How the Twitter Algorithm Works

While Twitter may have fallen by the wayside for marketing in comparison to its other social sharing competitors, it is still an extremely useful tool for brand awareness amongst other things. Although the site can produce a more divisive rhetoric, the opinion based platform is great for understanding your target market and for implementing social listening.

From its inception in 2006, Twitter has been viewed as a microblogging platform for users to share their thoughts in the form of tweets. It has evolved over time, but the premise has remained the same. In order to really reap the rewards from the limitless sharing power of the site, it’s a good idea to stay up to date with the Twitter algorithm and how it works.

There are four main factors used in the Twitter algorithm. Recency, Engagement, Rich Media and Activity.

 Recency

• This is exactly as it says on the tin, the algorithm will take into consideration how recently a post has been posted. Though it does favour the more popular recent tweets.

• That being said. there is an element of control for the user here. On the home feed they have the option of seeing the most recent posts in chronological order or see the recent ‘Top’ posts first.

• As a business, there is no way of knowing how your followers choose to see their posts however, pay attention to when they are active on the platform and use that time to post to ensure the highest chance of your content being seen.

Engagement

• The popularity of the tweet will be taken into consideration for the algorithm too. What popularity refers to in this instance is retweets, clicks on any links, comments and likes.

• Twitter also favours tweets from accounts who have regular engagement. They will rank this as a higher performing profile therein showing more tweets from this page.

Rich Media

• Rich media and engagement in a sense go hand in hand, particularly where brands are concerned. The algorithm doesn’t necessarily reward quality content, but the users do. If your content is great and garners more attention, engagement is sure to follow, and Twitter will then reward you by making the post more visible.

• The way for businesses to make the most of this is to really focus on their content strategy.

• Also bear in mind the general tone of Twitter, it is more relaxed and conversational. You are more likely to get your followers engaged by asking them questions, perhaps get their opinions on a new product name. Using a branded hashtag for this type of approach could even get your business ‘trending’.

Activity

• Like most algorithms, Twitter rewards those who are more active on the platform. Organic engagement with other accounts that are relevant to your brand will benefit how Twitter sees your page i.e. retweeting and sharing posts, or getting involved in discussions in the comments section.

• Two phrases that bear repeating (and can be applied to most other social platforms) consistency is key and content is king. The advice varies on how often you should post on Twitter a day, some suggest 3-6 times while others say up to 20! The latter of course being more centred on conversational tweets rather than engaging or attention-grabbing content.

• ·Experiment with this a little and find the formula that works best for you. Just remember while you are doing this, make sure that you are updating the page at least a couple of times a day while you figure it out.

Other Factors to Consider

• How many followers you have - accounts with a higher following count are likely to be ranked above those with a lower count.

• Tweets that are more relevant to a user and their interests will be ranked higher. This will depend on the types of accounts they follow and the tweets they like, retweet and comment under.

• Twitter also has an ‘In case you missed it’ feature where it shows the user tweets that are of interest to them. They are ordered according to relevance, but they could be from days ago rather than using the ‘recency’ approach.

• In order to make a user’s timeline more varied and interesting, Twitter will splice in relevant retweets, promotions and suggested accounts. This is an opportunity for businesses to gain more visibility and new followers.

Tips to Increase Reach 

• Re-use your best performing content, if it has done well in the past it is likely to perform when posted again. This is helpful for engagement.

• Experiment with posting times.

• Explore using video content. It doesn’t necessarily need to be you or your team behind the camera, you can just play around with different formats that feel more comfortable to you.

• Be strategic with your hashtags. Join in on trending hashtags where relevant and use a branded hashtag for promotions or giveaways. This will get more people talking about your brand and as mentioned above, if enough people get involved, you could be trending too.

• Reply to all and any mentions, and quickly! It is good for the public to see that you are a quick responder and it also bodes well with the algorithm.

• Lastly, if all else fails you can try paid promotions of your tweets.