CHARLOTTE – This is part 1 in a several part series about social media algorithms

Be careful what you read. 

Everything you do on social media is being closely monitored by the platform and recorded for future use in analyzing what to put in your feed. This means what you stop and read is recorded.

There’s a ton of personal data that social media platforms have on their users they don’t share with anyone, but use to program algorithms.

What this means essentially is that every single thing you do on the platform is constantly shaping how the algorithm works for you specifically. Just like you are a living, constantly evolving being, so is the algorithm.

This may feel a bit creepy, but it’s not always a bad thing because it means that you have a specific version of the algorithm just for you and you can train it to show you exactly the type of content you want.

If you don’t want to see cooking recipes on Facebook, and every time you see one, you stop scrolling, read it, and then comment on it that you don’t want to see recipes on Facebook, guess what your algorithm thinks?

“Oh look, this user stops on every recipe post AND comments on it, they must love this type of content, let’s show them more.”

If you take nothing else from this series, take that with you because it is the heart of how a social media algorithm works.

What you focus on grows.