This post is part of Spotlight on Social Media Strategies, a new series designed to help you make the most of the changing landscape of social media. Be sure to check out our other posts in the series, Performing a Social Media Audit, How to Craft an Editorial Calendar, Scheduling Content with Later, and Social Media Analytics.

With an ever-growing number of blogs, news hubs and social media profiles, it is important to stand out by showing what makes your content unique. Even more important is understanding the ins and outs of social media platforms––and that starts with learning more about their algorithms.

What is an algorithm?

Put simply, an algorithm is a set of instructions designed to perform a specific task. In the social media universe, algorithms determine which posts people see (and in what order) every time a user signs into their accounts. This means that rather than being shown in chronological order, posts in a user’s feed are presented according to a set of criteria that prioritize content that companies such as Twitter and Facebook deem to be the most relevant to their users.

Relevance is determined by what are known as “ranking signals”, that is, data points that take information about a user’s past behaviour and aggregate them with the behaviour of the community at large. Signals include information about activities such as:

  • who a user interacts with the most;
  • what kind of information they share and with whom;
  • what media format they engage with most often, and so forth.

Facebook, for example, groups ranking signals into three major categories: interactions (who a user typically engages with); media (whether they engage with a video, a photo, or a link, for example); and popularity (how a post is faring on the platform, which is determined by the overall number of likes, shares, views, etc.)

Why should I pay attention to algorithms?

As the image above indicates, social media platforms tweak their algorithms frequently to respond to user needs and demands. In Facebook’s case, a significant change was introduced following the 2016 US election which has resulted in content from users that don’t have a personal relationship to an account being deprioritized, meaning that users are now seeing more posts from friends and family compared to those of organizations. As a result, it may not be as easy for nonprofits to reach their community as they did before.

Similar experiences apply to platforms such as Twitter and Instagram as well. For example, an article by online scheduler Buffer found that “people usually don’t see all the new posts when they visit Instagram”. A study by Instagram themselves found that, on average, users missed “70 percent of the posts on their feeds when the posts were arranged in a reverse-chronological order”.

Fear not, though! As a nonprofit, there are several steps that you can take to raise your organization’s profile on the web. Taking some time to boost your online presence will help your posts go even further, leading to greater exposure and higher traction for your content. In the next section, we explore a few things your nonprofit can do to boost social media engagement.

Tips for boosting social media engagement

Thinking about algorithms can be daunting––especially when hearing that new changes may limit the reach of your content. Not all is lost, however. As Buffer writes, “as long as you are creating engaging, relevant, and timely content, the algorithm is actually an advantage to you. It will help to surface your great content to more of your followers than when posts were arranged reverse-chronologically.”

So what can you do to make sure the algorithms work in your favour? The first best practice is to post when your audience is online. This requires knowing which days of the week are the most opportune for posting, and what time of day reaches the highest number of followers. The second is to tailor your content to the specific ‘culture’ of the platform. Below, we combine the two and offer a round up of key tips and recommendations for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Posting on Facebook

For nonprofits, market research suggests that Facebook posts perform best when released Wednesday and Friday between 8-9am, and that they seem to perform the worst on weekends. To increase the reach of your posts, you may therefore want to find a balance between a platform’s busiest times and your organization’s ability to post at a regular frequency (make sure to check our post, Scheduling Content with Later, for more on how to schedule online content). Similarly, it helps to regularly check Insights (Facebook’s analytics) to get to know the most popular post times for your specific community and to find out what kind of content is getting more traction.

There are also a number of strategies you could adopt to drive engagement with your audience (keep in mind that Facebook has acquired Instagram, so many of the recommendations overlap):

  • Privilege visual content––on Facebook, video content drives the most engagement compared to any other type of media. High quality videos that average 3 minutes in length perform especially well, but you do not need to raise funds to hire a professional videographer to elevate your posts! Tools like Adobe Spark, Lumen5 or Animoto are a great option to turn your existing content (including written articles!) into a video feature. You could also get creative with more whimsical platforms such as TikTok and Boomerang to create shorter, more dynamic videos.(For more on how to get started creating your own videos, check out the 6 Key Ingredients of a Perfect Social Video and How to Create High-Quality Videos for Social Media.)
  • Facebook Live is another way to boost engagement––Live videos produce notifications that ping followers directly, helping a page stand out.
  • Avoid Clickbait––posts that are engaging in ‘shameless self-promotion’ (a practice also known as engagement bait) are no longer tolerated on Facebook. While posts asking outright for comments, tags or likes were once the norm, Facebook recognizes how these posts can often serve as spam. To avoid seeing a post de-prioritzed, consider the following alternatives:
    • Encourage staff and community members to share content with their personal networks––because priority is given to ‘friends and family’ content, others will be more likely to find you this way. This practice is called Employee Advocacy, or building ‘micro-influencers’, and it’s becoming increasingly popular.
    • Facebook prefers users keep content on their platform rather than linking off-site, so create ways to link to posts from within your Facebook page instead. You don’t always need to create new content to do so. You can ‘repurpose’ content by using different captions, images and/or hashtags or by using the acronym ICYMI (which stands for in case you missed it). Not sure where to begin? Here’s a short guide on repurposing top content developed by the Digital Marketing Institute.

Posting on Instagram

On Instagram, the heat map above suggests posting on Tuesdays from 1-3pm and Wednesday around 2pm (again avoiding the weekend).

Being a predominantly visual medium, strategies for boosting your reach on Instagram revolve around ways to attract audiences with captivating images and videos, but they have also adapted to accommodate the rise in influencers and their outreach practices. Here are a few tips to balance the two:

  • Be Interactive––successful Instagram accounts rely on audience engagement to build a relationship that is meaningful. To do so, you could consider activities such as contests and giveaways; creating and repeatedly using hashtags unique to your organization; hosting community events such as read-alongs and live chats; highlighting user-generated content through re-grams and shoutouts; and stimulating the sharing of stories by inviting users to comment on their experience on your posts.
  • Tell Your Story––sharing bite-sized information about your organization’s history, community, or the everyday/behind the scenes is a great way to build a relationship with your audience over time. You could also feature volunteers or staff through recurring columns, or celebrate achievements by showcasing milestones and big events on social media. As a general rule of thumb, practice posting engaging captions until you’ve successfully refined your online ‘voice’.
  • Post Instagram Stories––using the Stories feature increases engagement in other areas, especially if posts are slow to pick up. Bonus: you can make your content even more interactive by using GIFs, questions and polls, and other features. Go Live––consider going live on a semi-regular basis. This practice bumps content up in the Stories feed and followers may also receive a personal notification if they opted in for that.
  • Be a Resource––use your feed to offer free advice or insider information: this is a fail-proof strategy to build awareness and engagement. You can also repurpose content by posting teasers and sharing the full version through the Link in Bio feature.

Posting on Twitter

On Twitter, it is customary to post multiple times a day––as often as 6-12 times a day, to be exact. While here, too, weekends tend to be the least busy times, posting mid-week between the early morning and mid-afternoon tends to yield the most engagement.

Unlike Instagram and Facebook, however, on Twitter it’s easier to access posts in reverse chronological order because they will still appear on your feed if you keep scrolling down enough. What you should know about the Twitter timeline is that it consists of three main sections: ‘in case you missed it’; ranked tweets; and remaining tweets in chronological order. What many don’t realize, though, is that unlike the other platforms the Twitter algorithm can be turned off. When doing so, it’s the original timeline that will appear instead. To opt-out, go to Settings and select “Content Preferences” and, from there, uncheck the “Show me the best tweets first” box.

For more on how to boost your engagement on Twitter, consider the following recommendations:

  • Know Thyself–– Because on Twitter it’s ok to reuse content (sometimes even during the same day), being able to identify your top performing posts will allow you to repurpose your content more effectively. To do so, simply consult your Twitter analytics, which are built into the platform and allow you to easily find out the number of impressions (or reach) of your posts and how people are engaging with them.
  • Use Hashtags––Twitter’s own research shows that tweets with hashtags get 16 percent more retweets. Create your own and/or use popular ones to make sure your tweets are being included in important conversations happening on the platform. This post by Twitter for Business covers some important dos and don’ts when it comes to their correct use. If you’re curious about which hashtags to use, this article by Lifewire offers helpful recommendations for finding the hashtags you need to amplify your tweets.
  • Visuals Help––despite not being a visual medium per se, online culture has shifted and visuals now are a big factor when it comes to grabbing (and holding!) your followers’ attention. Always ensure you have a photo or video to go with your tweets to maximize engagement. You can use tools like Canva or Adobe Spark to create your own. If you are linking to a news article, you’ll be happy to know that, in most cases, Twitter will auto-generate an image for you!

This article was originally published on TechSoup Canada’s blog and is reprinted with permission.

Chiara is TechSoup Canada‘s Digital Education Coordinator. As part of her role, she creates and curates content focused on nonprofit digital transformation, and delivers quality educational resources to TechSoup’s members. Off-screen, she can often be found riding her bike, reading too many books at once, and attempting to improve her sourdough baking skills.