So if you haven’t heard, last week Instagram accidentally removed like counts for a lot of users, but has since restored them.
If you have concerns about the Instagram like counts getting removed, you’ll want to keep reading this blog post.
It’s time to stop focusing on your vanity metrics (AKA, your likes and followers).
Does it feel good to have a higher number of likes and followers? Of course!
But do either of those grow your business or make you more money? Nope.
I’m going to tell you exactly what I told someone last week when they reached out to ask why they were losing a couple followers here and there.
- When it comes to your audience, it’s all about quality over quantity.
It’s better to have 500 really engaged followers that are a part of your ideal client audience and willing to purchase from you, rather than 2000 followers that aren’t a part of your ideal audience, don’t engage with your content, and don’t bring in revenue.
(Remember when that Instagram influencer with 2.6M followers couldn’t sell 36 t-shirts? Yeah, me too.)
- It’s normal to lose followers.
This could be something as simple as Instagram getting rid of bot accounts that were following you, someone deleted their account, or someone saw your post and realized they didn’t mean to follow you or no longer align with your content (which is totally okay!).
Likewise, it’s normal for not every one of your posts to be the most-liked post ever. It doesn’t mean it was a bad post—it literally just means less people double tapped, which is a natural part of the ebbs and flows of marketing!
(Also, we should be grateful for the x amount of humans who did choose to engage with that piece of content, because they are each a living, breathing human that took the time to read your post and hit the like button…and that’s pretty dang awesome!)
Instead of focusing on vanity metrics, focus on metrics that actually grow your business such as reach, clicks through to your website, or sales made directly from social media!