Authenticity vs. The Algorithm

Hello and welcome fellow Awsomologists to Awsomology. I’m Sue.

And I’m Ben. And in this episode, we’re diving into how algorithms are affecting reach online and what we can do about it.

Because, hopefully anything. If anything. Exactly.

Exactly. I was gonna say if hopefully, there is something we can do about it. Right?

Well, maybe let’s just set the table a little bit about how interesting of a topic this is because that is the sad, claim we have to make because we we honestly don’t know Right.

If there’s anything we can do about it. We can learn best practices. We can see what’s working for others, all this kind of stuff, which we’ll touch on on some level, I’m sure, this episode. But there’s only a few people on the planet that really know.

Right. Exactly.

Exactly.

And that is why this is about authenticity as well as algorithms because it comes back to that, you know, that old chestnut. Be who you wanna be. Yeah. Be, be your authentic self, and that’s the point.

Yeah. So but spoilers. That’s a spoiler. Right?

That’s okay.

K.

We’re just keeping the listener here.

Yeah.

Giving them some early answers.

I hope we’re keeping them here. Let’s we’ll find out.

Speaking of setting the table, you know, I love to set a table.

Let’s define a whole lot of things. I have a whole lot of information, just information packed here at the top so that our table is well set, including napkins and napkin rings and all of those things. Right? Right. Do you set table at home? Like, when you sit down for does your family set the table?

Not typically. We, usually do, like, a, pseudo family style setup at the counter where all the stuff’s just up at the counter. We dish up and take it to the Yeah.

Take it to the table.

Somebody dishes up and then brings it to the table. Okay. Every now and then, though, we’ll have the food in its baking apparatus or whatever it might be at the center of the table, and we’ll have plates and forks set and all that. Of course, for the big the big ones, Thanksgiving and all that, we’ll set a table.

But Right.

Yeah. But yeah. Unfortunately, no. Not too often. But it’s okay.

I mean, while we don’t set the table, we spend a lot of time eating together and are pretty good about that schedule.

So at least for now before life gets too crazy.

So Exactly. Yeah. That’s what matters. Right. That that’s what matters. Right.

I’m all to say, I’m a table setter from way back.

Yeah. Good for you.

Yeah. Just always been the table setter. Yeah.

Glad we glad we got that established.

Yes.

And I well, I just wanted to make sure I’m a new home and how much I love to set the table because let’s talk about what we mean by algorithms. Let’s talk about some of the some of the things that we know to the best of our ability, as you said.

Whatever some of this information actually is Social media platforms keep it pretty secret. All we can do is try something, see how it responds, and make some assumptions based on that. So, twenty twenty five, algorithms are different. Things are and this is this has been emerging for a few years.

Probably since the pandemic when TikTok short form video really took over. It was always popular, but it really took over those algorithms. And algorithm is a really hard word to say. But, anyway, really took it over.

Really, things it became incredibly clear and has been increasing that that’s what’s being prioritized, that short form video, particularly short form video that is getting good engagement.

Yeah. And, everything else either sort of hits to a lesser degree or you know, one thing I would be interested in talking about, although we this, we don’t have any answers about either, is, the number of creators who feel they’re being actively suppressed.

So that’s that’s another little wrinkle here Right.

Where I think when we’re normally talking about whether something is appealing to the algorithm, the algorithm rhythm’s pushing it. We’re thinking either it is being pushed or it is being ignored. But to think about it being actively dampened down is this whole other thing.

Right.

So but that’s not part of setting the table.

Yeah.

That is already eating dessert, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. At least second course.

Right? Right. Right. So we have to talk about platform feed ranking.

And platform feed ranking is the process that social media platforms use and other content platforms to personalize the order of content in your feed instead of displaying it in chronological order. And I think we, I have noted the noticed this a lot more lately, maybe.

It’s been all all over the place for, like, at least the last year, if not longer.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So things that are maybe several days old are now showing up in my current feed. And so that is all that platform feed ranking, and that is informed by this by the algorithm.

Let’s see. What else? What other things can we set the table? We already talked a little bit about that short form video. Stories, reels, those things, have been continually innovated.

They’re continually being prioritized on these platforms.

Recommendation engines are another thing to know about. That’s AI powered software that filters the content and products to offer personalized suggestions to the users. They improve they quote unquote, what this research I found is that it improves their experience by increasing sales.

According to who. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. And customer loyalty. So recommendation engine. So these are the things you know, those recommendation engines are behind your platform feed, behind what you’re going to be seeing. And the more you interact with something else, the more likely that is to show up in your feed.

And on top of all of that, we pile on the fact that our habits as consumers are shifting.

Doomscrolling is gonna be in the Webster’s dictionary in the next edition, by the way.

It’s the thing I just heard.

So doomscrolling is one of the ways that our, habits are shifting. People are on these platforms and just getting into rabbit holes of I mean, and I think people go both ways. Yeah.

You maybe are dooms controlling and getting just I think what I have seen, and maybe this is just this is a, this is an audience of one, that the on the short form video platforms, I am using my same behavior that I was using on Facebook.

But on Facebook, I would see a headline

And only consume the headline and maybe not move past maybe not move beyond that and just keep scrolling.

Yeah.

Now on short form video platforms, I and other consumers are not watching whole videos. We are consuming the first few seconds Right.

And moving on. Yeah. Right? Until we find something that really catches our interest and keeps us there long enough.

So there is a lot going on there. We have the algorithm, which is informed by all of this AI and all of these things looking for what it thinks we want, and our behavior is informing it.

And then we have the discussion of reach versus impression versus engagement and all of that. So we’re layer, layer, layer, layer at this point. Right. Impressions are the total number of times something is displayed. So not number of times it’s shown Yeah. To people.

And reach is the unique number of users seeing it. Engagement is their interactions.

Now the thing about engagement is it stops being tied to especially on platforms like TikTok where you can engage in multiple ways, that stops being tied to a strict number of people. So you could have one person that on TikTok engages four different ways.

Right.

And you all of these, all of these tie in together. Increasing numbers on any of these things can’t be seen as bad necessarily.

True. Yeah.

But I think we reach and impressions were really, a pretty key dynamic for for social media for a long time. And truly, not only are they declining for especially for business accounts, unless these are unless you’re paying Right. Paying to play. But those impressions really mean less because people are you know, that habit is people are scrolling.

So you’re in their feed. Right. But they’re not consuming you. Right. They’re not seeing actually what you’re saying.

Yep. And so that can sort of mislead people into, marketers in particular, non marketers who have to do marketing too, into believing, you know, we have great impressions. We have great reach. Why aren’t we getting sales?

Well, the answer could be, you have those numbers, but your engagement is not good.

Yeah.

Nobody’s actually paying attention.

Right.

So there. Table set.

It’s a bountiful table.

There’s so much on this table right now. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, to, like, go borderline conspiracy theorist on this, maybe Go all the way.

Dark Internet or dark web on this.

What I think is really interesting and probably is some version of what I’m gonna bring up is, like, really what’s behind all of this that could be impactful to understand, and we also never will because it’s a secret and is tied to things like ad revenue and stuff like that is, like, what kind of engagement is being measured, is being observed, and then decisions are being made off of it. Something as simple as, like, scrolling past something and then realizing, oh, what was that? And then scrolling back to it. You know? Are the platforms measuring like, oh, they came back to this thing for some reason, so let’s serve them more content like that. Or it’s got some kind of a hook or something that means, okay. We need to give them more content like that.

So, you know, we’re not liking, commenting, sharing, doing any of the traditional engagement stuff that, you know, platforms typically measure or we’re getting in our reports and stuff.

But there’s a different kind of engagement that the platform itself is noticing and then serving you different things in different ways or more of something because

Of something like that. And I I feel like, I mean, I am certainly not studying this. I am not, tracking my own, interactivity. And, honestly, I’m hate to say it.

As a marketer, I’m probably not on social media enough to really provide, like, a ton of relevant feedback here. Yeah. And I prob that’s probably me glossing over how much time I actually spend on social media. It’s probably more than I you know, I should probably give myself a little more credit as a marketer or researcher of this topic.

But I do feel like I’ve noticed some things, stuff like that, like, of course, like, clicking on something and then all of a sudden, that’s what you see in your feed a ton. Like, that’s the easy one to make a connection to. But some of that other behavior too that is maybe happening in the platform, like scrolling back to something Or stuff that’s happening outside of the platform too, like websites you’re visiting, shopping you’re doing, stuff you’re saying around your devices, you know, and and all of those things, playing into each other so that you get served something specific. And I I

do think that it’s intentionally not obvious.

There’s a lot of, you know, research and money and resources being put behind serving people something that they want to see whether they think they do or not.

Do you really think it’s not obvious? I think I hear people commenting on it all the time.

Yeah. Do I think what’s obvious?

That it’s not you said maybe it’s intentionally not obvious or that it’s not I’m recording this, so I could probably go back and tell you exactly what you said. But Yeah. Yeah. But you said something like that it’s maybe intentionally not obvious, but I think it’s incredibly obvious Yeah. Not to pick a fight.

Sure.

I I don’t know. I don’t know if I agree with you. Give me an example maybe. If you even wanna solve this.

Right.

I think the fact that you and I aren’t immediately on the same page about this tells me that there’s at least some truth to it not being totally obvious. Like, you have to have had the experience where something shows up in your feed and you’re like, what the hell? Like, why is this here? You know?

And if you spent enough time digging into it or you had even, like, the first layer of information as to how the algorithm is built and how it works and stuff, maybe you could connect the dots to, like, I got served that because this or because of that or, you know, whatever it might be.

But Right.

I think we can probably, like, put all of the variables out on the table. Like, it’s either I clicked on something or my spouse clicked on something or I said something around my HomePod or this or that or, you know, we could put all those variables on the table, but the not obvious part is which one of them is being played at the time that the hand is, you know, being played, you know. And Yeah.

That’s the not obvious part to me.

Yeah. There you know, and I can I can identify with that feeling of, something popping up and going, oh, oh, I that is something that like, I know I know it’s one of these amorphous things that put that here?

But, so it’s sometimes it’s a little bit of a surprise.

Yeah. Which one? Why? And and for me, why now is most often the question I get.

Like, what? Yeah. Not just, like, old content, but, like, I mean, this is something I maybe would have been interested in ten years ago. Or I don’t know.

I think you get it.

Yeah. I do get it. I do get it. That’s okay.

But yeah. Let let’s maybe let’s bring this back to the title a little bit, you know, in this, you know, authenticity versus algorithm topic. You know? Let’s let’s say that we could totally understand the algorithm.

Right? Like, what are you doing as a business to take that knowledge? Because we do have some knowledge of it or and are even hearing things from the platforms themselves saying, like, this kind of stuff will do well. I remember when Facebook Live was the new thing, and there was direct advice from Meta saying, like, you should put live videos out there.

Yeah. Those will get lots of views. You know?

So, like, even if we knew some of that stuff, like, what are we doing with it to deliver on what we’re selling, on our brand promise, on all those things.

So which I don’t know if we wanna get into that now or if that’s just a segue to something in the future.

No. That’s where we’re at. Let’s talk about, you know, we’ve talked about what the algorithm is and when it’s what it can do.

But what do we do about that? Because, chasing that especially chasing it, especially knowing that it is somewhat of a mystery.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about authenticity a little bit. Right?

Maybe start by defining it, what it actually means beyond I mean, sadly Are you gonna set the table? I’m totally set on the table.

You know, it’s interesting that, a way to define authenticity is by using a bunch of buzzwords, and authenticity has kind of become its own buzzword. Right? But yeah. You know, what is it? Consistency, vulnerability, clarity, alignment with your values.

I do think that authenticity is an interesting word in that, it is something that businesses that people bear the burden to deliver on.

And at the same time, the recipient has to understand a certain amount of things or has to be open minded enough to know when something is authentic and when it’s not. You know? So it’s kinda like this two way street.

But at at the end of the day, we do know that it’s important. There’s plenty of research, and you brought a really excellent data point to the conversation that, says that eighty six percent of consumers say that authenticity matters in brand choice and that sixty percent believe that brands fail to deliver on it.

So That hurts. Six in ten businesses That gets me right to the point.

Is that they’re not Yeah. Yeah, delivering authenticity. So, I mean and it hurts you and it hurts us because of, I think, the emphasis that we’ve put on Delivering authenticity, being being real with people, being all of those things, transparent, vulnerable, clear, you know, all that. But it, I mean, sorry.

In the most authentic way. Right?

Yeah.

Just doing it to do it or saying it because we want to do it. You know?

Yeah. And there is an inherent challenge in being completely authentic and also having a huge business and having different business units and all of the things that take takes a massive amount of management to always deliver on your brand promises, to always live up to your core values.

There are places, you know, I if I just pulled one out of the sky, I guess Zappos is the one that has been kind of the gold standard.

Sure.

People buy from Zappos anymore. I just I haven’t really thought about Zappos in a long time. Yeah.

But that, you know, in terms of customer service and, you know, they were always the one that we were studying, you know, for years.

They were Right.

We were studying them and how they deliver across every interaction. Yeah. And that, you know, that doesn’t come easy.

Right. Yeah. I do feel like, the reason or a reason that they were, you know, kind of, like, under that microscope for such a long time is because they were they were doing it really well and doing it really well in a couple of the, like, most important, aspects of interaction with a brand to deliver authenticity, which I think is company culture, which was a big thing that they, you know, were studied on a ton, and then their customer experience too. Those two things.

You know? I I do think that there’s enough, like, allowable volatility, if that’s a term, in, like, quality of your product and some of those other things that I think are easy to see and observe or get feedback on in, like, a survey or something. You know? But some of that stuff that’s, like, really core to who you are, how you operate, how your clients, customers, members, whatever perceive you, you know, speaking of the customer experience stuff.

I feel like those are two things that they were just doing so so well and so visibly well that they were it was an easy association with, like, yes. Authenticity equals apples. You know what I mean?

Right. Right.

So yeah. But and and, you know, the thing is, it’s easy to point to their company culture and, their customer experience. Maybe because it was so visible, maybe because it was so awesome, genuinely awesome. But I think there’s other ways to deliver on authenticity that doesn’t necessarily mean, like, corporate culture that everyone’s gonna write about and study Or, a customer experience that’s so amazing. It changes people’s lives or is mind blowing or anything like that.

Right.

Let’s talk about McDonald’s.

You know? I think they deliver on an authenticity through their customer experience and their product experience and that it does not matter which one you go to. The fries will taste the same.

Right.

The speed will be, you know, relatively the same.

Of course, there’s, you know, the one store where the ice cream machine’s always broken, and broken, and I haven’t heard about that in a while.

I’m actually It’s not just one. I think that’s the problem.

But, but, you know, that’s, I think, part of them delivering on what they’re authentically selling and showing and and telling and all that.

Right. And and that is a brand that has known who they were and what they were doing for a long, long time.

You know, that’s And crafted that from the very beginning.

Right. That’s an interesting point, actually, that there’s maybe this, like, scale, sliding scale. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s sliding scale. Doesn’t matter. There’s You know what?

That scale. It’s a big spectrum.

Maybe it’s just a cutroom.

It could be. Could be a teeter totter. We don’t know.

Right. Where there is a connection to, like, longevity and just the ability to, like, know oneself or know a company itself before you can, like, truly deliver on this on authenticity thing. You know?

Because there’s so much to learn over time about your internal processes, how your clients your customers respond to things, how you’re like, where you fall on the BS meter when it comes to company culture and things like that and and those kind of changes to, like, really deliver on something amazing.

Like, some companies do it faster than other, and that’s the spectrum or the scale that I’m talking about. But, generally, most of the time, darn near all the time, it takes a lot of time to figure those things out to be able to do it so well Right.

That you’re gonna be studied or you know?

Yeah. So let me here’s my hot take on that.

That. I think when you look at when you look at a company like McDonald’s, Ray Kroc knew what he wanted. He knew what he wanted to do.

AKA Michael Keaton. Right?

Also, you know what? Hashtag my Batman. Yeah. Yes. He yeah. That’s all I can think about is that movie now.

Yeah. Sorry.

It’s okay. But he he knew what he wanted and started from the beginning with it, what he wanted to do. And I think so many companies, start with this idea of we’re going to make money.

And everything else is sort of reverse reverse created. Right? So we wanna make money. We want to make this widget because we figured out how to make this widget. Now we have to figure out how we get people to want it. We have to figure out you know? And then this ties into the authenticity conversation because they then are reverse engineering this quote, unquote story.

When the authentic story would be, like, I you know, we decided we just liked buttloads of money.

And we wanted just money raining down on us, and that was why we went into business. But if that is when you go into business with that in mind, you know, you then have to do all of this work.

And I think that there are people who, there may be two kinds of people. You either revert you either back yourself into that, right, and discover it in the way like, oh, well, this this was my purpose. I didn’t stop and think about what this purpose was. I didn’t, do this work ahead of time. I thought it was about this, but then I realized, you know, I do have this reasoning behind it so you can back into it.

Or you never get there, and then you just you I think you struggle

Forever Yeah.

To figure out, why people would want your product, and you’re constantly reinventing that. And then that all feels inauthentic.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we gotta bring this back to social media a bit and, like, authentic I mean, I do think talking about authenticity as it relates to things like company culture, your products and services, stuff like like that’s important.

It’s gotta start there for sure because then that helps, you know, inform how you position yourself on social media and things like that.

Or it doesn’t, and then you’re inauthentic. Right?

But Right.

Right. What you know, someone asks, like, okay.

How do I make sure that I’m prioritizing authenticity

On social media? And, like, how do I even know, like, if people are responding to that, or am I doing it the right way? Like, what advice do you give someone? What do you say? Or what have you learned in your extensive research?

Well, in my extensive research and, and also my storied career.

The the answer to that is what you what you you learn by doing, you learn by trying.

And, you know, when when we get back into that conversation about social media, you learn by looking at engagement, especially now, where engagement really is that indicator, with impressions being a far leading indicator.

Right. Engagement being a lagging indicator. Right? So that is if you are hitting the mark, you your indicate your engagement will indicate that. You will learn something from it.

And that’s why I think it’s so important that you that you don’t abandon ship when you don’t immediately get, you know, massive kudos for being authentically you. Yeah. Because number one, you have to find your people.

So you could you could have a business that has a great story, has excellent purpose, that you are living everything that you set out to do. And if you are not in the place or you just haven’t gotten enough visibility that your people aren’t seeing you, you’re going to feel like you’re just spinning your wheels. You’re doing something wrong.

Which is why it’s so important to understand exactly what we’re talking about today. How algorithms are going to affect your reach, and your engagement and how to continue, you know, really to, push yourself to be authentic and to keep there’s sort of these dueling things you have to keep in mind.

And keep I I’m I’m trying to put a bow on this, and I don’t want the bow to be keep doing it until you get it right. Yeah. Because I I think that’s I think that’s faulty advice because we know you could you could think, oh, I just haven’t found my people. And you could also be sucking at what you’re doing. You could just not be good. So it’s, it’s that iterative way of testing. You chain you do something.

You change a little something about it. You don’t rewrite the whole playbook, and you do that over and over and over again. And eventually, something will hit. Yeah.

And then it is, and then it becomes vital to pause and analyze the thing that hit and figure out how you can re recreate it without copying and pasting it. That is something that, that I have seen people fall into that trap of saying, well, this is the thing that gets engagement. So let’s just do exactly that thing Yeah. Until the heat death of the universe.

Let’s never change that.

Yeah.

And that’s not really the solution either. You, what we can do is analyze what it was about that thing and try and recreate it in different ways. Then, again, you’re iterating. Right?

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Okay. It’s an iterative process. Yeah. And everybody loves it when a marketer says that.

Yeah. Right? No. I think there’s truth in what you’re saying because the opposite of it or some version on the other side of it is really counteractive to what we talked about at the beginning, which is just like this, I don’t know, kind of, like, piece you have to be, at in knowing that you don’t know what what exactly the algorithm is, how exactly it works, and, you know, which things you might be able to do to completely change all of your data that you care about. You know what I mean?

Right.

So, like, I I don’t think there’s any denying that, And to the iterative thing, which can feel buzzwordy and

Like an excuse or something.

We also know that the algorithm is always changing. So, like, even the folks that get it right and are doing it well, they have to keep changing because things are always changing. You know? Right. And, again, I don’t think there’s any denying that. So Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I in my extensive research, as you mentioned, I have a good example, I think, of what what that can look like, that authentic authenticity.

I don’t know which word is harder to say. Authenticity or algorithm. But, and it is it’s Duolingo. We spent we on our team spend a lot of time watching Duolingo because, besides the fact that there are several of us that are addicted to being on the leaderboard.

The one lesson we can learn from Duolingo is not just by looking at what they’re doing now with marketing, but to start back and look into this is my extensive research right here.

Yeah.

Look into where they started, which was, trying they started online trying to prioritize demonstrating the learning in the platform. Right? And really showing it as this educational platform.

And it is, but the educational it’s a great way to learn, but the educational aspect of it isn’t really the defining feature. It’s the engagement.

So they shifted and I I thought there was this was really interesting to hear this. They shifted basically what they were doing online. And particularly, if you go on TikTok and find Duolingo, it’s it’s not Nutter Butter crazy, but they do some crazy stuff. Yeah.

And, basically, they shifted their social media to mirror what the platform the goals of the platform, which is continued engagement

Rather than, I mean, the the primary end of the day goal is they want people to be able to learn languages.

They know that the way to do that is to encourage, in almost an addictive way, the engagement.

And so they mirrored that on social media, and it took off. People love, you know, love interacting with and, seeing what Duolingo’s doing. And it’s the same it’s that same addictive quality, I think Yeah. In the nicest way possible. Yeah. So I thought that I thought that was a really interesting little microcosm, little case study.

Yeah. Yeah. The, word that you use that, is perfect and terrifying is addiction.

Right.

Because I do think that that’s, if there’s a secret ingredient to the algorithm, if it’s a recipe It’s, that. Yeah. You know?

Which, you know, addiction isn’t an ingredient, but how do you make your content, your conversations, your artwork, your words, whatever it might be Right.

Addictive because that’s definitely what they’re looking for. You know? More users on the platform, more consistently to get more views on ads and all of those things that make them money. Right?

Right.

So Right.

And, oh, brother, it’s it’s all about lighting up the little synapses in people’s brains. And that’s what we do.

Yeah.

It’s all about looking at, you know, what excites people, what moves them, what creates any emotion in them.

And depending and that is the thing about social media that you can find and really broadly. We we should expand it to things like Reddit.

You can find whatever emotion you want.

Sure.

And you can keep hitting that, you know, like a like a gerbil on a Yeah.

Hitting a little bar to get little pellets. Right?

Yeah.

So and you can, much like Duolingo, you can just keep satisfying that desire to do it. And that I think is that makes it an interesting challenge for a lot of marketers because I don’t think everybody and and I also would not advise everybody. I don’t think everybody is ready to really get into the addictive nature and to think, you know, to think about.

I hate to use the word manipulation, but I you know, I what I prefer to use, especially, like, if I’m talking to our team or something, like, we want it to be evocative. We want it to be compelling. Right? But things that are evocative and compelling, they’re it’s not that, it’s a nice way to say manipulator.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Yeah.

I think the thing where social media is just a bit different than everything else that we do is the unlimited access.

You know? Right.

So, I mean, I think we can create evocative and compelling content that’s delivered a bunch of other ways that’s very difficult for people to get that hit.

To use a very traditional form of advertising, a billboard or something. Like, take a lot of work to spin around the block to see that thing.

And then, also, you’re gonna see the same thing, so it’s not gonna have the same effect.

But Yeah.

You know, that that access is key to it. And I don’t know. This is probably a whole different episode. But, you know, speaking of authenticity, you know, like, we’ve got a really interesting challenge as marketers to responsibly activate these tools that we have at our fingertips. You know? And, part of it is playing into the systems that we have access to, like social media to, deliver evocative comp, content or, shoot, I’ll say it, like, manipulate people to doing the thing that we want them to do or who knows, even get them addicted to our content. You know?

Right.

That is our job. You know? But how do we do that ethically?

How do we, you know, yeah, do that safely?

Right. Especially when you’re talking about some of the products and services that a lot of our clients, credit unions are delivering, you know, financial services and stuff where, you know, manipulation to get somebody to click on a ad and or click, like, or follow to get more silly content is one thing. To get them to take out a loan that they don’t need, that’s another.

Right.

You know? And so, and there’s a lot of, you know, safety mechanisms in place and stuff to make sure that our power with that is limited and stuff.

But the power is still there on some level, and so it’s, you know, it’s just an interesting challenge that we have to get people to do a thing we want them to do while also not hurting anyone.

Right. Right.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of companies out there that are fully comfortable with getting people to do the thing that we want them to do knowing that they’re hurting people.

But Yeah.

Yeah. And it it and it comes back to something that we’ve talked about as a team before that, you know, that concept of whatever we do, our purpose is to be doing good.

Right.

To bringing good into the world. Yeah. Yeah. And when you when you think of when you think about the difference between the I don’t think we should say form I’m gonna form a sentence.

I don’t think we should really look at authenticity versus the algorithm, even though I already know that’s gonna be the name of this episode. Yeah. But it really is, I think, I’m coming around to this idea, that it is how how do they interact with each other? How do you leverage the algorithm to, to demonstrate your authenticity?

How do you do it authentically? Yeah. And, and it is bringing good to the world, being of value to people. You you know, you it is I think it’s simple to get people addicted to, I don’t know, short videos of guys getting hit in the face with baseballs or, you know, whatever.

It’s simple to get people addicted to things that are not creating alter creating good in the world.

And there are certain people, I think, that are prone to looking for things that are, you know, developmentally healthy, whatever you wanna call it. But there’s this whole group in the middle, this eighty percent that, you know, we always see on the bell curve that we need to we need to we need to find a way to get them interacting with authentic, good, healthy, useful things that are not just guys getting hit in the face with face calls. Face is not was not gonna be my go through, by the way. I get you.

Everybody’s filling in that blank.

We can Okay. Good. It’s good. That’s good.

Yeah. No. It’s a I mean, a really nice, like, way to kinda full circle the topic on, you know, authenticity being more than, like, what your social media content is and stuff. Like, it is your product, your services, how you deliver it, your customer experience, your company culture, like, all of those things. You know? And, I mean, to, bring it back to another exam or to an example I used previously in McDonald’s, like, there are as much as, you know, they can kinda be painted as evil mega corp and all of this stuff, I’m sure there’s some things about McDonald’s that I don’t love or whatever.

McDonald’s has delivered on some things for me that have been, like, pretty important moments, micro moments. You know? Definitely micro compared to the rest of life relatively. But, you know, times that, like, shoot, man.

I needed food, and I was on an island, and that’s where it that’s where I got it from or, you know, it made my kids happier, you know, whatever. Right? You know? So, like, I think that sometimes the connection between the authenticity of how you operate as a company and what value your products and services deliver and how you might be perceived on social media or how your, how well you interact with the algorithm and all these things.

Like, there there can be a quite visible disconnect between those two things.

And as long as you’re doing things ethically, you know, on the high road and all of that, I think it’s I think you can I don’t know? This feels unauthentic me saying it, but I think you can check the box. You can check both boxes of, you know, like, feeding the algorithm and delivering on authenticity.

Right.

You know?

Right. Well and circling back to this idea of things posts or things on social media that are being, throttled. That is maybe one maybe one thing, and I don’t have a solution for it. And I also just like the rest of the algorithm, I can’t promise you that when I hear a creator say, you know, my my posts are being Throttled.

I’m being demonetized. Yeah. You know, they’re trying to, they’re not showing me to people. I’m sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

You’re probably right.

I have no reason to not believe you. Yeah. But I don’t have any proof of it. I mean, what what you see I don’t wanna get too far off on this topic.

But when I see that, generally, people will say like, they’ll bring data. So I created this video. It had that many impressions. I created a video that was substantially like it, and the impressions were a quarter of what the last one was.

So they were not showing it.

Right.

Right? And that’s the, you know, again, that’s the impression side of it. It is not going to people. If you can’t get impression’s not everything. But if you can’t get any impressions Yeah.

You then can’t get the engagement, which is Right.

You know, really key.

Yeah.

So, so what I think, one, you know, we’re circling into this. I feel like we’ve been all over the place.

I it’s okay. We’re circling into sort of capping it off with advice. Yeah. One thing I think that we can do is if you feel like you are being suppressed, or your content you know, suddenly your content is not going where you think it should be going, examine that and find out why. Now bring that back to authenticity.

If it is because of something you authentically are, if it is a message that you authentically feel you need to have, you don’t get to reverse course. You’re like, oh, now I’m this guy.

Right.

And I’m doing this thing. So can’t necessarily solve that throttling of you That way. But, also, you know, we have some experience on social media working with brands that are financial.

And they social media platforms for good reason, because of pertinent laws in the country, can be kind of persnickety Right.

About how ads can be and things that you can post.

Right.

So you you need to appease the algorithm there and make sure that you are creating content, that stays legal and above board and is not going to be suppressed.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, consistency is the word we’re talking about here. Right? Like, if you’re if you’re gonna be authentic, authenticity is what got you where you are.

Like, don’t steer away from that just to get Right. Results. I mean, I suppose there’s an exception, like, a business that is solely dependent on social media traffic and engagement and stuff to continue to survive.

There’s probably businesses like that out there. Right? But, also, like, if social media is the only thing that you’re doing to get you work, like, there’s probably something wrong with your business model. You know? So, like, stay consistent and lean into those other things that are getting you work while you figure it out. You know? And, like, again, I I say all of this with the disclaimer that I don’t know how it all works.

But, it’s also pretty safe to say that, like, time will get you where you wanna be. You know? Like, just give it some time and stay the course. Stay consistent.

Right. Yeah. I think another thing is, related to authenticity, related to what we’re saying, is to not and I’ll just call it out, to not be performative. Yeah. And make sure that what you are saying online matches how you really do your business.

Or or this is my caveat for that. If what you’re saying online does not match your business today, you better be moving toward it.

Right. Right. Yep.

So It’s alright if it’s a little aspirational.

Right. Yeah. Right. But you better have a plan.

Doug’s just because you when you get called out on it and you will.

Yeah. Yeah. Somebody’s gonna notice.

Yeah. Yeah.

I love the tip of, not over optimizing Or, you know, going all in on the last thing that you heard, or maybe you even got directly from the platform saying that, hey. This works and will get you views. And I’ll use Facebook Live videos as this example Yeah.

For sure because I there’s a few pages or businesses that I follow where every time I see it, I’m like, oh, you’re still doing Facebook Live, You know?

You know?

Haven’t given that up yet.

You know? Just and, specifically, I mean, I think there’s still times where Facebook Live is perfectly fine, and it’s exactly the way to put information out there or something. But just seeing what information they’re sharing and stuff, it’s like, yeah. There’s there’s a better way to do that, and you’re probably only doing it because you’re kind of stuck in that optimizing for, oh, yeah. I heard that this is a great way to get reach. And it’s like, well Yeah. It was, you know, but things have changed.

Right. So Right.

Also, it could come back around. And if you stay consistent with that, who knows? Maybe you’ll just wind up crushing it.

But Who knows?

Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I do I think it sort of correlates to, this is my opinion.

You can argue with me. It correlates to what we saw with websites and SEO where, you know, initially, people were just building websites. They were billboards. Yeah.

And you were putting any information you could possibly think of on the website, then we became you know, Google became not just more important, but as the most important thing, in in Google’s mind.

And suddenly, everyone was optimizing things for Google and, quote, unquote, optimizing their SEO, and then pages became unreadable Yeah. Junky Right. With all of these words because they were trying to think of every search term that people could be thinking of and cramming it into these pages. And then the advice came to say, hey. But this also has to be readable. Yeah. And, so I think sort of a similar thing here that if you push to just optimize for the algorithm, you and you’re gonna end up with garbage.

Right.

And, by also, by the time you figure out how you can push to optimize for the algorithm, three weeks will have passed and the algorithm will have changed. Yeah. Right. So Right. Which is which is why often the authentic content done well, done with research in mind, pay attention to your analytics and how things are you know, that that is the algorithm part of it. Pay attention to the results you’re getting.

Yeah.

And you will see how the algorithm is affecting you.

And then you adjust as needed. Do the right things. Do them frequently. Repeat them.

Yeah.

And when they stop working, try something else. Change. Yeah.

Yes.

And then, of course, all of this to say, all of that, great advice about try a million things and do an optimized and, iterate.

Stay consistent.

Stay consistent. We also know that, you have to understand your own practical constraints.

If you have a small team, if you don’t have a lot of money, if you begin to burn out trying to do this, hey. Hey. We only get one life. Yeah.

And we gotta do this right too. Yeah. So, yeah, that’s just good life advice.

That is.

So be kind to yourself. Don’t follow it.

That’s that bow you were looking for, but I’m my bow.

Awesome bow on the episode because I do think it’s important. Like, it’s very easy to get caught up in the advice and the research and your own metrics and all that stuff. And it is important to remember you’re probably facing some kind of limitation and, you know, at at the very least acknowledge it.

I’m not saying, like, don’t keep pushing, but Right.

Acknowledge that you only have so much time. Your team’s only so big. You know? You’ve got other stuff to do. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. And that’s okay. Do your best. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, I see, for the record listener, Sue always puts together fantastic notes for our episodes. Stop. And these are the most comprehensive notes for any episode to date. And at the end of them are some excellent, useful links that I imagine we’ll be sharing.

We can share some of those. Yes.

Absolutely. We’ll share links. There just a ton of information here. And you could, and this might be from personal experience.

You could really go down a rabbit hole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But, you know, check out some of these links, read some of this information, and, we always wanna hear from you. So you if you can find this podcast, you can sure find us. Yep. So we welcome your comments. We love creating these episodes of Osmology for you, and we are always excited to have you here with us even if it becomes a rambling pile of expert, but slightly confused opinions. And you can always learn more about us at our website, exclamation q s o dot com, and find us on your favorite podcast app.

Thanks, Sue. Thanks, friends, for tuning in. Be awesome, and see you next time.

The Awesomology podcast is a production of exclamation services. Executive producers are myself, Ben Bauer, and my friend, Suzanne Campbell.

Thanks to Kylie Ganther for our show artwork, Scott Saager for booking our guests, and Alex Westerhausen for social media support.