To get more likes on Instagram in 2026, fix the opening of every post and get it to your existing followers fast. Share it to your Story within minutes and publish at the hour Insights shows them online. Below is a way to check whether your likes are low at all, then the tactics that still move the number. It ends with a straight section on buying likes, which is what I sell.
Updated October 2026.
How many likes is normal for your follower count?
Normal is whatever your own last ten posts average. None of the guides ranking for this search gives a benchmark by follower tier. The one figure that does get quoted comes from Hootsuite's guide, citing Statista: the average post received 513 likes in 2024, with 19 saves and 15 comments. A hobby account and a celebrity both sit inside that average, so it can't tell you whether yours is low.
Build your own. Open your last ten posts and drop the best and the worst. Average the remaining eight and divide by your follower count. That is your like rate. Under a few hundred followers the number will feel small, and that's expected. At that size you have a distribution problem before a content problem, and our guide on getting your first 100 followers is the better place to start.
What makes people like a post in 2026?
People like a post when it stops their thumb in the first few seconds and then gives them something worth a tap. A guest listicle on Vocal puts the hook window at three seconds, and nobody has measured it. Hootsuite quotes Adam Mosseri naming the top three ranking signals as watch time, likes and sends. He was talking about Reels. I'd assume the same order for feed posts, but he didn't say it. Hidden like counts change none of this. You still see the count on your own posts, and likes stay a ranking signal either way.
The hook is the part you can fix today. For a Reel that means the first frame plus the first line of on screen text. A carousel lives or dies on slide one, which has to make the swipe feel necessary. With a single image it's the crop and the first line of the caption, which is all that shows before the more button.
Which post format gets the most likes?
Carousels tend to collect the most likes per viewer and Reels bring the most reach. Single images still work when the photo itself is the product. Hootsuite says its Q4 2024 data showed carousels outperforming Reels by 26% on engagement. No sample size or method was published.
The reason carousels do well for likes is mechanical. A swipe is a small commitment, and after two swipes someone has spent enough time to feel like tapping the heart. Reels run the other way. Viewers arrive from Explore or the Reels tab and most don't follow you. Plenty watch to the end and move on without liking, which is the "views but no likes" pattern people ask about. On Reels that pattern is normal, and the number to watch is likes against your own past Reels.
When is the best time to post on Instagram for likes?
The best time to post is when your own followers are active, and Instagram Insights shows that by hour and by day. The published best time tables contradict each other, and none of them was built from your followers.
| Source | Best time it claims |
|---|---|
| Hootsuite (publisher guide) | 1 to 3 PM on Sundays and 7 to 9 PM on Mondays |
| wikiHow (publisher guide) | Wednesday around 11 AM; Sunday peak at 7 PM |
| Post Planner (25 tip list) | Friday at 8 AM by some accounts, Monday at 3 PM by others, then tells you to check your own analytics |
| Vocal (guest listicle, ends on a seller link) | 8 to 10 AM, 12 to 2 PM and 6 to 8 PM, no time zone given |
Open the active times chart in Insights and pick the hour before your peak, so the post is already warm when people arrive. Hold that slot across several posts before you judge it.
How do you get likes fast after posting?
Story shares and a warm account
Early likes come from people who already follow you, so the job in the first hour is to put the post in front of them by every route you have. Share it to your Story straight away with a sticker or a line of text that gives a reason to tap through. Send it to Close Friends if you keep that list. Before you post, clear your DMs and reply to comments. The account is already active when the post lands, and the people you spoke to are the ones most likely to see it first.
Collab posts and hashtags
Collab posts are the multiplier most people skip. The same post can sit on up to three profiles, by Hootsuite's count, and each audience sees it as a native post. Hashtags still help discovery at low volume. Three to five per post is the range Hootsuite and wikiHow both give. Captions are searchable now, so write the words a person would type into the search bar.
Does replying to comments get you more likes?
Replying to the first comments keeps the post alive during the hours it's still being tested. It costs nothing. A reply pulls the commenter back, often with a like, and the thread gives late arrivals something to read. Your replies count in the post's comment total, so the engagement rate you read afterwards includes your own typing.
Away from your own posts, the 5 3 1 habit is the outreach that still returns likes: five likes and three comments a day inside your niche, plus one DM. Keep the comments about the post in front of you. A string of "great shot" comments reads as a bot to the account owner and to Instagram alike, and repeated bot patterns are what get accounts penalized.
Which Instagram likes tips are dead in 2026?
Most of these come from Post Planner's 25 tip list, which sits in the top five for this search and still runs studies from around 2013 with no citation and no year.
- Thirty hashtags. Post Planner says Instagram allows 30 and that Instagram recommends 3 to 5, and still tells you to use as many as possible.
- No filters and blue tones only. The same page tells you to avoid yellow, orange and pink in favor of grays, blues and greens, and admits "your guess is as good as ours as to why". Its edgy, high contrast photo tip is from the same era.
- The word "like" in the caption. Nobody has produced the study behind the 89% figure, and whatever it echoes predates Reels.
- Like for like pods and follow trains. Those likes come from accounts that never watch or save, which teaches the ranking system your post holds nobody's attention. Instagram has been identifying accounts that buy fake likes since at least 2018, by Hootsuite's account, and a pod produces the same pattern by hand.
What should you do in the first 60 minutes after posting?
- Before you publish, reply to comments and DMs so the account is active.
- Post at the hour your Insights show followers arriving.
- Share to your Story inside the first few minutes, with a reason to tap.
- Send it to Close Friends and to two or three people who will care about it.
- Reply to every comment for the first hour, with a question where one fits.
- At the hour mark, compare likes with your baseline. If it's well under, look at the hook and the first slide.
If a post has nothing after an hour, leave it up. Deleting throws away the slow burn some posts get from saves and shares over the following days. Publish the next one on schedule.
Does buying Instagram likes help you get more likes?
Buying likes fills the empty post look and keeps your like to follower ratio believable while the organic tactics above catch up. A bought like is social proof, not distribution. It won't fix a weak hook, and it can't create the sends or watch time that Mosseri listed alongside likes for Reels. It also sits outside Instagram's rules on artificial engagement. The accounts that get penalized are the ones running obvious bot patterns, where "1k likes in minutes" is the phrase forum users reach for. That risk never reaches zero, and the two things a seller can do about it are pace the delivery and size the order to the account.
How delivery works at ExpressFollowers
You give us the post link or your username and nothing else. We never ask for a password. The likes start within minutes and come in at a natural pace, the way a post picks them up on its own. If three posts all look thin you can split one order across them. If you have never bought before, take the 10 pack at $1.05, put it on one post and watch how it lands before you decide between 100 for $1.45 and 1,000 for $6.99. Order near your baseline or a modest step above it. The order I'd talk someone out of is 1,000 likes on a post from an account whose last ten averaged 40. The split option and the 10 pack exist so nobody has to place it. Every likes package carries a 30 day refill. All of them are on the buy Instagram likes page, with a separate Reels likes option for video, where the like to view ratio is what people read.
Buying is only one route, and if that is on your mind, read Is It Safe to Buy Instagram Likes? What Can Happen before you spend anything.
Run the baseline check tonight, then change one thing on your next post and hold it for two weeks before you read the numbers. If the opening and the posting time are both right and the count stays flat, the audience is the problem, and the followers guide linked above is the next read.
Frequently Asked Questions
Runs English-language customer support at ExpressFollowers, handling everything from order tracking to custom package requests. Joined the team at launch and is known for fast, accurate first responses.
