Hacking The Algorithm for Social Media

In the world of digital marketing, social media has become an essential tool that businesses can and should use to market to their audience as well as establish a personality for their brand.

Many social media platforms boost engagement between businesses and audiences because it allows for a less formal tone, and it is a means of two-way communication, meaning that customers can give their feedback and companies can interact with them directly.

So, when trying to understand the algorithm of social media platforms, it is important to understand how our news feeds work. It all boils down to user behaviour. User behaviour is analysed so that the content that appears on your feed is most relevant to your personal likes or interests.

So how is this user behaviour determined?

  • Engagement

Whenever people like, save or repost anything on social media, we call this engagement. These platforms collect data of the posts that users engage with regularly, so that overtime it can predict what content is most likely relevant to you, hence your news feeds. Whenever you open up your social media applications, generally your news feed is a compilation of content that interests you or that the algorithm has predicted will interest you.

  • Time Spent

Engagement is important because that means that users are spending time on these platforms. And, that means that users are more likely to come across certain adds, click on them and perhaps even purchase something.

Social media algorithms do vary from platforms to platform and so, to understand them, it is easier to look at each platform individually.

1. Facebook

After many complaints from users, Facebook has updated their algorithm over and over again to suit the needs of their audience. So, in 2015 Facebook began prioritizing posts of friends instead of just news. Meaning, that when people logged on to their accounts, posts from their friends would pop up first.

What does this mean for businesses?

If you are advertising on Facebook, it is essential to have meaningful customer engagement. Especially if you are looking for strong responses to unpaid advertising. Content to be interesting to your audience and also be posted regularly.

Paid advertising is ranked differently but engagement is still important. That means you should try encouraging your users to like, comment, even follow links to your website. Posting live videos because this requires more engagement and so the algorithm will favour this. Facebook stories are not included in the algorithm and so using them could be an advantage.

2. Instagram

Instagram works similarly to Facebook, its parent company. It used to prioritize recency but now it is all about relevance. Instagram’s algorithm works according to these factors: interests, frequency of app usage, who you follow, recency of posts published, relationship between people sharing posts, time spent on the app.

This means that brands should focus again on relevancy and consistency when it comes to posting. But also, reels have become the newest feature and a great way to create engagement. By posting short videos on reels, your brand will be able to reach an even larger audience.

3. Twitter

Twitters timeline was made up of all the recent tweets by accounts you follow arranged in chronological order. With this method in place, it is clear how users were missing possibly the best tweet from their friends or family, especially in the case of following influencers who tweet every hour.

Twitter heard these complaints and got to work on making some changes. Now, they’ve introduced a ‘while you were away’ feature as well as a ‘best tweets’ feature.

This means that today, Twitter is prioritizing relevance, activity, media type such as GIF of photos and lastly recency. This means that consistency is essential as well as taking note of time and day when posting. Lastly, encourage engagement, post content that provoke thought so that people will comment, like or retweet.

4. LinkedIn

You might have read our previous blog on how LinkedIn is not simply about networking anymore, but also a great tool for marketing! So, here’s a summery breaking down the algorithm.

LinkedIn is recognized as the leader in B2B marketing. Why? Because this platform connects people to pages and profiles in their niche. This means that relevance is key. LinkedIn does not appreciate blatant marketing, rather it should be used as a tool to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

This means that content should be insightful and create discussion, especially in your comment section. Hashtags should also be used. Your employees should be encouraged to share business posts to their network to get a higher engagement reach. And lastly, make use of LinkedIn’s paid advertising feature.

5. TikTok

The fairly new social media app that has become quite popular with many people is the new place to be. The best part about this platform is that any video can blow up, as long as the content interest’s people. That means that even if your account has only five followers, if you post one video that is good, you stand a chance to gain a lot of views, follows and likes overnight.

That means that posting regularly is important and also using hashtags to categorize your video. Making use of the popular or trending songs/sounds is also another way to ensure your videos reach people’s fyp (for you page) and this way you also stand a chance to grow your channel organically. And, TikTok also has paid advertising options in the form of influencer marketing, in feed ads, video ads, and the like.

As always, these algorithms are always changing and updating to become as efficient as possible, so keeping yourself informed on any new updates is essential when planning your marketing strategies. But, if that sounds like too much of a challenge, then we can help you out there!

Here at Haystack we strive to get your ads at the very top. So, get in touch today!

Share this

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *