- Five ways to get more Instagram likes.
I've been running a lot of Instagram experiments,
not only on my Neil Patel account,
but also on 38 other accounts
in a variety of different industries.
If you want to see some of these experiments in real time,
then just follow me on Instagram.
My username is NeilPatel.
Either way, I'm going to break down my learnings here
that will help you get more likes.
So let's dive right in.
Hack number one, go live.
I know you're thinking,
"Neil, how's going live going to get me more likes?"
Well, check this out.
According to Earth Web,
Instagram has seen a 17.6% decrease
from users creating live content.
Now 80% of users prefer live content
over reading blog posts.
According to Growthoid, live video is expected to grow 15X
from what it was in 2022.
So even though the popularity of live content is growing
and people want it more,
people on Instagram though aren't creating as much of it.
If you go live twice a week,
you'll find that you'll get more engagement
and more followers.
Then when you post content,
more people will see it and will like it.
But here is the issue though,
if the content you're going live with isn't great,
it won't work.
So you can't just go live for the sake of going live,
you need to plan ahead on what you're going to show
or talk about and how that's going to add a lot of value
to all the people listening in,
that way going live produces more followers
and eventually when you post more content,
you'll get more likes because you got more followers,
and those people are super engaged.
Hack number two, get influencers to comment on your post.
One signal that Instagram uses to figure out
how much to show your content
is based on who's engaging with your content.
It's not hard to network with other Instagram users.
Some of them will also be Instafamous.
Don't ask for anything crazy from them,
especially from these friends of yours,
other than just asking them,
hey, leave a good comment on your post.
And what I mean good comment,
I mean one that creates engagement.
For example, if I post a video
that talks about how to rank number one on Google,
I may have a friend who has a lot of followers
to leave a comment on how they released a free tool
on their website, and then generated over 500 backlinks,
which boosted their overall site rankings,
and how other people can find these tools
for free on CodeCanyon,
and is another strategy, in essence,
to rank number one on Google.
Now I wouldn't type out that comment for the person.
I would want to make sure that they're in a relevant industry,
field, and they can leave comments
like that based on their own experience,
that's what does really well.
And when others leave a comment on your posts,
and ideally within the first hour of them going live,
you'll get much, much more likes,
because your post will be shown
to a lot of your non followers.
In essence, Instagram will use their algorithm
to show to other people
that they think may be interested in it.
Hack number three, use music from memes and trends.
Have you ever noticed that when you like a reel
from a meme or a trend,
you could generally see more of that video
or other similar ones that contain the same music?
This happens to me all the time,
especially with those dancing videos.
But here's the thing,
even if you don't have an account that is about dancing,
you can use that meme or trend to get a lot of likes.
If you take the music that people are using
in those popular videos
and you implement it in your video,
and your video should be
about whatever your followers are following for,
like mine follow me for marketing or entrepreneurship,
what you'll find is it'll get you more likes,
because a lot of the people
that liked those other dancing videos with that song,
they're more likely to see your video.
The key to doing this strategy
is to do it right when you see a new trend popping off.
So if you see this new popular dance video
or new trend popping off
and everyone's using that same music,
that's when you need to jump on it.
Hack number four, ask for a like.
I know this sounds simple,
but asking for a like is a great way to get more likes.
But you just don't want to ask for a like,
because there's actually a slicker way to do it.
Ask people to either tag a friend, double tap,
leave a comment, share this post with a friend,
drop an emoji if you agree,
or just like the post,
which is the most simplest form of it.
And every time we've tested this, on average,
we get roughly 38.45% more likes.
That's huge!
Hack number five, use carousels.
For some weird reason,
people like writing long captions on their Instagram posts.
You know, you'll have your post,
but then people have this long text description.
People using Instagram,
use it on mobile devices primarily,
which means they're not going to read that long caption.
Maybe you'll get a few percent of the people to do it,
but most won't.
But here's the thing with Instagram,
they have this feature
where you can add multiple images to one post.
In essence, it's a carousel.
Just look at this example.
You can see how we can swipe through
and go from image to image.
Those posts on average are getting 49.22% more engagement.
The carousels can have a lot of words or a little,
but as long as the content is good, it'll do well.
And here's one example from Codie that did extremely well.
Here's the trick that she used to get more likes.
She co-published it with another account.
In other words, she published it
from her own personal account
and her business account called UnconventionalAcquisitions.
Now, you may not have multiple accounts, that's okay.
But you can do a collaboration with someone else
and you both can post the same carousel image
and it'll get way more engagement.
Now if you need help with your social media marketing,
check out my ad agency, NP Digital.
If you just have any questions, leave a comment below.
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Thank you for watching.