The social media marketing landscape is ever-changing, and keeping up with it may seem like a chore. Something that worked yesterday may not get as much traction today because the content consumers have grown out of it. Every month there is a new obsession until there is another. In such situations, how do you actually understand the algorithm of social media? Let’s find out how you can stay on top.
Understanding The Algorithm Of Social Media
Understanding social media algorithms is essential to determine what works or gets lost in the deep sea of content. The social media algorithm is biased and it only delivers the content that captures your audiences’ attention. Today, when the attention span has reto reduced to 45 seconds, social media algorithms work overtime to promote content that gets more engagements and ignores everything that fails to get it.
If you start to understand the algorithm, you can pinpoint what works for your target audience. These social media algorithms can be really useful when it comes to growing your online presence, audience, and reputation. And, it entails more than just posting a reel at a particular time with a specific array of emojis.
How Social Media Algorithms Work?
Social media algorithms carefully monitor the engagements to carefully sort out and match content which your audience would like to watch. It basically filters out the content noise and shows users content which they find interesting. To unravel the intricacies of social media algorithms, let’s explore how it works and what you can do to benefit from it.
Shows Your New Post To A Small Audience
Around 95 million photos and videos are being shared on Instagram every day, which means the algorithms have already a lot on their plates. When you publish a post, only a small percentage of people will see your post. The algorithms are notorious when it comes to observing engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and saves. If your post manages to perform well with the initial audience, your visibility will increase and your post will now be shown to a wider group of followers or non-followers. On the contrary, if your content engagements are low initially, your post will only reach to limited accounts.
Checks The Engagement Signals
If more accounts are spending over 10 seconds on a story, post, or a reel, you are likely to get more visibility. Your posts have to be entertaining, inspiring, or experimental — and the algorithms will suggest your post to people who have a viewing history aligning with your content.
Sometimes, it also recommends the story to those accounts who have previously DMed or reacted to any of your posts. Today, reels are performing much better than visuals as more and more people are enjoying short forms of video content.
Recommend Your Post To More People (Or Not)
If your content passes the initial audience test and people are engaging with your content, social media algorithms will push your post for more accounts to see. This process is repeated until the engagement rate of the extra audience cannot beat the account’s average any longer.
5 Tips To Beat Social Media Algorithms in 2025
To beat the social media algorithms in 2025, you have to focus on creating high-quality content more frequently and follow these tips to ensure you stay ahead of the game.
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Create Content For Your Users
The content you create should resonate with your users. Social media algorithms are pushing relatable content, influencers, and memes to users as this type of content gets the most traction. If you know your target audience and you hit the right nodes, you will become invincible.
For example, if you are targeting businesses on LinkedIn where businesses generate over a billion dollars each year, your content should provide value. Your focus on LinkedIn should be on building relationships and showcasing your expertise. To get better engagements, you can create more valuable content on different topics, such as:
- Industry insights and trends
- Professional stories and lessons
- Tips, how-tos, and solution-oriented content
- Behind-The-Scenes content
- Case studies and success stories
- Polls and quizzes
Today, even LinkedIn algorithms promote visual content more than written posts. Try to create digestible content which can be consumed easily to beat the algorithm.
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Be Authentic — But Do Not Shy Away From Following Trends
While it is equally important to build an audience with authentic content, you can not undermine the importance of relatable content too. Marketing educator Shana Bull recommends in North Bay Business Journal to reconnect with your passions to establish a unique point of view and voice to create content that resonates with your audience.
On the other hand, trends build a sense of relatability and increase visibility and reach the easier way. If your brand values align with a trend and you do not fear that if you poorly execute the trend it will hurt your brand reputation, you can surely try to engage with the trends. It shows your brand has a human side and it may generate some valuable insights into audience preferences and behaviors.
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Try Creating Shorter Content
Today, the social media algorithm generally favors short-form content, particularly Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, Facebook, and now even LinkedIn. Short-form content gets more engagement, including likes, comments, saves, and shares.
Short-form video content has the potential of garnering more attention as they are easy to consume. Most importantly, the content has a mobile-first approach which aligns perfectly with most social media platforms, making it a better fit for apps.
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Post Consistently And Post At The Right Time
Algorithms change, but to keep up with an ever-evolving content labyrinth, you must be very consistent with the posts. If you follow the right frequency while posting content, you may succeed in tricking the algorithm.
| Platform | Ideal Frequency |
| YouTube | 1-2 videos per week |
| TikTok | 1-3 posts per day |
| 1 post per day | |
| 1 post per day or 5 times per week | |
| X (formerly known as Twitter) | 3-5 posts (tweets) per day |
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Test Different Forms Of Content
There are many different types of content for different platforms which can get engagement and algorithms actually promote them actively. Let’s have a look at some of the videos that work best for different platforms.
| Platform | Type of content |
| YouTube | FAQ videos, How-To tutorials, Case studies and success stories, BTS content, and product comparisons |
| TikTok | Educational Micro Tutorials, BTS clips, User-generated content, Quick tips and tricks, Reactions and Duet videos, Mini vlogs |
| Reels, Carousel posts, stories, user-generated content |
Conclusion
Leveraging social media algorithms is very important in 2025. Social media algorithms are a bunch of bots that determine what your audience is looking for and your Facebook marketing or Instagram marketing strategies should take care of it.
To get the best results on social media platforms, you need to create visually appealing content that sparks conversations consistently. Your content should resonate with your target audience and you can also adapt to the response social media algorithms give to your content. You can also follow industry blogs and publications to learn more about the updates and stay ahead of your competitors.
