Note: This was featured as part of our Web Wednesday segment on Charleston’s 105.5 The Bridge with Box in the Morning. You can catch us every Wednesday morning at 8:20 am ET for your dose of social media & digital marketing news. You can listen to the segment below:
Social media algorithms are what all social media platforms run on, and they’re the change agents behind the evolution of the social platforms — for better or for worse. Essentially, algorithms are the reason that Facebook is constantly changing what its users are able to see in their news feeds.
If you are going to take advantage of social media for business purposes, it’s vital that you understand what algorithms mean for you. And as a general consumer, it’s interesting to understand why you see certain things … and why you may never see others.
1. Algorithms’ goals are to show YOU the user the content you care about most.
Algorithms are not bad guys. Although they get a lot of flak because right now Facebook Page reach is less than 6%, they really have a good goal in mind. And that is to put the content that its users want to see front and center in their news feed.
2. Algorithms look at several different things to determine if someone sees your post.
Here are just a few of the things that an algorithm is going to analyze for each post:
- How often have you interacted with this type of post?
- How often have you and everyone else hidden this type of post?
- The level of engagement that page and post has received.
- The performance of each post among users that have already viewed it.
The answers determine if you, or others, are going to see a particular post on social media.
3. Social sites show your content to a sample group and they determine the fate of your post.
The first five minutes of your social media post is so incredibly important, because that is the time frame that algorithms are using to see if people interact with your post. If you get engagement in the first 5 minutes of when you post a social media post, you will receive exponentially MORE reach. Your post will move from the initial sample to more and more people, so long as they are engaging with your post. This is why it’s so important to focus on engagement when creating your social media content.
For more information on the social media algorithms and how to get your business to the top, call TMC at (800) 759-7996 or fill out our free consultation form.
