Is Instagram right in testing the removal of 'Like' feature in India?

Are you on Instagram? Then you would know the craze for likes. But there’s more to Instagram than just the likes. At least that’s what the makers of the platform believe.

This is why the social media platform is mulling a removal of the 'like' feature in India, as it has done in markets like Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, among others.

In India, users will be able to see who has liked their post but will not be able to check the likes on others' posts.

What will be the implications of such a move by Instagram?

According to Rohit Raj, creative chief and co-founder of creative agency The Glitch, removing the like feature will have a negative impact on influencers and content creators as likes are a measure of where they stand.

"Influencers are complaining that because people are unable to see how many likes a post has received then many people don’t end up liking a particular post and the mob mentality doesn’t exist which means there is lesser engagement in terms of likes. Influencers think hiding the like feature is affecting their reach," Raj said.

Meanwhile, Apaksh Gupta, Founder, One Impression, influencer marketing and branded content solutions company, thinks that celebrities are the ones who will be impacted more by the move.

"The higher up you go in terms of followers you will see more drop in numbers as for bigger influencers (celebrities) people go by the number of likes. When it comes to micro influencers, they will actually get a lot of push because they have very engaged communities and they were not getting likes because of the numbers but because of their content".

He added, "why micro influencers will grow is because till date a brand could put money on a larger person and get a lot of likes. Now, because content actually becomes more important, so the way forward is to go with the diversification route. Diversified content would be a better strategy."

What Gupta means is that content will now overpower stardom, a shift that is also being witnessed when it comes to the big screen.

Talking to Moneycontrol, Prateek Kumar, MD and CEO, NeoNiche Integrated Solutions, said, "Instagram is a much more visual mode of content marketing and this mode of content marketing is highly sharable and from that perspective people want to not just like but share it, comment on it, hashtag it."

This is why he thinks that this move will not have a big impact on brands.

"Brands look at the kind of engagement with the post. Hence, likes do not play that important a role. Catchy hashtags, re-shares, reach on multiple platforms are important for brands. Plus, likes can be bought," Kumar added.

Even for influencers, Gupta thinks it is a fairly good idea as those of them "who have very connected engagement will benefit a lot because you wouldn’t see a drop in engagement versus the influencers who have created the larger community just with the push of likes, these people will have a harder time."

"So now, content engagement becomes more effective even if the actual numbers drop. The value per engagement increases now. The better influencers will be able to manage their numbers as against those who had either fake numbers or had big numbers because of herd mentality, their numbers will drop," he added.

Another thing that is likely to see a downward shift is the pricing of influencers, said Gupta. "The pricing of influencers will drop by a marginal percentage because they were commanding prices on numbers that probably did not matter as much. Drop in pricing will be better for market as the ROI (return on investment) will be better," he said.

Influencer pricing, Gupta said, is defined by various factors, some of which are the number of followers an influencer has, their engagement rate and the category (luxury influencers are less, but fashion influencers are many).

He added that currently "an influencer with 25,000 followers could be charging around Rs 5,000 per post". Similarly, those with 25,000 to 100,000 followers charge anywhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000 a post and those with 100,000 to 500,000 followers charge in the range of Rs 20,000 to Rs 60,000 per post. Per post charges levied by influencers with a million followers or more goes up to Rs 1 lakh.

"Above a million is a question of how big you are as a celebrity and then your celeb brand value can bring in the multiplier effect," he added. ​