Social media has become an integral part of our lives. Everyone has come under the influence of social media. Social media platforms are governed by social media algorithms. Whether you are an individual sharing your experience or a company posting for your target audience, social media algorithms are important for both determining the reach and effect of your post. 

Someone who understands the working of social media algorithms will have a higher engagement rate. However social media algorithms have been evolving and becoming more user oriented and advanced. So you must adapt to these changes and create a strategy accordingly. You can do so only if you are updated with the latest trends and eventually increase engagement rate. 

In this article we’ll understand the factors that affect social media, tips for engagement, algorithms of different social media platforms. 

What are social media algorithms and engagement?

In social media, algorithms are the rules, formulas that determine or govern the platform’s operation. Social media algorithms use data to determine the user behavior and preferences. This algorithm decides how content is shown, filtered and recommended to users. Algorithms show us the content that matches with our preferences. At times it tends to influence our choices. 

Social media engagement is a  measure of all the interaction that users have with your content. Social media engagement includes likes, comments, shares, brand mentions,direct message etc. It shows how the audience is interacting with your content and whether they appreciate it or not. You can measure social engagement by using this formula: Add up your total content interaction such as likes, comments shared by total number of followers and then multiply it by 100 to get the engagement percentage. 

What factors affect social media algorithm 

Social media algorithms consider the following factors for showing relevant content to relevant users. 

• Keywords: hashtags and keywords help in understanding the context of the content.
• Engagement: By understanding the like, comment, save etc algorithm understand the preferences and type of content user likes. 
• Time: Posting at the right time and consistently can increase the visibility of the post. Post when your audience is active. 
• Recency: the new posts get more relevance than the older posts. 
• Profile authority: Follower count, engagement rate etc increase your visibility and reach. 
• Interactions: The accounts you follow, interaction with content and click on the links indicates content quality.
• Content: Different types of content such as images, videos etc are determined by user interaction. 
• Location: Social media algorithms consider the location and demographic of users while presenting content. 
• Watch time: It represents the duration or time you spend on a particular content such as IGTV, reels etc. 
• Viral content: Content that gains more likes or popularity indicates relevancy to the social media algorithm. 

Importance of social media engagement

Why social media engagement is important for your business

• Increase Visibility: Social media engagement increases your brand awareness and visibility. It helps in attracting new customers. 
• Organic traffic: It increases organic traffic of the website or your social media page. It helps in better ranking of your website. 
• Increase sales: It helps in increasing your sales. Better social media engagement helps in increasing sales. 
• Encourage brand loyalty: Better social media engagement proves that customers like your content and share it with their friends. It encourages brand loyalty. 
• Customer experience: Social media engagement helps in improving customer experience. Better engagement provides you with recommendations from users on how to improve customer experience. You should encourage users to give feedback. 
• Generate leads: It helps in generating leads. Which eventually increases your sales and helps in attracting new customers. 
• Social media campaigns: It analyzes the performance of your social media campaign. Better engagement indicate better performance of your social media campaign and helps in fulfilling the goal of your campaigns such as if you’re leading a lead generation campaign then with better engagement you will attain more leads. 

Tips to boost your social media engagement

Here are some of the tips to boost your social engagement

• Set goal/ objective: Select the clear goal or objective of your platform. Do you want more leads, more visibility etc and then plan your strategy accordingly. 
• Select metrics: Select the metrics that you want to track. For content you can use no. Of likes, comments, shares etc. Your selected metrics should be aligned with your goal and objective.
• Select the appropriate platform: Select the appropriate platform that you want to focus on. Select the platform that matches with your goals or objectives. For building professional relationships use LinkedIn, for more visibility use instagram etc. 
• Target Audience: Define your target audience and the platform they spend their maximum time on. You must define your audience on the basis of language, location, demographics, preferences etc. 
• Type of content: Select the type of content such as infographic, case study, Powerpoint Presentation, video, images, live sessions 
• etc that has maximum demand and will deliver your message clearly to the audience. 
• Engaging content: Create engaging content. Use attractive headlines, visually appealing images or videos, use correct hashtags, use memes or GIFs, etc to make your content engaging and appealing. Create emotional headlines that encourage click throughs and add an element of humor in your content so that users don’t get bored. Discord is known for its lighthearted and funny content on X platform. Similarly bearverse video game created a fear of missing out and compelled them to sign up for a flash sale. A facebook group Instant Pot is known for its creative and innovative posts. Benefit Cosmetics has a sticker  that users can use, thus encouraging UGC content as well. 
• When to post: Select the correct time to make a post. Select a time when the maximum of your audience is active. Post more frequently.
• Feedback: Encourage your customers to give feedback. Include theri feedback in your work and based on feedback work on the suggestions given by your audience. Ask questions from your audience. 
• Analytics: Use past analytics to rectify past mistakes. Study the available data and make strategies accordingly. Along with that, study the current data or real time data as well and make necessary changes. 
• Giveaways/ UGC/ Contest: To promote your content or to increase engagement you can run a contest, give freebies, Encourage user generated content etc. Marvel Entertainment has used the same strategy of giveaways on X platform. 
• Response time: Respond to all the users and within 24 hours. The less time you take to respond to a user the more they will be impressed by your brand. 
• Human side/ conversational: Add a humanistic element or a conversational tone to your content. Audience should feel that they are talking to a person, not a robot. 
• Stay updated about different algorithms: Stay updated about the recent algorithms of different platforms and the expected future updates. Improvise your strategy. 
• Different needs of different platforms: Understand and consider the needs of different platforms. For example instagram is an image oriented platform whereas linkedin is a professional platform.  
• Collaboration: You can collaborate with influencers or different brands. such as Dunkin donuts and e.l.f did. They made a customized donut promoting a particular line of cosmetics. 

Social media algorithms of different platforms 

Different social media platforms have different social media algorithms such as facebook and instagram offer a personalized feed wherein according to your likes, shares etc you are shown the similar and relevant content. 

X

X looks through 500 million daily posts to display the relevant posts on your timeline. 

• It has a ‘Trends for you section’ to display content based on your location
• X’s algorithm measures the relevance of the post by studying the keywords used and your past interactions. 
• It has a feature of a similar account. Accounts that are based on similar niche or content

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social media platform. Facebook uses multiple algorithms to provide the most relevant and engaging content. 

• It consider timing as a important factor for the ranking of the content on a user’s feed
• The posts that match the user’s past preferences are shown the most. 
• Content from accounts you follow is shown more than accounts you don’t follow or show interest in. 

Instagram

Instagram’s algorithm is a bit complicated as it is divided into 5 sections. Each section uses an algorithm to present the relevant content based on past user behavior. 

• Recent posts are prioritized over the older posts 
• It prioritizes the content of the accounts you interact most with over the least interacted accounts
• For instagram stories, algorithms consider the relationship you have with the creator like the number of mutual followers, similar location etc to prioritize this story over others. 

Youtube 

Youtube algorithms consider many factors to rank videos on a homepage. 

• Youtube algorithm considers the video which it feels that the user will click on 
• Videos with longer watchtime indicate high quality content and user retention. 
• Videos created by a creator in a given location, are spread more on that particular location before spreading it globally. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn algorithm uses a ranking system to prioritize the content and its success. 

• It filter posts into three categories: spam, low quality and high quality
• It uses machine learning to predict the engagement of the post
• It likes short videos and long form well written and structured content 

Pinterest

Pinterest uses some of these factors for ranking the content

• Hashtags, keywords and past user interactions determine the posts relevancy.
• Pinterest’s ranking is influenced by Website safety and user engagement.
• It also considers your posting consistency and account credibility. 

Conclusion

We have learned how important it is to understand the working of social media algorithms. To increase your engagement, lead generation and sales you need to work around the social media algorithms. If you understand it then your chances of succeeding increases. To know more about social media marketing email us at info@lumia360.com  or call us at 514-668-5599. We have experience of catering to small to medium businesses. We understand the special needs of such businesses and design a strategy that is cost effective. We, at Lumia 360, guarantee you confirmed leads every month and increased visibility. 

Read Also: The Rise of Voice Search: Optimizing Your Content for Voice Assistants

Read Also: Understanding the Impact of AI and Machine Learning on Digital Marketing

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• X
• Instagram