in mind as you’re, as you’re starting to plan ideas for content in the future on social media and Instagram in particular, this is something to take into consideration is what type of content is going to really engage my viewers, engage patients, engage people that we know that follow, that, follow our brand page two into a conversation that’s going to get them talking. It’s getting, get them, motivate them to share. It’s going to really make you think twice about that.
So,that’s it, my friends. Thank you for joining us today on this first ever quick tip on the Dental Marketing Secrets podcast. Give yourself a high five for being one of the first people. And as always, if you have comments, questions, or feedback I’d love to hear from you. Simply email me at markthack@gmail.com. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, leave me a review for this podcast. That would be awesome. Huge virtual high five for doing that already in advance. And a big virtual hug. Lots of love coming your way. Thank you for sharing that, but until next time, my friends make it a great week.
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