From the course: Social Media Video Strategy: Weekly Bites

Capitalizing on social media algorithms - Premiere Pro Tutorial

From the course: Social Media Video Strategy: Weekly Bites

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Capitalizing on social media algorithms

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- You probably know social media news feeds aren't organized in chronological order. Instead, each platform has its own algorithm for how it ranks and displays content. Algorithms take into account usage analytics, personal relevance, timeliness, and more. Before going into specific platforms, I want to mention a few algorithm-boosting things about video in general. First, it's almost always better to post native video instead of embedded video links. Each platform wants users to spend as much time as possible on its own site, so you're generally rewarded for using native video over embedded YouTube links, for example. And the bonus is that you'll get access to better integrated performance analytics related to the specific social media platform. Also, it's important to accompany meaningful text along with your video, so make your headlines and captions count. Your audience needs a reason to stop scrolling and watch your video. And reading a caption that provides context is often a great way to accomplish this. Also, algorithms often prioritize videos with more available metadata, and specific text is a great way to provide that. Now let's dive deeper into two social media platforms, Facebook and LinkedIn. The reason I only want to touch upon two is that each platform's algorithm changes all the time, and chances are by the time you're watching this, things may have changed again. So just check the most recent algorithm reports and engineering blogs to get a hint of what gets priority. First up, Facebook. Its algorithm is sophisticated, and nobody except Facebook truly understands everything that goes into it. But one major hint they've released is that it prioritizes content that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people. This includes things like likes, replies, comments, and shares. It especially means posts with lots of back-and-forth discussion. That said, Facebook deprioritizes content when you are blatantly asking your audience for likes and shares. That's where the meaningful interaction comes in. It's got to be organic and real, creating spaces for your audience to communicate. To naturally encourage this type of interaction, know your target audience and be a conversation starter. So post that thought-provoking text, like a question or a quote within the video. And don't just focus on getting people to watch the video. Find ways to get them to interact and share with one another. Also, if you can go live, you can also take advantage of some higher engagement with live videos having about six time the interaction as other videos. Facebook's algorithm goes beyond bumping high engagement posts to the top, though. It digs into each user's individualized formula of personal engagement statistics. It predicts what you want to see based on your past interactions. So the more you engage with certain people or brands, the more likely Facebook will show you their posts. All of that said, Facebook has declared that it will show less public content, including videos and other posts, from publishers or businesses. So that may seem a little defeating in terms of brand marketing, but this just means that you should strive to get your existing followers to engage with your video content in terms of those meaningful interactions. Spur back and forth commenting and focus on interactive posts. Much of this is also why brands that associate with influencers often get big boosts. Influencers are real people who command huge social followings, so audiences are more able to spark those meaningful connections as they engage with the content. Let's also talk about LinkedIn's current algorithm. As you can see from this flow chart, it details a four-step process for content distribution and amplification. This may be a lot to look at right now, but I'll briefly break this down. Step one is a content quality filter, and it just makes sure you aren't posting spam. If it's spam or low-quality content, it gets shut down in this filter. If not, it moves on to step two. In step two, the content moves on to an initial smaller sample of users in your network, and the algorithm analyzes how people begin interacting with it. If the smaller audience likes, comments on, and shares it, then it's likely to make it through to the next filter. So it's really up to your network to engage with your post to keep it alive. For this reason, many people send their post to a core group of supporters to ask them for their social support. In step three, the algorithm looks beyond the content itself to decide if it should continue showing up. It analyzes various characteristics of you and your network to determine if it's worth keeping it around for further promotion. And in step four, actual humans enter into the process, which is a cool, unique aspect to LinkedIn's algorithm. LinkedIn editors are able to boost content to a wider audience if it's doing particularly well within its own network. And as long as it continues receiving high engagement, your content will often stay around. Recently, content rooted in personal storytelling seems to have been getting boosted quite a lot, which all comes back to creating that meaningful content that others will care about.

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