Today’s most popular social networks all have algorithms that aim to balance content on your feed by providing you with a variety of posts from different pages, groups and people. This is done in an effort to create a better user experience. The only problem with this is that these social media algorithms constantly change, which makes it hard for business owners to keep up and ultimately get noticed.
That’s why we’ve created a short guide on how current algorithms work for all the major social platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) in an effort to solve this problem.
What is a social media algorithm?
A social media algorithm consists of a set of rules that help to determine what users want and (just as important) don’t want to see on their feeds. Each person is assigned a unique set of parameters which results in no two people seeing the same social media feed, ever. Social media algorithms are used as a way of sorting posts in the newsfeed based on relevancy instead of in the order they are published.
Fun fact! Before the switch to algorithms, most social media feeds displayed posts in reverse chronological order.
Facebook’s algorithm
Facebook’s goal with its latest algorithm has been to personalise the user experience by prioritizing posts most valuable and meaningful to an individual over the long term. To give users the best possible experience, a team of engineers constantly study user’s behaviour to see which kind of content each user is most interested in.
How does it work?
Over the years Facebook has consistently mentioned 4 main ranking signals as being most important when it comes to how high up in the news feed a post appears. It also takes into account things like relevancy score, the prioritisation of friends, time spent on a post and video engagement.
4 ranking signals
- Relationship: Who a user typically interacts with. This could be from a person, business, news source or public figure that the user often engages with.
- Content-type: The type of media in the post (eg, video, link, image, etc.) and which one the user interacts with the most.
- Popularity: How many engagements the post gets and how people are reacting to it (especially friends). Are they sharing it, commenting on it, ignoring it or expressing dissatisfaction via the angry face emoji?
- Recency: Newer posts are shown first.
Relevancy score
When choosing posts for user’s news feeds, Facebook’s algorithm can predict certain outcomes like whether or not the user will engage with the post in a negative or positive way with a certain amount of confidence. This prediction is then reduced to a single number called a relevancy score which is specific to both the user and the post.
Once assigned a relevancy score, the post is ranked and sorted according to that score. The social media algorithm then determines the order in which the post will appear, with highly relevant posts appearing first based on the likelihood that users will react and engage the most with that particular post.
Ads are also given relevancy scores, with Facebook showing users ads that it thinks will matter most to them in an effort to create a better user experience. Businesses that pay for these ads also benefit from the relevancy score algorithm because the ads end up being shown to their ideal target market, which can help to turn users into leads.
‘See First’ feature
Through studies and surveys, Facebook found that many users were concerned about missing important updates from friends and family they cared about the most. So in response, they rolled out the ‘See First’ feature in 2015 which prioritised posts from certain friends over others. This was done in an effort to give users more control over their newsfeeds and began in April when Facebook gave priority to friends and family over pages and ads.
The ‘See First’ feature was unique in that it allowed users to handpick which of their friends and family they wanted to see first and hear from the most in their newsfeeds.
Amount of time spent on a post
Facebook then began analysing the amount of time users would spend on a particular post and found that “dwell time” (the act of spending a lot more time on a certain post compared to other posts) was a more accurate way to determine whether or not a particular piece of content was impactful, reached its target audience, or had tangible business results, regardless of engagements or clicks.
It was also decided that the longer a user spent time on a post, the more likely it would be shown to their friends in the newsfeed.
Instagram’s algorithm
Instagram’s algorithm is very similar to Facebook’s in that it uses machine learning to take into account 6 main factors when determining what sort of content the user would appreciate the most. These 6 factors, according to TechCrunch are:
- Interest: A prediction Instagram makes about how interested the user will be in a particular post.
- Frequency: How often Instagram is opened by the user. The social media algorithm will try and show the user the best posts for them since their last visit.
- Following: The more people a user follows, the less likely they’ll be able to see everyone in their news feed.
- Recency: How recently the post was published. This impacts when the user sees a post in their news feed.
- Usage: How long the user spends on Instagram. The algorithm determines which posts to show if the user browses for a short time or a longer time.
- Relationship: Who shared the post. The user’s connection to them will be a significant factor in how often they see their content. This is influenced by tagged photos, engagement, and even how often the user direct messages them.
Instagram’s plan to remove likes
This one has been in the works for quite some time and is currently being tested in countries like Canada, Brazil, and Australia. The reason behind removing the like count (one of the most popular features on Instagram) is in an attempt to discourage bullying and peer pressure to post content that gets more and more likes and social approval from other young Instagrammers.
Twitter’s algorithm
Today’s Twitter home page and timeline consists of a stream of tweets from accounts that the user follows when they first log in. It used to be that a user’s timeline would include tweets from every single account they followed in chronological order. But analysts at Twitter found that users began to miss out on tweets from loved ones as they were not prioritised, similar to what was happening on Facebook at the time. So they made some changes that ended up making the social platform what it is today.
What Twitter changed
Engineers at Twitter have come up with two approaches to solve the user’s problem. The first is the “While you were away” feature and the next is the “Show me the best tweets first” feature. The “While you were away” feature attempts to rid users of FOMO (fear of missing out) by showing them a recap of the best tweets, determined by user engagement. While the “ Show me the best tweets first” feature lists content based on relevancy which is very similar to Facebook’s newsfeed.
Super follows
Something that might emerge on Twitter is an opportunity to subscribe to people’s tweets, known as Super follows. It’s a paid service that hasn’t been received very well by the Twitter community with the hashtag #RIPTwitter becoming a top-five trending topic as it was used thousands of times to reject the new feature. One Twitter users even went as far as to say, “I love y’all, but there’s no way I’m paying to read your tweets.”
Subscription services being integrated into a platform is nothing new and have been widely used on websites such as Patreon, Substack, Twitch and YouTube. So if Twitter does decide to implement this feature, odds are it wouldn’t disrupt the timeline’s mostly reverse-chronological order. It could however add one more section to your timeline if you are willing to pay for it.
Conclusion
The various social media algorithms favour content quality above all and filter out irrelevant and poor quality posts. Users ultimately determine what they would like to see and in response, the social media algorithms learn and adjust to their tastes. It’s our job as business owners to post content that’s interesting, entertaining, helpful, and relevant to our audiences. This means picking relevant topics, writing delightful copy, and posting eye-catching images and videos.
Now that you have an understanding of the above, your organic posts will have a better chance of getting shown to users. Use these learnings to continue to promote brand awareness by inspiring, delighting, and educating your audience.
If you require any assistance with your social media strategy, feel free to get in touch with us to find out more about how we can help you.
