How does social media's algorithm actually work, and why do artists need to post more than they think?

Facebook and Instagram explicitly tell you that when you make a post, they only show it to about 2% of your followers. They do this because they want people to buy ads. They have 500,000 or 600,000 data points on every user—every time someone stops scrolling, clicks, comments, or likes something, the platform knows it. The algorithm uses this to determine which of your followers to show each post to. For example, if someone has shown interest in waterfall-related content, they’ll likely see your waterfall image, but not your cityscape. Each post gets shown to a different subset of your audience based on what the algorithm thinks they’ll like. Your top fans who constantly engage will usually see your posts, but the vast majority of your followers won’t see any given post. This is why high-frequency posting (some experts recommend 20-40 posts per day across platforms) isn’t ‘over-posting’—it’s actually the only way to get meaningful reach across your full audience.

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Asked by a podcast host · Answered by Nick Friend · art-marketing-podcast · 2023-05-22