People never talked about fighting the algorithm in the early days of social media.
It was fresh. It was exciting. There were no complaints, unless I’m seeing things retrospectively through rose tinted spectacles.
In the early days of social media from Myspace and Facebook we all were amazed at the opportunities.
And now in 2024 all I see is people complaining about their posts not been seen; not getting past the 200-300 views mark on TikTok and “It must be the social media algorithm”
This blog looks at 15 Years of Cracking Social Media Algorithms: The Truth About Why Your Posts Aren’t Being Seen
WHAT IS A SOCIAL MEDIA ALGORITHM?
A social media algorithm is a set of rules and calculations that social media platforms use to decide what content to show users.
It helps determine which posts appear at the top of your feed and which ones you might never see. These algorithms consider things like what you’ve liked in the past, who you’re friends / connected with, how popular a post is, and even how recently it was posted.
The goal is to show you content you’re most likely to enjoy and engage with, making your time on the platform more enjoyable.
The more you enjoy the content, the more time you spend on a platform and the more money the platforms owners make.
POSTING LESS OFTEN = LESS VISIBILITY
You’ve cut your nose off to spite your face.
A few months ago, you noticed your posts weren’t performing as well as they used to, so you got the hump and saw it as an excuse to post less frequently
5 days a week has gone down to 2.
You used to schedule social media posts for whilst you were on holiday and now you have a digital detox for the 12 weeks of school holidays.
You’ve got to flex your social media muscles to keep them working.
Social Media Platforms generally reward those that turn up.
ENGAGING WITH OTHERS LESS OFTEN = LESS VISIBILITY
More people are posting and ghosting on social media.
We’ve spent the whole of this month talking about community on Instagram to re-engage people with the social side of social media.
The moment you stop commenting on other people’s content – you know, your customerS, potential customers, networking groups content – your reach and engagement on your own posts will drop.
And past research reveals it can impact your own content by as much as 30-40% drop in engagement and reach.
PEOPLE HAVE CHANGED PLATFORM PREFERENCES = LESS VISIBILITY
I should really ditch Twitter / X from a business perspective.
But I still love the platform. Nothing competes with it for national / world events.
The reasons I should ditch Twitter is 99% of my business contacts left the platform for either LinkedIn and Instagram.
Now I use both of those platforms every day and drive business from them every day. My 30 minutes a day on Twitter would be better used on other platforms.
But my old romantic view of Twitter being a force for good in the small business community is actually harming my business.
DORMANT SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS = LESS VISIBILITY
If you’ve been on social media for longer than 6 months, some of your followers will be dormant accounts.
It’s just a matter of Fact.
Businesses come and go. People come and go.
We know that despite having 70,000+ followers on social media some of those followers will have died, gone out of business, retired, stopped using a social media platform, set up an account and logged in once and never visited again, been hacked and can’t get access to their account.
One of the main reasons your total views of your posts will be lower is dormant accounts.
SATURATED MARKET AND MORE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS = LESS VISIBILITY
It’s harder to stand out on social media now because of the sheer number of users.
I’ve been an early adopter of all the social media platforms and it’s always easier to get noticed in the formative years.
The big 4 platforms of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn have between 1 billion and 3 billion+ users.
Just in sheer numbers it’s harder to get seen in the feed as there’s more noise.
POOR CONTENT = LESS VISIBILITY
The audience decides what makes good content.
They vote for good content with likes, comments and shares.
They ignore what they consider to be poor content.
You don’t have to spend thousands on content, but you do have to understand what your audience like, what makes your content relatable and engaging and what brings the audience coming back for more.
If you post content over a period of time the algorithms will start to demote your posts.
NOT USING NEW FEATURES = LESS VISIBILITY
I’ll be honest with you – I hate having to produce Instagram reels and short form video content.
I much preferred the days where you could post one strong image on social media and be seen.
But the reality is times more on social media platforms prioritise the newer features on the feed.
The reality is by producing more reels my accounts reached have gone up by 85% and accounts engaged by 45% (and it was already a high bar)
Over on TikTok our short form video views have gone up by 424% by changing the sort of video content we do.
If you see a new feature on social media play with it. See how you make that feature fit in with your brand and watch your posts get seen by more people.
POSTING THE SAME CONTENT ACROSS ALL PLATFORMS = LESS VISIBILITY
I know you’re time poor and it’s easy to just blast the same content across every platforms.
But where possible adapt it.
For instance, the post we published on Facebook this morning was an adapted post from LinkedIn.
5-line intro change for Facebook and then 10 lines copied and pasted from our LinkedIn post.
A small change but it made all the difference to how it performed.
A simple copywriting change, image change or video edit can make a huge difference to how the content performs on each platform.
If you want to be more visible read our blog 7 Easy Ways To Increase Your Visibility on Social Media which focuses on …
- Post Consistently
- Engage With Others
- Leverage Others Audiences / Micro-Influencers
- Produce Long Form Content
- Employee Advocacy
- Partnerships
- Competitions
Read it here
NEED HELP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Want more visibility?
Chat to us about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation
We can chat about whether online or Face 2 Face is better for you
We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you
Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services
We offer Social Media Training on
* LinkedIn
* Instagram
* Facebook
* Twitter
* TikTok
* Blogging
We can do this
* 121
* Corporate Workshops
* Group Workshops
* Face to Face or Via Zoom / Skype
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
