What is a social media algorithm?

Every time you open an app, it gathers the posts it could show you, predicts how likely you are to interact with each one, and puts the ones it scores highest first. Platforms publish their own explanations: Instagram explains how it ranks Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels, TikTok explains its For You feed, and LinkedIn and YouTube describe their recommendations too.

The details differ, but the signals usually fall into the same groups:

• Your past activity: what you like, comment on, save, share, watch to the end or skip
• Your relationship with the account: whether you follow it, message it or often interact with it
• Information about the post: what it's about, its format, how recent it is and how others are responding
• Information about the account: how people have interacted with it recently and whether it follows the platform's rules

Most apps now mix two kinds of content: posts from accounts you follow, and recommended posts from accounts you don't. Instagram's Explore and Reels, TikTok's For You feed and YouTube's Shorts feed are mostly recommendations. That is why a good post from a small account can reach far more people than its follower count.

Platforms also have rules about what they will recommend. A post can break no rules and still be left out of recommendations if it falls under a platform's recommendation guidelines.

• Original content, not reposts with another app's watermark
• A strong start: the first line of text or the first second of video
• Posts people save or share, such as tips, guides and stories worth passing on
• Posting regularly on a clear topic, so the platform learns who your audience is
• Posting when your audience is online, so early responses come quickly
• Replying to comments, which keeps the conversation going

• "The algorithm hates business accounts." Platforms rank posts, not account types.
• "You must post every day." A steady schedule you can keep matters more than a burst of posts followed by silence.
• "More hashtags means more reach." A few relevant hashtags describe a post better than a long list, and some platforms limit how many you can use.
• "Asking for likes is the best way to get them." A post worth reacting to does more than a request to react, and repeated begging for likes or shares reads as engagement bait.

Several platforms now explain their ranking in some detail. These points come from their own pages, checked on 14 October 2026.

The common thread is that every system learns from what real people do with a post. That is why the reliable advice hasn't changed: make things your audience wants to watch, read, save and share.

• Facebook: Meta says its Feed system gathers posts from friends, Pages and groups you follow, picks roughly 500 of the most relevant, gives each a relevance score and orders them. It also tries to mix content types, so you don't see several videos in a row.
• Instagram: Instagram says it favours original content. Re-sharing someone else's content without material edits can be treated as unoriginal, and it recommends reposting or sharing to stories instead.
• YouTube: YouTube says its system has two goals, helping each viewer find videos they want to watch and long-term viewer satisfaction, and that it learns from what viewers watch, skip, like, share and dismiss.
• TikTok: TikTok lists content you like, share, comment on, and watch in full or skip among the interactions that shape your For You feed.

Partly. Most apps keep a ranked feed as the default but offer a chronological option.

For a business this cuts both ways. Followers who choose a chronological view only see your post if they open the app soon after you publish it. YouTube, on the other hand, says it hasn't seen evidence that publish time affects a video's long-term viewership, though posting when your audience is active may bring more views straight away.

So post when your followers are usually online, which your insights may show, but don't worry if a post goes out at an odd hour. Recommended feeds can still pick it up later if people respond to it.

• Instagram: the Following view shows posts and reels only from accounts you follow, including a Latest tab in chronological order.
• Facebook: choosing Following on the home screen shows content from accounts you follow, newest first. People can also add favourites, whose posts are shown higher in their feed.

You can't see inside any of these systems, but you can give them clear signals every week.

1. Look at last week's posts and note the two that held attention best.
2. Make more of what worked: the same format or topic, from a new angle.
3. Write the hook first: the first line of text or the first second of video.
4. Post your own original material, and use the platform's repost or share feature for other people's.
5. Reply to comments in the first few hours after posting.
6. Avoid engagement bait and anything that breaks the platform's recommendation guidelines.
7. Keep a steady schedule, and judge any change over weeks rather than days.