Are you a business or blog owner? If so, popular social media accounts are integral to your success. In our current digital age, social media is the best way to grow your business or blog.
Social media is the perfect method to effectively reach a wide audience, gain mass attention, and scale your business.
However, if you’ve already tried to make social media accounts and gain an audience, you probably know that it’s much more difficult than it sounds.
Gaining popularity on social media requires an extensive number of factors. In other words, simply producing great content isn’t going to suffice.
Nevertheless, during our social media endeavors, we realized that the key to social media success is user engagement. But the question is how can you get more and more users to engage with your content?
The answer lies within social media algorithms. In addition to producing high-quality content, you need to manipulate and work with social media algorithms. But don’t worry, we got you covered.
In this article, we discuss the impact of common social media algorithms on engagement and how you can use them to your advantage.
What Are the 5 Most Common Social Media Algorithms?
Before we dive into how you can benefit from social media algorithms and how to use them to your advantage, it is necessary that you understand what common social media algorithms are.
Social media algorithms are similar to Google SEO, meaning you need to optimize for them in order to rank and gain attention.
These social media algorithms are applicable to most social media platforms; however, it is important to note that they may work slightly differently from platform to platform.
Below we also talk about each algorithm’s impact on engagement, so you can gain insight on them and potentially devise other strategies of your own.
Content Relevance
Content visibility is the algorithm that determines which content is visible to users in their feeds. Currently, platforms determine which content to show to a user based on their interests, preferences, and past behavior.
As a result, users are now presented with a curated selection of content that is more likely to be relevant to them.
This algorithm has changed from the past, when content was displayed on a page chronologically. In other words, users would likely see the latest content rather than content that would be most relevant to them.
Social media platforms realized that this negatively impacted user engagement.
Think about it yourself. Would you engage with a post that is boring but new or that is interesting? Your answer is likely the latter option, correct?
Therefore, now posts are shown based on how relevant they are to a user rather than by date.
However, this does not mean that platforms do not consider time at all. For instance, a post from a few months ago will likely not be shown to audiences because it is simply too old.
Personalization
One of the key ways by which social media algorithms impact user engagement is through personalization. The algorithm uses data about a user’s behavior, interests, and preferences to show them content that is more likely to be of interest to them.
Personalization can take many forms.
For example, the algorithm might prioritize content from accounts that a user has engaged with in the past, or it might show content related to topics that a user has shown an interest in.
Personalization is also based on factors such as the user’s location, language, or device. This allows people to experience things that are actually relatable to them.
Imagine scrolling through TikTok and you come across a video in a language you’ve never heard of that talks about a local event across the world. How much would you like that? I’m guessing not at all.
That’s why personalization is such an important social media algorithm.
Time Spent on the Platform
This algorithm calculates how long a user stays on the platform. Social media always aims to keep users on their app for as long as possible.
Therefore, this algorithm gives priority to creators that have proven that they can successfully retain people and prevent them from closing the app.
As a result, you need to create interesting content that induces people to watch at least the majority of your video.
We recommend doing this by adding music and catchy titles to your posts. Additionally, if you’re creating a video, make sure the video begins with offering something your audience wants.
Look at the video on this page, for example. Notice how they begin with music and offer the audience with 2 things they want: saving money and having fun.
How Do These Algorithms Impact Engagement?
When reading about these algorithms, did you notice something? They all work together to improve a user’s experience and show them content that they like.
By presenting users with relevant, personalized content, social media platforms are able to increase user engagement. When users see content that they find interesting, they are more likely to interact with it by liking, commenting, or sharing.
This, in turn, can lead to higher levels of engagement for the content creator and can increase the visibility of their content to other users.
Time spent on platforms contributes to engagement as well because if you can keep people glued to their screens, they are more likely to engage with the content rather than click away.
Ultimately, user engagement increases exponentially when content is interesting, relevant, and personalized to audiences.
How Can You Use These Algorithms to Your Advantage?
If you want your content to be more visible, you have to prove that your content is engaging and valuable. Remember, social media ranks content higher if it receives more engagement from users.
Therefore, when attempting to grow your social media following, you need to direct your focus on creating more engaging content. The best way to do this is by tailoring your content to the needs of your audience.
By tailoring your content to the needs of your audience, you effectively fulfill the requirements of all 3 algorithms discussed above: relevance, personalization, and interesting (time spent on platform).
You can do this in the following 2 steps.
Step One: Identify Your Audience
The first step is to identify who comprises your audience. Is it students? Singers? Astronomers? Technicians?
Figure out who your target audience is by determining who your content is most relevant and interesting to.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What kind of content do I produce?
- Who is this beneficial to?
- Why would people want to look at my content?
- Is my content only for local residents?
- What niche is my content in?
Once you answer these questions, you should have a pretty solid understanding of who your target audience comprises.
Furthermore, if you already have social media accounts with some following, regardless of how small it is, you should also identify them.
You can access this information through the platform’s creator tools. Every platform’s creator tools differ slightly, but they will all give you sufficient information to deduce the makeup of your existing audience.
Step Two: Address the Needs of Your Audience
Now that you know how your audience is, you need to address the needs of your audience. What does your audience want?
No one wants to waste their time looking at content that is either boring or not beneficial to them.
Therefore, your job is to give your audience what they want in an interesting manner.
For example, if your audience comprises singers, you can create content about wireless microphones and tell them why these microphones would help them sing better.
Doing so will increase engagement with your content, boosting your views, likes, and ultimately, popularity.
Conclusion
Ultimately, if you want to grow your social media following, you need to increase the engagement rate with your content. The more engagement you get, the higher your content will rank.
If you adhere to the tips outlined above, you will position yourself for success and will definitely see a huge growth.
Remember that you need to take advantage of the social media algorithms that impact engagement: content relevance, personalization, and interest.
I guarantee that if you tailor your content to incorporate all these factors, you will see your engagement and audience spike.
