Boost Your Instagram Game: Comparing Likes vs Free Likes for Maximum Engagement
David Morey 
The types of Instagram likes you are receiving on your posts can make a big difference in engagement, content visibility, and account or brand credibility. When you find the best ways to increase likes on your Instagram post, you’ll find so many tips and tricks including implementing organic growth strategies and/or getting free likes from third-party service providers. In this post, you will understand the major differences between them with their respective pros and cons.
What are organic likes on Instagram?
Organic or real likes are highly prioritized by Instagram’s algorithm and users because they come directly from genuine users. Since they are authentic likes, they indicate the genuine interest and engagement of people with your content.
Pros
● Improve credibility: Brands, influencers, or creators who increase their likes count organically are known to develop audience trust and strengthen positive reputation. It shows that your content is related to the needs and interests of the potential audience. When viewers find lots of real likes on your posts, they find it to be worth considering and interesting.
● Increasing, genuine engagement for the long-term: Since real likes come from users who are truly interested in your post, brand, or offerings right from their heart, there will be no decrease in the engagement rate. They are loyal followers who will regularly engage with your Instagram channel and posts to discover more.
● Cost-effective and sustainable solution: To receive likes from genuine users, you don’t necessarily require investing lots of amounts to promote your content. Instead, you just need to understand your audience, create different types of quality content on trending and relevant topics, add popular hashtags and encouraging captions, tag other creators, and do regular analysis. Since you don’t need to pay anything for these strategies, you can implement them for longer durations with no worries about investment.
● Increase chances of Instagram influencer marketing: Brands and influencers want to collaborate with creators whose post constantly receives increasing engagement. Receiving likes from genuine users indicates that you have a dedicated following and partnering with your account will not affect the credibility of both parties.
● Real, updated analytics: Organic likes increase natural growth which the users and the algorithm always support. Real growth enables more reliable and updated analytic data, allowing you to make risk-free and informed investment decisions.
Cons
● Requires time: Instagram accounts that are just starting will find it difficult to drive viewers and encourage them to like their posts. It is hard to get thousands of likes in the first few weeks, months, and sometimes years.
● Constant effort: Receiving organic likes requires staying updated with Instagram’s new trends and implementing strategies regularly to boost engagement. Moreover, you need to measure the metrics at regular intervals to better adjust your strategies.
● No guaranteed likes: The competition among content creators is increasing rapidly on Instagram with lots of new accounts being created on this platform. Since users are seeing so many posts on their feeds, you can’t rest assured that they will like your content rather than others.
What do you mean by free likes on Instagram?
Free likes are not received naturally as they are either generated by bots/computer programs or come from 3rd-party social media service providers. They are received by paying some amount or exchanging likes with other users.
Pros
● Save time and effort: You can save a lot of time and effort with artificial likes while quickly increasing your likes count. You can use that time to convert your Instagram account into a revenue-generating channel.
● Guaranteed likes: Getting free likes provide the assurance that you will surely get the desired number of likes on a required post within a specified duration.
● Create a sense of credibility: Receiving a large number of likes on your post can boost trustworthiness and credibility among the audience you are trying to reach.
● Proof of quality and popularity: A large number of likes can increase the popularity of your post among viewers because people generally relate likes with content quality and popularity.
● Higher visibility: When the algorithm finds a higher number of likes on a post, it might increase the chances of appearing on users’ feeds and the Explore page, driving more viewers.
Cons
● No meaningful engagement: Instagram free likes can increase the likes count on your post but it cannot generate valuable engagement from the audience you want to reach.
● Monitoring Instagram growth is challenging: Since these likes distort engagement metrics, monitoring the growth becomes challenging. It is difficult to determine which post is performing well among the audience and how to improve the organic growth strategy.
● Look spammy: Free likes when coming from phony Instagram accounts can look spammy to the algorithm and harm the credibility of your account. The algorithm can easily identify the mismatch in metrics if your post receives fake likes but no other follower activity.
● Risk of permanently losing your Instagram account: As mentioned in the above point, the algorithm considers fake like spammy, it can delete your account permanently or suspend it to avoid fake engagement. Instagram doesn’t allow users to get likes from unknown sources.
● Not cost-effective: When a fast-evolving algorithm detects any inauthentic activity on your account, you can get your account banned permanently no matter how much amount you have invested to get those likes. If you don’t do proper research about a service provider, artificial likes can prove highly costly for you.
Conclusion
Likes on Instagram posts are important to improve content’s visibility, popularity, engagement level, and credibility. Keeping the optimum balance of free and real likes authentically can help you get the trust of users and maximize engagement on your Instagram account. So, if you are thinking about considering free likes, be sure to focus on genuine likes also to avoid the potential risk and ensure safe growth on Instagram. Consider legitimate strategies, such as high-quality and engaging content, relevant hashtags, consistent posting, user-generated content, interaction with followers, and regular monitoring.
