Increasing sales by showing likes

At its core, a like is a very common form of user reaction to a particular piece of content today. This form of expressing opinion is widely found in social networks, on various forums, marketplaces, and video hosting sites. By putting a like, the user publicly expresses their approval, shows that they liked the material, picture, or product presented in the publication.

Along with this, this tool also has additional functionality, which directly depends on which platform you have to work with at a given time. So, if we talk about messengers, then here a like is mainly a way to show that you have read the message, taken it into account. But in the same TikTok, with the help of a like, users make a kind of bookmarks for themselves. All publications that are marked are automatically collected in a separate folder and can be viewed later. If we talk about trading platforms or profiles on social networks that specialize in selling goods, then here a like will indicate the high quality of the product and the fact that the person who ordered it is completely satisfied with their purchase.

As part of today's review, we will get to know such a tool as a like in more detail. We will tell you when such a solution appeared in principle and what functions it performs today. We will highlight a number of points that likes give to bloggers and Internet marketers. We will consider such a concept as a dislike. We will give a number of recommendations that will allow business representatives and personal brands to collect more likes in social networks. We will pay attention to such a tool as a like counter and tell you why it is worth using, how it affects the increase in sales. We will say how to connect a like counter to your profile on a social network or on another platform.

Who and when invented the like?

Such a tool as a like was invented in 1998 by the Dutch programmer Van Der Meer for the social network Surfbook, which he developed. The platform itself never entered mass use, but likes have found worldwide application and are actively used today. In 2010, the social network Facebook added a button through which the user could express their approval. The Dutch developer immediately responded to this decision and filed a lawsuit, accusing Facebook of stealing the idea. But they failed to prove their case, as well as win the case and receive the desired compensation.

Today, likes are used in a huge variety of variations on various Internet platforms: class, I like it, excellent, etc. Their prospects and convenience were very quickly appreciated by many users, business representatives, since this is one of the simplest and most convenient ways to interact with the content presented on a particular page in a post, product card.

In 2016, Facebook slightly improved the like, giving it a deeper emotional content. Since then, such a word as reaction has been introduced into the everyday life of this social network. But, despite all their convenience, likes also had a downside. It's one thing when a pleasant event happened in a person's life and he decided to share it with his friends, subscribers, acquaintances. Then such a reaction looks absolutely natural and correct. But how should one react to sad posts? On the one hand, one should react, and on the other, people associated a like with something positive. But what if a person is in trouble? And then it became the norm to write additional comments, as if explaining that a like in this case was used as a way to express support, sympathy. Today, such a problem has been eliminated. In particular, a huge number of emoticons have appeared that describe certain emotions. So, now you can find almost any reaction to any event, mood. Moreover, many experts agree that such reactions are used not only by real people, but also by the algorithms of social networks and other platforms. With their help, they can provide better ranking of content presented on the sites, and issue certain publications in accordance with the reader's mood.

Today, the word “reaction” is mainly used in the professional segment of the market, in particular, among people who work with social networks, trading platforms, messengers, that is, among SMM specialists, Internet marketers and representatives of related professions. But ordinary users everywhere use the word “like”, “like” to express their own emotions from this or that material, product.

So what function is assigned to these likes? Are they so important for modern social networks and other platforms?

The main tasks assigned to likes

We have already said above that a like is one of the simplest and most convenient tools to use, ensuring interaction between the user and the brand or blogger. This means that the more such marks there are in a particular material, the better it will be for promotion. Of course, reviews, reposts, and comments still give great results in practice. But if you consider the increased employment of modern people, their unwillingness to strain their brains to come up with something original and interesting, then you definitely won’t find a better solution than likes. Put such a mark and you can consider that you have expressed your own opinion about a particular product, service, publication, etc.

That is, we can say with confidence that a like is both a reward and a replacement for a rating. The more such reactions are present in a particular publication, the more useful the material presented in it. And this is a well-deserved and widespread opinion both among the owners of these very accounts and those who prepare these publications, and among ordinary users. For content creators, each like is a kind of incentive indicating that their work is highly appreciated. As a result, there is a natural desire to prepare similar materials in the future.

People who see a large number of likes in a particular post will definitely pay attention to it and read it, even if they did not initially have such a desire. Here, let's say, the "herd instinct" comes into play: if it is interesting and useful to someone, then perhaps it will be useful to me too. If we talk specifically about social networks, then likes have long become a kind of internal currency. And this is not surprising, because a blogger can easily convert them into real money, in particular when collaborating with advertisers and determining the cost of publishing certain ads in his accounts.

That is, a like is what indicates the high quality of the material. They arouse increased interest among users of social networks, advertisers, SMM specialists, marketers, competitors. And the presence of a reaction also contributes to the fact that users have a natural desire to express their own opinion on this matter by pausing the same like.

With regard to the algorithms on which modern social networks operate, for them, user likes are what makes the system promote material marked by a large number of users. A similar approach is currently implemented in practice by a large number of social networks, including the same Facebook, Instagram. Here, the issuance algorithms are directly related to the activity of the user audience. That is, the more likes there are in a particular post, the more actively the social network itself will promote it, showing it to a wide user audience, facilitating more active interaction. Moreover, a number of social networks, such as VKontakte, will send users messages saying that they missed a publication that has received a large number of reactions. And this means that people will view it.

Likes can also be perceived as a manifestation of public support for a particular business or brand, a manifestation of higher loyalty to them. It is absolutely unimportant which message caused a large number of backlashes. The content, quality, and semantic load are not taken into account here. That is, the system is simply guided by the pressed button. Everything is logical and clear here, since if a person clicks on a reaction, it means that he supports the message that was voiced in a particular post. And here the reaction from the user can be caused not so much by the material itself, but by the name of the brand or the same opinion leader. As a result, a group of users is formed that will treat your publications with the utmost loyalty. As a result, this will lead to the fact that reactions will be placed on absolutely all publications. The main thing is that they are related to a particular business or a particular person.

Many experts today also consider likes as a symbol of belonging to a particular social group, cultural community. That is, to the category of users who are united by common interests and values. A striking example of such a solution is fans of certain actors, singers, visitors to a club, restaurant, hotel. By posting their reactions here, people not only express their opinions, but also demonstrate their own identity. Moreover, they can track the likes left by other users in an attempt to find like-minded people. Often, new thematic communities or, so to speak, interest clubs are organized on this basis.

As you can see, the opportunities that a like opens up for business representatives and people working with social networks and other similar platforms are quite impressive. Now we will show what an ordinary blogger and marketer can do with such reactions.

Likes as a tool in the hands of a blogger

We have already said above that user reactions are this is what stimulates the opinion leader to work more actively and productively with their channels, develop them, come up with new, even more original content, increase the frequency of publications. If you have already worked with social networks or even just with the creation of various content, then you probably know how difficult it is to come up with something interesting and unusual. Over time, even the most active and creative bloggers burn out. The topics for publications that they had planned for themselves earlier have already been exhausted, and there are no new ones here. What to do in such a situation?

That's right, set up feedback with your audience. Even the same likes will let the author understand that his content is interesting, that it is useful, that people are looking forward to it. For the most part, this will be enough to get, so to speak, a guiding kick and continue to work, create creative ideas, publish them. Not only positive reactions are especially useful, but also negative user opinions. This means that people do not like the material, that it is not interesting. If you analyze everything, you can easily make adjustments to the content plan and offer the user audience only the material that will captivate them.

And also likes for a blogger are what can attract advertisers to his channel or profile. Those who plan to launch their own advertising through social networks carefully monitor the accounts of opinion leaders. And here attention is paid not only to the number of views? publications, but also whether they cause a feedback from the audience, that is, the number of likes. If they are present in the publications, it means the blogger managed to engage his subscribers and, accordingly, the launched advertising message will not pass by these people. And here there is a chance to significantly increase advertising budgets and, as a result, the level of your own income.

Likes as a tool in the hands of an Internet marketer

An Internet marketer is a specialist who is assigned a huge number of duties and tasks. He must attract the attention of the target audience, present goods or services in the most favorable light, make people want to perform this or that conversion action, etc. The success of any idea will directly depend on how professionally and competently the business strategy is drawn up. And at this stage, likes can be of significant benefit. With their help, an Internet marketer can:

• Analyze the activity of the user audience. To understand whether a particular product or publication is appealing to users, attention is initially paid to the number of people who have subscribed, and then to how actively they behave. That is, the number of reactions to the same message is measured. Thus, the activity can be constant, and the reaction rates to a particular material can be high. This is what every marketer will strive for. If in practice there are situational reactions, that is, at one moment users show increased activity and like, and at another, on the contrary, do not show any enthusiasm, then you need to think about the launched strategy. Most likely, there are shortcomings, such as low-quality content, which prevent you from achieving consistency.
• Understand what real volume of contacts with the audience is in a particular account. It is worth studying the statistics of likes to understand which publications caused a certain reaction in people and even that the material was read. The latter aspect is especially relevant for the Telegram messenger. In particular, there is such an option as "Mark all as read". It is used by people who do not want to waste time studying the accumulated messages, but do not want them to constantly hang as unopened. As a result, after clicking on the corresponding button, all messages in the messenger look like read and the system counts them. But there was no full viewing. That is, you, as a business representative, will not be able to understand whether people actually saw your material or just clicked on the "Mark all as read" button. But if you pay attention to the number of reactions, you will understand whether your publication was studied.
• The ability to compare the number of likes and views. This is what will allow you to determine the level of user audience engagement. And this, in turn, is one of the key indicators indicating the effectiveness of the promotion of a particular account. If it is ultimately revealed that the profile has a large number of subscribers, and the likes can be counted literally on the fingers of one hand, then the material is of no interest to people, they are not ready to contact you to buy goods or services. This is a reason to reconsider the entire strategy and make radical changes to it.
• Using likes as a promotion tool. When promoting a particular community, personal or business account, social networks first of all pay attention to user reactions. Along with comments and reposts, likes are also taken into account. Seeing a large number of likes, social network algorithms will automatically conclude that the material is useful, that it causes a negative reaction in people and, accordingly, will show it more actively. Understanding the work of algorithms, many, let's say, "not very conscientious" bloggers and specialists themselves order the placement of likes on certain messages from real users, paying them a certain amount of money. Despite the not entirely honest behavior, the result of such cheating is quite impressive.
• The ability to perform a comprehensive analysis to better understand the interests and preferences of your audience. So, if you analyze likes, dislikes, as well as all those icons with emotions that users place under your publications, you will get enough material for a more detailed analysis, compiling a portrait of your audience.
• The ability to track the reputation of your company. In order to understand whether the audience's attitude towards your business has changed over a given period of time, it will be enough to simply periodically monitor the number of likes left over the same period of time. For example, if it turns out that in one month you have collected 1000 likes, in another only 500, this means that interest is gradually decreasing and it is necessary to take more drastic measures to retain the audience's attention. It is also worth monitoring the type of reaction itself. If negative reactions prevail over positive ones, then this is a signal that you are doing something wrong and it is necessary to radically revise the strategy.
• The ability to analyze the real indicators of a particular account, to identify the use of cheating, bots. Such a solution is often used in practice by advertisers to choose the most suitable platform for launching their company and not to overpay for automatic cheating. Today, many bloggers use this in order to get as many subscribers as possible, including effective ones, to improve their profile indicators, at least visible ones. This is their chance to sell advertising at a higher price. Therefore, advertisers themselves should be especially careful in this matter.

All this is relevant for both social networks and video hosting sites. As an option, cheating is actively used today in the same YouTube. Therefore, if you see a large number of views, but few reactions, then there are only two options: either the content is completely uninteresting, or bots are actively working here, or so-called cheating, which launches a video in the background, without even delving into what it is about. All this suggests that an Internet marketer, by analyzing the reactions of the user audience, will be able to obtain a lot of information that will be indispensable in his daily work.

Dislikes: the other side of the coin

Unfortunately, publications on social networks, instant messengers, and video hosting sites do not always cause positive reactions. Negative assessments are also often encountered, which manifest themselves in such a reaction as “I don’t like it” or, as it is also called, a dislike. YouTube was the first to use such a solution in practice, but several years ago the platform closed the display of negative reactions. That is, users can still express their opinions, but strangers will no longer see this, as well as general statistics for a particular video. Out of curiosity, you can stroll through the video hosting site, paying attention not to the videos themselves, but to the reactions that are posted under them. We are sure that you will find only likes.

According to the YouTube management, such a decision was made so that content creators do not become victims of haters and competitors. But there is another fairly common opinion. In particular, today dislikes are actively used as a tool for black PR. So, there are a number of content creators who are ready for any decisions, just to attract the attention of the user audience. So they themselves will provoke a large number of negative reactions to their videos, focusing on the most curious audience of users. That is, those who want to personally check what is hidden in this video that it caused such a large number of dislikes.

But, whatever the main reason, the result is the same - YouTube displays only likes while dislikes are hidden from view. Unlike video hosting in social networks and messengers, today there is a huge variety of reaction emoticons that carry a negative context. They can be put by ordinary users who really did not appreciate your material, and the same competitors, including paid people who want to harm your account. The only way to combat all this is to constantly work on content: interesting, exciting, informative for the target audience.

How to get more likes: practical recommendations and advice

We would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that there are no universal tips that will allow you to get the maximum positive reactions from the user audience for any posts or videos. Here, the type of material itself, the platform where it is posted, and the existing audience reach indicators available in your profile, as well as a number of other parameters have a significant impact. But there are still a number of tips that will help increase the number of user reactions to your publications:

1. Work with an audience you know. That is, initially, in any case, you will need to get a portrait of your subscriber. You must understand what interests the people you attract to your profile, what problems you can solve with your publication, what will interest them. So, the topics that you will raise in accounts for young mothers will be radically different from those that may interest fishing enthusiasts. Although the example is quite radical, but this way you clearly understand what exactly we meant in this case. That is, even if you are targeting the most diverse audience, you will still need to additionally segment it, highlighting the key aspects that people will subsequently focus on.
2. Don't get hung up on the same format. Even the highest quality and most useful content will look too monotonous and dull, will stop surprising your audience over time and will lead to the fact that users will stop putting the same likes, although they can still read your material, draw some specific conclusions for themselves. They will simply get bored, which means that you will have to make an effort to entertain your subscribers. And one of the simplest solutions here is to combine different publication formats. So, along with regular text posts, from time to time you can post graphic or video content, launch interactives, increasing user engagement. There are many, many options here. Just combine them, diluting the monotony of the publication and you can be sure that you are guaranteed likes.
3. Use additional parameters to analyze the effectiveness of your accounts. Do not limit yourself to the likes themselves. To understand how effectively your account works, it is also worth evaluating the engagement rate, conversion, in particular the number of applications that will go to your site from the same social networks or other accounts.
4. And in no case should you chase likes, especially unnatural ones. The fact that dozens of people will come to you literally out of nowhere at one point in time and put reactions to the latest publications will indicate that you are using social network bots and this will not provide you with the desired result. That is, gradually, step by step, create interesting content, and you will see that users will definitely appreciate your work, which will be reflected not only in the number of likes, but also in the increase in loyalty, engagement and other indicators, which can rightfully be called one of the most important when working with such platforms.

And how to count likes?

Now that you know what likes are, what impact they can have on business, how important they are as a tool of social proof, let's move on to such a question as a like counter. In particular, how to connect it to your accounts and increase the effectiveness of reactions, and use it as social proof.

It will not be difficult to do this work. It will be enough to simply:

1. Add a like counter to your pages through your personal account.
2. Connect the display of photos from customer profiles, which will indicate the reality of the numbers. Research shows that showing likes will work more effectively if people are convinced that they are not dealing with a scam.
3. Post a series of profile materials of those products that will allow you to collect the most indicative reactions from users and will ultimately be able to attract organic traffic for key queries coming from search engines.
4. Be sure to add a form for consent to the processing of personal data of users. Without their permission, you will not be able to use personal information, including their reactions to your publications.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated about it. The whole secret of success is hidden in high-quality content and regular work on it. Do not even waste time and effort on any scams, whose actions can harm your account, arouse suspicion of dishonest actions.

Let's sum it up

As you can see, likes are not just a trivial click on certain buttons under a post. This is a truly powerful tool that bloggers, Internet marketers, SMM specialists and all those who work with social networks, messengers, video hosting or other similar platforms can use in their daily work. Follow them, analyze them, draw conclusions that will help improve the efficiency of your business as a whole.

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