By now you know that all of the major social media platforms operate off of algorithms designed to determine what fans want to see more of. These algorithms judge posts and content based on how valuable it deems what you are putting out to your fans and then decides which posts to show to which people and in what order.
While all of the social platforms are pretty tight lipped about how the algorithms work, we do know a few things:
1.) They rank texts posts the lowest, then photos, followed by video, and live video is ranked the highest.
This is because less people react to text posts. They can easily digest a photo as they are scrolling through their feed and don’t have to stop to look at it. Video requires people to watch about three seconds of it to determine if it’s something they want to see, and they tend to invest even more time watching a live broadcast to determine if it’s worth their time.
2.) Rankings are based on engagement.
This means the more likes, comments, reactions, and shares a post gets, the higher it is ranked (because obviously more people like it *wink*) Facebook has also said reactions (those little smiley/angry face emojis) are rated higher than likes are rated.
3.) Engagement is determined in a certain time frame.
While we don’t know what this time period is, we assume it’s pretty quick. How many interactions did a post get in the first hour? Or maybe it’s minutes…we don’t really know. We do know it’s essential to create content that will get people to interact with it in the form of likes, comments, reactions, and shares, to get noticed by the algorithm.
Pro tip: your engagement is not determined by the number of followers you have, but by the percentage of them that engage with you. For example, if you have 100 fans and only 10 of them interact, that’s a low engagement rate. If you have 100 fans and 100 of them interact with you, that’s a high engagement rate. If you have 100 fans and they share your post and now 30 of their outside friends interact with you, bringing you up to 130%, that’s an even higher engagement rate. So it doesn’t matter how many fans you have now, it matters how many people are engaging with you (a.k.a when people brag that they have a ton of followers, that could actually be hurting their accounts if those followers aren’t all interacting with them)
So how do you survive the algorithms?
Simply put, you have to create engaging content that works with the algorithms. Video is ranked higher, so use a lot of video. Live video is ranked highest, so commit to doing live broadcasts. Texts posts are ranked low, so avoid these when at all possible.
Post when you know people are online. The more people that see it right away and engage, the better.
Learn how much content your fans want to see from you and then commit to posting that often, wether it’s once a day, three times a day, or every other day. (Pro tip: you should be posting at least once a day, six days a week…you’re fans are worth investing that time in)
Track what you are posting and how well it is doing. When you see a certain type of post getting more engagement, keep posting that type of content. Cut out content that isn’t getting engagement because that’s a waste of your time.
And more than anything *insert shameless plug* hang out with me at Reading Transforms because I actually study these things and track them and I flat out tell you what to specifically post as an author. Remember, I have a 500-700% engagement rate on Instagram while most authors sit around 60% because I study the algorithms and adapt.
Have questions? Hit up the comments!
Stay inspired,
-K.M.