The Algorithm, Your View Count, And What Matters

Going to be a little personal in this post, personal and very long.

I recently had an experience where we have some teaser reels that are created for an audio book podcast we were hired to produce, and the author of the book asked if we could post the teasers and collab with her.  We figured if we were going to post them on Instagram, we might as well just post them on all of our platforms because why not.

We haven't been super busy posting on TikTok, but "BookTok" is so huge, why not post these there?

The algorithm chewed me up and spit me out big time.  

The first one got 72 views.  If you know TikTok you know for the most part anything under 200 is the algorithm choking you out.  Usually posts get shown to at least 200 people as the sample section to decide if it should be shown to anyone else.  We didn't even hit 200.

Fine. 

I posted the next one, 109 views.  

Ok, that's a little better.

After that? 42.

TikTok was clearly trying to tell me something.  

I kept posting, ignoring the message TikTok was repeating to me: "We don't like this content, post something else, or create it a different way."

4 views on the next.

5 on the one after that.

7 the one after that.

And when I kept going despite it - 0. 

The next reel we posted got ZERO views.  Not a single one.   It was shown to no one. Which for organic reach is highly mathematically improbable, if not actually impossible. 

What happened?

For whatever reason, the right boxes weren't checked and so the software deciding what people see in their feeds decided not to show them this, and when I didn't listen, they just stopped sharing my content.

Now, why was I so brazen about this and just left it up anyway?

Because for this particular thing I didn't really care.  The point was more to have the trailers there and if someone goes to our page they can find them.  We are sharing the content so many other places, I don't need TikTok.

But you'd think I would care more about the fact that I wasn't getting engagement.  Doesn't that mean the content is bad?

No, not at all.

TikTok wasn't even showing it to people who might like it, so I have no way of knowing how the content would actually perform with people who see it.  Because no one was seeing it.

And so often we change our message, or change our creative process, or try to redo what we're saying or how we're saying it to connect with a software deciding what people will see, without always keeping the people in mind. 

Years ago I was part of an art project turned social experiment on a website called "hitRECord" (a former online open collaborative production company where you could post work that people would share and co-create on with everyone credited, and paid if their work was used in a paid production.  It was a very cool platform, it's where I met my husband and some of my closest friends).  

When I joined the site back in 2011, people would post photos or audio files (songs, voice recordings), or videos, or drawings, and other people would recommend it (or not) by clicking the little heart button next to the work.  

The art project that I was a part of was a collaboration that was started where people could share their work that had 0 recommendations.  Maybe it had little to no views, maybe it had views, but the rule was it had to have absolutely zero recommendations in order to be shared.

The result actually surprised me because it solidified my thoughts about who was seeing what work and how that would affect things like the response to it.

Every single piece of work added immediately was flooded with recommendations.  

The number one comment across the pieces?  Some form of how the people recommending it now had never seen it before, they didn't know how they had missed it earlier, they wished they'd seen it sooner, and they thought the work was fantastic.

I personally went through several pieces that I hadn't seen earlier, but totally loved them and would have recommended them if I had seen them in the first place.

For whatever reason, the way the platform was set up and the way my feed was set up, I never saw that person's work.  But their work was fantastic!

What does this have to do with me getting zero views on TikTok?

Some software somewhere is deciding what it wants to show people, and that decision is based on the most random things that I can't control, and has nothing to do with the actual quality of the content.

I can say this because the actual audiobook podcast has solid 5 star unsolicited reviews. 

But for some reason, TikTok doesn't like the trailers.

OK.

It told me loud and clear to make something else, make it a different way, change the words, change the edit, change the style - But at what point does following that direction mean no longer creating authentically, or changing the telling my story or the stories of my clients to connect with an algorithm instead of people, and just making something that fits a mold so that an algorithm will like it?

For this particular series of posts on TikTok, it didn't matter.  The point of them being there was so if someone goes to our page they will find them. We're sharing them on other platforms and through emails and messages.  We don't need TikTok's blessing.

If it was for another client where the goal was to hit a large following, we would be figuring out how we can make the bot happy while still keeping the messaging and style and art that we want to share with the humans on the other side who we want to see it.

So why share here?

When selling something, you need to reach a lot of people because only a percentage of the people you reach will become sales.  Going viral on social media is a great short cut, but you can't really control that.

This is also why you can't put all your eggs in one basket and count on social media only to help you with marketing, or count on one social media platform only. If I only looked at the TikTok metrics I would think the podcast was awful (but again, 5 stars…).

At the end of the day, drawing the line between your own messaging and style and how you want to present yourself to the world and how the world wants you to present yourself can be a bit of a jump rope.

You have to decide if you want to skip it.

Find the people who are the right people for you, remember that you don't control the algorithms or the social media platforms or the software that decides who will see what.  Don't forget about the coffee effect when you do go viral.

And no matter what, just put yourself out there! 

This might be a weird thing to share by someone who creates social media content and advises people how to be successful with content creation.  But the reason my clients are successful is because we don't hyperfixate on hitting that golden algorithmic button.  And the metrics we use are their actual goals - how much money they are making, how many people are calling them, how they are thought of in their community - things that social media views don't control.  It supports, but doesn't control.

Spending all day trying to figure out how to make the algorithm like you, unless your business model is paid content and you don't actually sell anything or deliver any services, isn't going to actually help your business or brand.

Plus just knowing that's how it works should change how you see accounts that are producing paid content, because their messaging, word choice, edit styles, all of that might just be because the algorithm demands it, not because it actually connects with people or it is things that are relatable to people or match the messaging of the people who are creating the content in the first place. 

It's always nice to get tons of views.  But at the end of the day, social media isn't your sandbox. You just play in it.  And you have no idea how many people might adore you or your work or your brand or want to see what you're putting out and don't because they aren't ever being shown who you are.

In short: remember to connect with people beyond what the algorithm lets you do.  Maybe that means buying ads or paying to boost content.  Maybe that means finding other ways to connect with people.  

And when you hit 0 views, know that you have every right to decide if you want to try to change to raise that number, or to decide that you're just going to go about your goals in other ways.

Personally, I chose other ways before I want to change my voice or the voices I'm working to amplify.