How does social media engagement actually work with algorithms?

All social networks operate on the same basic principle: the overall engagement your account gets charges up a battery, and that battery determines how many of your posts get seen by how many people. The battery needs to be recharged regularly. When you just show art constantly, there’s no juice in the battery because it doesn’t get engagement—it goes nowhere and no one sees it. But when you post personal content that people actually engage with, you get way more likes, comments, and views. That charges the battery up. Then when you show your art (the commercial), it goes way further and way more people see it. The algorithm is really just a proxy for what’s interesting to human beings, and your art all the time simply isn’t interesting enough to generate the engagement you need.

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Asked by general teaching point · Answered by Patrick · Art Business Webinar · 2026-06-17