What Is a Social Media Algorithm?
What is a Social Media Algorithm?
A social media algorithm is essentially a set of rules that the social media digital platform creates behind the scenes to shape the user’s experience.
Put simply, an algorithm is automated to decide which social media digital posts make it to the top of your feed, and which don’t.
In most cases the top factors in these algorithms are engagement (ie. the amount of interaction a post gets). Understanding what generates that engagement is the key to maximizing reach and response.
How Algorithms Work Across Popular Social Media Platforms:
Facebook has stated that in order to promote its transparency they will help users understand their algorithm through ranking signals. Ranking signals is data that has been accumulated by the bots to understand a user’s past behavior. There are three major ranking signals that Facebook focuses on: who the users are interacting with, the types of posts they are interacting with, and how popular the post is.
With these ranking signals, Facebook will then use the data to create a feed based on what the user is most likely to enjoy.
First, Twitter algorithms will give you both real-time content and content picked out by the algorithm. Secondly, the algorithm can be disabled from your feed if you wish.
A blog post by twitter highlighted the main ranking signals to keep in mind when producing your content:
How recent is your post: How long ago was this post published? Twitter will favour recent posts over older posts.
Engagement: How many likes, comments, clicks, retweets, favorites and impressions your tweet has received. The algorithm will favour the ones with higher engagement.
Rich Media: The different types of media used in your content. Algorithms like different ways of engagement.
Activity: How active your marketing account is and how many followers you have. Algorithms want to know that the account is active and engaged on the platform.
Instagram will look at:
Interest: Instagram will base your interests off who you follow. And what content you have liked and favoured more over the others. Machine learning will understand a user’s past behavior and make sure to fill their feed with the right content in mind.
Relationship: Instagram will make sure to always prioritize posts that help you maintain strong relationships with friends and family. So the algorithm will use past behavioral data to show you who you have interacted with the most.
Frequency: If you are someone that is constantly on Instagram your feed might feel chronological. As it will order the information according to your last visit. Whereas if you are absent from the app, it will show you what they think you will like according to your past behaviour.
There are many more factors in the algorithm that will influence a user’s feed, but as you can see most are based on past behaviour.
Tik Tok
Tik Tok has been rather transparent and provided information as to how their algorithm ranks the 15-second videos. Much like other social media channels it creates a personalised feed based on a user’s likes, comments and what they mark as not interested. Tik Tok also gives you an opportunity to select some interests in order to make sure they are serving you the right content.
One important thing to keep in mind is that Tik Tok does not take into account a profile’s reputation. For instance, even if they have a high follower count and multiple people have previewed the clips, it will not affect the placement it gets on your feed.
Beat The Algorithms
Now that you have a little bit more information on algorithms you can focus on creating content that will be “catchy” to your consumer!