Gaming the Algorithm

A person using both laptop and smartphone with a social media network open on each.

There are always ways to game the system to reach more people on social media and search engines.

Gaming the system means finding shortcuts, alternative ways to gain more exposure than you deserve, to reach more audience than you know you should. (The more people you reach, the more significant impact you have, of course.)

You trick the algorithm, and as a reward, you get ahead. The best way to do this (today) is to publish as much as possible. Because when people interact with your content (and the algorithm knows when they do), it will be shown to more people.

The more content you publish, the bigger your chance that something resonates with many people, and when a lot of people interact with it, as we already established, the algorithm will notice and show it to even more people.

But, as you already figured out, that’s precisely what the algorithm wants. That you publish as much valuable content as possible on its platform. And the reality is that you should be doing this anyway.

So the best way is not to game the system but to play right into it and create as much value for your audience as possible.