Why Am I Not Getting Likes on Instagram?

We hope to get interactions (likes and comments) when we post on Instagram.

You’d expect the more followers you have, the more likes you’ll get.

That is not always the case, as the number of likes sometimes doesn’t match the number of followers.

You start to wonder, “Why am I not getting likes on Instagram?”

Whether you are running a personal account or a business brand doesn’t matter. It is difficult not to tie your social worth with the number of likes and comments you get.

In this post, we will discuss the possible reasons why you aren’t getting likes on Instagram and how to reverse your situation. Are you ready to dive in? Let’s go!

Why You Are Not Getting Likes on Instagram

There can be many reasons why you are not getting likes on Instagram.

We’ll discuss the most common ones below.

Reason #1: You Have Many Ghost Followers

Ghost followers are those followers who never interact with your posts.

They neither like nor drop comments under your post. The most interaction they have with your account is following you.

They are the primary reason you aren’t getting the likes you expect. When you have many ghost followers, they might boost your follower count but harm your engagement rate.

Suppose you have around 2000 followers but get only 150 – 200 likes on your posts. In that case, only 7.5% to 10% of your followers are active. The remaining 90% to 92.5% of followers are ghosts.

Reason #2: Your Followers Are Uninterested in Your Content

Another likely reason your posts aren’t getting likes is that your followers have no interest. They do not appreciate the kind of content you share.

This is more common with business accounts because their posts are usually about their products and services.

Their followers may get bored after a few posts because there’s nothing new to see. Therefore, they do not like the post because they do not appreciate the content.

People are generally more inclined to interact with personal pages.

So if you run a business account and notice a decline in the number of likes your post gets, this might be the reason. Some might even go as far as unfollowing you.

Reason #3: Your Captions Are Unengaging

When an Instagram user comes across your post, your caption is one of the first things they notice about your posts.

How captivating and engaging is it?

If your followers find value in your content, they will engage with it. Likewise, if your captions are interesting, they will spend more time engaging with the post.

When adding captions to your posts, you might want to include some things to make captions more interesting and engaging:

• Ask questions that demand responses from your followers or anyone who comes across it.
• Be creative with your words.
• Include interesting emojis that will quickly grab a person’s attention.

One more thing! When adding captions to your posts, avoid lengthy captions.

When your caption drags on, your followers might lose interest and quickly move on to the next post. Remember that not everyone loves to read longer than a few seconds.

Reason #4: Inconsistency

How consistent are you in putting up content on your post?

If you are inconsistent, it shouldn’t surprise you that you’re getting only a handful of likes. What were you expecting?

It is easy to forget that an account exists when you don’t come across their post for a while.

Remember the saying, “Out of sight is out of mind”? It could contribute to your posts getting fewer likes than you would love.

To prevent this from occurring, you should be intentional about consistently putting up posts.

You can start by posting at least once a day, just to remind your followers that you’re still very much around and they don’t disconnect from your account.

Once you get into this pattern, try to avoid unnecessary long breaks.

Reason #5: Your Followers Have Too Many Posts on Their Feed

This is most likely to happen if your followers follow many people.

A high number of followers equates to lots of posts on your feed. So chances that your posts are getting drowned in the ocean of other posts are high. Hence, your post will lose a couple of likes.

Keeping up with liking posts on your feed can be tiring. It’s just unfortunate that your post might be the one they’re too tired to hit the like button on. Or your post might be one of the least interesting posts on their feed.

If you check any of your followers’ accounts, and they follow over a thousand people, they will come across many posts on their feed.

But if they mute several accounts or most of the accounts they follow are inactive, they won’t have that many posts to engage with on their feed.

Reason #6: Low-Quality Pictures and Videos

A possible reason your posts aren’t getting likes could be the bad quality of your pictures and videos. They are probably not as good as the other posts your followers come across on their feeds.

The output will be substandard when you take pictures using inadequate editing tools or make videos with poor lighting.

Suppose you want to get pictures and videos of better quality and even professional standards.

In that case, you should have proper lighting when shooting and use standard picture and video editing tools other than the available Instagram edits.

Reason #7: You’ve Been Shadowbanned

When your account is shadowbanned, your posts are prevented from being displayed to people.

Instagram limits the number of people a user’s post reaches, making them less visible to new people. This implies your posts won’t be displayed in the explore pages and hashtag search results.

Simply put, a shadowban is a temporary ban on an account when the account violates Instagram guidelines.

You’ve most likely been shadowbanned if you notice a drastic decrease in engagement on your latest posts. But if just one or two of your posts has fewer likes than the others, you are safe; you haven’t been shadowbanned.

If you suspect you’ve been shadowbanned and want to confirm, follow the steps below:

1. Create another Instagram account.
2. Upload a post on your main account and add a unique hashtag.
3. Use your new account to search for the unique hashtag you used in your post.
4. If the post shows up under “Recent” hashtag results, your account hasn’t been shadowbanned.

Reason #8: You Are Using Hashtags Wrongly

Hashtags help you reach a larger audience. However, not a lot of people use it correctly.

Using overly saturated hashtags won’t help your post. Maybe you’ll get a few more likes.

Using the wrong hashtags would only cause you to miss out on engagements on your posts.

To properly utilize hashtags and gain more likes, you must use hashtags specific to a niche or specially designed to attract likes.

To get the most likes using hashtags, you have to find and use the right hashtags by searching for a common hashtag on Instagram and going to the ‘Recent’ section.

Look for a post with many likes and copy the hashtags you see on the post. You should get the best result by employing this strategy.

Conclusion

Getting few likes on Instagram or having the number of likes on your post drop drastically can be frustrating and saddening.

We understand that; that’s why we took our time to explain the possible reason for your posts getting few likes.

The fewer likes you get on your post could result from one or several factors we mentioned.

Regardless of the cause, the problem can be solved.

All you need to do is follow our tips and dedicate time to specific parts of your account.