
Instagram Algorithm
- Relationships matter. You’re more likely to see content from accounts you engage with. So brands have to interact more with their followers.
- Interest rule. Your feed will mostly consist of content you’re keen on.
- Relevance is key. Relevance is based on factors like timeliness and topic trends.
- Popularity pops. Post interaction speed and engagement with an account in general — all that help the content get to the Explore page.
TikTok Algorithm
- Previous interactions. This includes accounts followed and hidden or content you’ve engaged with or marked not interesting.
- Behavior on the Discover tab. This factor analyzes captions, sounds, effects, and trending topics of content.
- Location and language. You’ll likely see content from your country or in your mother tongue.
- Trends. Using trending sounds and effects can help make your content more discoverable.
- Follower count does not matter. TikTok’s real distinction is that follower count is NOT a ranking signal.
Facebook Algorithm
- Facebook connections. Your feed will primarily be filled with content from people and pages you follow and interact with.
- Content type. If you watch videos, you’ll get more videos. If you interact with photos, you’ll get more photos, and so on.
- Engagement level. Popular posts, with lots of engagement, are more likely to be boosted by the algorithm.
- Content quality. Facebook describes it as “meaningful,” “informative,” “accurate,” and “authentic” content.
YouTube Algorithm
- Video performance. Popular videos get pushed more. It’s measured through view duration, likes, dislikes, and click-through rate.
- Watch history. YouTube recommends content similar to what you have watched before.
- Context. Topically related videos or videos that are often watched together are more likely to show in your recommendations.
LinkedIn Algorithm
- Post quality. LinkedIn’s algorithm does an initial sort to flag content as spam, low-quality, or high-quality. You can guess which you should aim for.
- Early engagement. LinkedIn’s algorithm uses early engagement as a secondary quality test before pushing the content out further.
- LinkedIn connections. Closer connections see more of your content, while the pages, groups, and hashtags people follow are used to determine their likely interest in a topic.
- We get into much greater detail in our post breaking down the intricacies of the LinkedIn algorithm.
Twitter Algorithm
- User interactions. As Twitter defines it, “accounts you interact with frequently, Tweets you engage with, and much more.”
- Recency. This specifically affects what shows up in trending topics or What’s Happening.
- Location. This will also affect what you see in Trends.
- Current popularity. How much engagement and activity are in this Topic/Trend/Tweet right now, especially from people you follow.
- Get the full scoop in our post on the Twitter algorithm.
Pinterest Algorithm
- Website quality and ownership. Pinterest judges the quality of a website based on the popularity of Pins that link to it and prioritizes content from the website owner.
- Engagement levels. Evaluated for both individual Pins and for the Pinner’s account.
What to focus on to make social media algorithms work for you:
- Quality of content
- Following trends
- Experimenting with mechanics
- Encourage your audience with clear call to action
- More video or motion-design