Your reach has dropped, or the account has been stuck at the same follower count month after month. It is tempting to blame the algorithm. But the platforms have actually described how their feeds work, in blog posts, help pages and engineering blogs. Here is what Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube say themselves, what it means for a business and how more people start following your account without you buying them.

Two things first. There is no single algorithm. Instagram says Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels each have their own ranking, and in practice the same applies on the other platforms. And the platforms don’t tell you everything. So this guide is based only on their own descriptions, each one dated. Where a detail comes from a secondary source, applies only to the US or comes from the platform’s own data, we say so. Swedish usage figures come from Svenskarna och internet 2026, the Swedish Internet Foundation’s annual survey. Everything is as of 15 October 2026, and the sources are at the end.

Five things every platform rewards in 2026

The wording differs, but when you put the platforms’ descriptions side by side, the same five things keep coming up:

What is rewardedWhat the platforms sayWhat it means for you
1. People stoppingInstagram’s head counts watch time among the three most important signals. TikTok calls watching a longer video to the end a strong signal. LinkedIn predicts how long people read, and YouTube whether viewers stick around.The first seconds and the first line decide. No filler.
2. People sending on and savingAccording to Instagram’s head, sends, meaning shares in messages, matter slightly more when a post is shown to new people. In Explore, likes, saves and shares matter most. TikTok and LinkedIn count shares, Pinterest saves.Make things someone wants to send to a friend or save for later.
3. Original contentMeta has deprioritised unoriginal content since March 2026. TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest have similar rules or advice.Film and photograph things yourself. Don’t post other people’s clips.
4. A clear topicLinkedIn matches posts to topics using language models. Instagram and Facebook let users choose topics themselves, and TikTok reads captions, sounds and hashtags, among other things.Say what the post is about, in words and in the picture.
5. Satisfied viewersYouTube asks viewers whether they were satisfied. Facebook and YouTube take into account when someone chooses Not interested, and Facebook predicts how likely you are to scroll past.Don’t promise anything in the headline the post doesn’t deliver.

What is missing is just as interesting. TikTok wrote as early as 2020 that neither follower count nor previous high-performing videos are direct factors. In January 2025, Instagram wrote that ranking used to favour creators with larger followings, but that creators of all sizes now have an equal chance of reaching new audiences with Reels.

Instagram: watch time, likes and sends per reach

Instagram’s most recent official overview dates from 31 May 2023 and was written by Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri. It explains how the four parts of the app rank content:

  • Feed is based mainly on your activity, information about the post, information about the person who posted it and your history of interacting with that person. Among other things, Instagram predicts whether you will spend a few seconds on the post, comment, like, share or tap the profile photo.
  • Stories are ranked by your viewing history, your engagement history and how close you are to the account.
  • Explore gives more weight to how popular a post is, and likes, saves and shares are the most important reactions. Instagram also looks at how many people react and how quickly.
  • Reels predicts whether you will reshare the reel, watch it to the end, like it or go to the audio page. According to Instagram, most of what people see in Reels comes from accounts they don’t follow.

In a video in January 2025, as reported by Social Media Today, Mosseri went further. The three signals that matter most, he said, are watch time, likes and sends. His advice was to look at average watch time, likes per reach and sends per reach in your insights. Likes matter slightly more for content shown to followers, and sends slightly more for content shown to people who don’t follow the account.

What gets shown to fewer people. Instagram says reels that are low-resolution, watermarked, muted, have borders, are mostly text or have already been posted on Instagram get less visibility. Instagram is also less likely to recommend reposted reels, content with noticeable watermarks and accounts that collect and reshare other people’s content. Hashtags are capped at five per post, according to Instagram’s Help Centre. In January 2026, Meta wrote that the prevalence of original content on Instagram in the US had risen by 10 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2025, and that 75 percent of recommendations now come from original posts. Meta doesn’t say whether the second figure applies only to the US.

How to read this in your insights: look less at the total number of likes and more at the ratios. A post with few likes but many sends is probably reaching new people. Instagram also recommends breaking down your reach by followers and non-followers in your insights. The share of non-followers shows how far you reach beyond your own circle.

Example: a restaurant filming this week’s new dish for 15 seconds probably has a better chance of being sent on (“shall we go here on Friday?”) than a photo of the sign with the opening hours. You need both, but they do different jobs.

TikTok: what the For You feed is based on

TikTok’s Help Centre divides its recommendations into three kinds of factors:

  • User interactions: what you like, share, comment on and watch in full or skip, and which accounts you follow back.
  • Content information: sounds, hashtags, number of views and the country where the content was posted.
  • User information: device and language settings, location, time zone, day and device type.

For most users, interactions carry the most weight, for example how long you watch a particular video. In its original description from June 2020, TikTok wrote that finishing a longer video from beginning to end is a strong indicator of interest, and that neither follower count nor previous high-performing videos are direct factors. The feed is also deliberately mixed, so you rarely see two videos in a row from the same creator.

What isn’t eligible for For You. TikTok’s Community Guidelines, in force since 24 September 2026, say that content with unoriginal or reused material without anything new is not eligible for the For You feed. The same applies to content that tries to manipulate people into increasing likes or follows. A video that doesn’t make it into For You can still be found through search or on your profile, and TikTok points out that a video with few views hasn’t necessarily broken a rule. Your analytics show whether a video is ineligible for recommendation.

What this means for a local business: a new account can reach people from its very first video, because follower count isn’t a direct factor. TikTok also lists the country where the content was posted and the viewer’s location among its signals. That suggests location matters, but TikTok doesn’t say how much. Whether the business should be on TikTok at all is a separate question, which we cover in Do local businesses need to be on TikTok?

Facebook: original content first

Meta publishes its own description of how the Facebook Feed works, most recently updated on 6 October 2026. The AI system first gathers all the posts you could see from friends, Pages you follow and groups you belong to. Then it considers signals such as who created the post, how you have interacted with that person or Page before, whether the post is a photo, a video or a link, and how many of your friends have liked it. A lightweight model selects around 500 posts, which are then given a relevance score and sorted. Among the things the system predicts is how likely you are to scroll past a post without interacting. Suggested content from accounts you don’t follow is handled by a different system.

Original content is prioritised. In March 2026, Meta wrote that unoriginal content will likely be deprioritised in Feed and Reels. Unoriginal content includes re-uploading things you had no role in creating, low-value changes to someone else’s content such as adding borders or captions or changing the speed, and reels where you just watch along, react or stitch other people’s clips together without adding anything. Accounts that continue to post primarily unoriginal content may be deemed non-recommendable and demonetised. Meta says views and watch time for original reels on Facebook roughly doubled in the second half of 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier, without saying in which countries.

What gets distributed to fewer people:

  • Long captions full of hashtags, or captions unrelated to the content. Such accounts are shown only to their followers, Meta said in April 2025.
  • Engagement bait, meaning posts that explicitly ask for likes, shares, comments, tags or votes for anything other than a specific call to action, such as finding a missing person or raising money. This is set out in Meta’s Content Distribution Guidelines.
  • Coordinated fake engagement. Comments Meta identifies as fake are seen less.

Why reach may have dropped. Part of the explanation lies outside the feed. In Sweden, according to Svenskarna och internet 2026, 69 percent of internet users aged 8 and over have used Facebook in the past year, a stable share, but daily use has fallen from 54 percent in 2021 to 45 percent. Fewer people opening the app every day means fewer chances to see your post.

Since 2025, all videos on Facebook have been shared as reels, and Meta says publishing a reel with a public audience gives it added reach. And since 13 October 2026, Meta has been rolling out a feature that lets users steer their recommendations in their own words. More on that further down.

LinkedIn: the rebuilt feed from March 2026

On 12 March 2026, LinkedIn described a new feed, both in its pressroom and on its engineering blog.

Retrieval is based on topics. A single system based on large language models finds posts that match your interests. It understands that topics are related even when the words differ, and it can retrieve posts both from your network and from professionals you have never been in touch with.

Ranking is based on your history. A so-called Generative Recommender reads more than a thousand of your past interactions as a sequence. It predicts whether you will click, scroll past, read for a long time, like, comment or share. About you, it uses professional signals such as industry, experience, skills and location. About the post, it uses the format, the author, the author’s headline and company and the text itself, among other things. According to LinkedIn, demographics are never used.

What LinkedIn is curbing: engagement pods, meaning groups that like and comment on each other’s posts by arrangement, automated comments and tools that create fake conversations. LinkedIn is also reducing recycled, low-substance material and engagement bait such as “comment to agree” prompts or videos that don’t match the text. LinkedIn says the feed should not be a popularity contest.

This matches what Swedish users say. In Svenskarna och internet 2026, Swedes who use LinkedIn weekly or daily appreciate the networking, content that helps them at work and the serious tone. They dislike bragging, sob stories and old posts in the feed. In Sweden, 27 percent have used LinkedIn in the past year, but only 5 percent use it daily.

What this means for a business, in our view: write about a clear professional topic your customers care about, so the system can match the post to the right people. Because the author and their headline are signals, it matters who posts. A post from the founder or a colleague with a complete profile in the field has more to go on than an anonymous company Page.

YouTube: appeal, engagement and satisfaction

YouTube’s Help Centre divides a video’s performance into three parts:

  • Appeal: do people choose to watch, or do they ignore the video or click Not interested? The title and thumbnail should communicate the value and set the right expectations.
  • Engagement: do viewers stick around once they start? The first seconds decide, and the video should deliver what the title promises.
  • Satisfaction: did viewers enjoy the video? YouTube asks through surveys, to understand satisfaction and not just watch time.

Recommendations are based mainly on watch history, search history, subscriptions and likes, but also on dislikes and on people choosing Not interested or Don’t recommend channel. According to YouTube, tags help mainly with common misspellings. There is no ideal video length, and a single underperforming video doesn’t penalise the channel. YouTube also says subscriber count doesn’t show how many people actually watch, and recommends the Unique viewers metric instead.

In our view, YouTube is particularly good for a local business that wants to answer questions customers search for, such as how a treatment works or what to think about before a purchase. In Sweden, 77 percent have used YouTube in the past year, more than any other platform, but 32 percent use it daily, according to Svenskarna och internet 2026.

What every platform penalises: reposts, watermarks and engagement bait

The platforms reward different things in detail, but they penalise almost the same things. None of them removes a post for being dull, but most of what is in the table below is distributed to fewer people or can’t be recommended to people who don’t follow the account.

What gets distributed lessWhat the platforms say
Reposted content and other people’s clipsMeta deprioritises unoriginal content in Feed and Reels. Instagram is less likely to recommend reposted reels and accounts that collect other people’s content. TikTok doesn’t allow reused material without anything new in the For You feed. LinkedIn is reducing recycled content, and Pinterest may flag duplicates as spam.
Visible watermarksInstagram shows watermarked reels to fewer people and is less likely to recommend content with noticeable watermarks, such as another app’s logo.
Engagement baitFacebook distributes posts that explicitly ask for likes, shares, comments or tags to fewer people. LinkedIn is reducing prompts like “comment to agree”. On TikTok, content that tries to manipulate people into increasing likes or follows isn’t eligible for the For You feed.
Giveaways for interactionsMeta’s spam rules, which cover both Facebook and Instagram, don’t allow offering anything of monetary value in exchange for engagement. Meta’s own example is “If you like my Page, I will give you an iPhone!” A promotion on a Facebook Page also must not require or incentivise shares or tags.
Long strings of hashtagsFacebook shows accounts with hashtag-filled captions only to their followers. Instagram allows no more than five per post.
Bought and automated engagementMeta, TikTok and YouTube prohibit bought engagement, and LinkedIn acts against automated comments and engagement pods. Fake followers, likes and views are removed or not counted.
Poor technical qualityInstagram shows reels that are low-resolution, muted, have borders or are mostly text to fewer people.

Watermarks are an easy mistake to make: a video is downloaded from TikTok with the logo still on it and posted as a reel on Instagram. Instead, keep the original file from your phone or editing app and upload it to each platform separately. When Instagram announced its editing app, Edits, in January 2025, it said the app would let you export without a watermark.

The classic “like and share to enter the draw” deserves a second thought. Under Meta’s policies for Pages, a promotion on Facebook must not require or incentivise participants to share, repost or tag others, and entrants must be given the official rules. Meta’s spam rules also don’t allow giveaways of cash or cash equivalents in exchange for likes, with the example “Anyone that likes my Page will be entered to win USD 500”. On Facebook, the prompt to like and share also counts as engagement bait.

Comparison of what lifts and what lowers reach on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube in 2026, according to the platforms themselves. Watch time, shares and original material lift reach. Reposted content, watermarks and engagement bait lower it.
The platforms reward different things in detail but penalise almost the same things: reposted content, watermarks and engagement bait. As of October 2026.

Has your reach dropped? Check this first

How a business gets more followers on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn

Followers come when someone who doesn’t follow you yet sees something and wants more of it. That takes two things: reaching people outside your own circle, and a profile that makes it easy to understand what you do and where. For a local business there is also a third route that is often forgotten: the customers already standing in the shop.

Instagram

  • Reels reach new people. According to Instagram, most of what people see in Reels comes from accounts they don’t follow, and reels of up to three minutes can be recommended to non-followers.
  • Trial reels are shown first only to people who don’t follow you. They require a professional account. You can then choose to share the reel with everyone if it does well, or let Instagram do it automatically. Trial reels are treated separately in ranking and, according to Instagram, shouldn’t affect your regular reels. Make something new, as a trial reel may get limited reach if you have already shared the same content.
  • Collabs are shared with both accounts’ followers. Make one with a neighbouring business, a supplier or a business you work with.
  • Keywords. Followers and non-followers can find you when they search on Instagram. Instagram advises putting relevant keywords in your content, caption, bio and hashtags. No more than five hashtags per post.
  • Account Status. Check that your account can be recommended to non-followers. Otherwise none of the above will help.
  • Favourites. Instagram advises creators to encourage their top fans to add them to their Favourites, so their posts appear higher in those people’s feeds. For a business, that’s your regulars.
  • The QR code. Every profile has its own QR code. Put it up at the till, in the waiting room or on the receipt.

TikTok

  • Every video is a new chance. Because follower count isn’t a direct factor, a single video from a small account can go a long way.
  • The first seconds decide. Interactions carry the most weight for most users, for example how long people watch. Show the interesting part straight away, not after a long introduction.
  • Followers unlock features. A link in your profile requires 1,000 followers or a verified business account, and going LIVE requires at least 1,000 followers and being 18 or over, according to TikTok’s Help Centre. The follower requirement for LIVE varies by region.
  • Music: businesses can’t use the general music library for commercial purposes and should use TikTok’s Commercial Music Library instead.

Facebook

  • Your own material as reels, with a public audience. According to Meta, that gives added reach.
  • Avoid what gets distributed less: reposted content, strings of hashtags and posts that ask for likes or shares.
  • Favourites here too. In the Facebook Feed, posts from people and Pages you have added to your Favourites appear higher up. Ask your regulars to follow the Page and add it to their Favourites.

LinkedIn

  • Invite connections to follow your Page. Admins of a LinkedIn Page get a number of invitation credits each month, shared across all admins. When someone accepts, the credit is returned.
  • Get your colleagues involved. LinkedIn advises companies to invite their first-degree connections to follow the Page and to notify employees of the most important Page posts no more than once a week. The advice is undated.
  • People carry the Page. Because the feed reads the author’s profile and the topic, a post from a person with the right expertise has, in our view, better prospects than the same text from the company Page. We have found no figure from LinkedIn on how big the difference is.
  • 150 followers as a milestone. LinkedIn says, also undated, that once Pages gain 150 followers, their opportunity for growth becomes exponential. Treat it as a first goal, not a threshold.

The customers you already have

The customer who has already bought from you is often the easiest follower to get. Link to your accounts from your website and email signature, put the QR code where customers wait, and say it out loud when someone is happy: “Do follow us, that’s where you’ll see when we have free slots.” That’s our view, not a platform rule, but those followers live where you operate and can become customers again.

Bought followers: why they do more harm than good

Offers of bought followers turn up in your inbox and in comment sections, and they look like a shortcut. This is what the rules say:

  • Meta: the Community Standards, which cover Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads, don’t allow selling, buying or exchanging engagement, such as likes, views, follows and clicks.
  • Instagram began in 2018 to remove inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to grow their audience.
  • TikTok prohibits trading in services that artificially boost engagement, removes fake followers and likes and can restrict an account so that it doesn’t appear in the For You feed.
  • YouTube doesn’t count artificial traffic or spam subscribers, and attempts to inflate the numbers can lead to strikes on the channel.
  • LinkedIn acts against automated comments and engagement pods.

There is no official figure for how bought followers affect your reach, and we have no measurement of our own. But going by the signals the platforms themselves describe, most things count against them:

  1. The signals are ratios. Mosseri says to look at likes and sends per reach. Bought accounts that are reached by a post but never react mean fewer reactions per person reached, and those are exactly the ratios he singles out.
  2. Follower count on its own does little. TikTok doesn’t count it as a direct factor, and Instagram says creators of all sizes have an equal chance of reaching new audiences with Reels. So you are paying for a number that isn’t what the platforms look at.
  3. Your insights go wrong. Bought followers rarely live where you operate. The data on when your followers are active, which towns they live in and how old they are becomes misleading, and that’s what you use to choose times and content.
  4. They can disappear. The platforms clear out fake follows, and then the follower count you paid for drops. If the account breaks the rules, it can also be restricted.
  5. They never become customers. A follower who doesn’t exist can’t book.

In short, you are paying for a number that can pull your reach down and makes your insights harder to steer by.

Diagram comparing followers who came by themselves with bought followers. Real followers stop, like and send posts on, which gives stronger signals per reach. Bought followers don't react, give fewer reactions per person reached and make your insights misleading.
Instagram’s head singles out ratios such as likes and sends per reach. Bought accounts that are reached but never react pull them down. Our reasoning, not a measurement.

If you want to pay to reach more people, there is an honest way: ads. Then you know who you are reaching and what it costs. How it works is covered, in Swedish, on our pages on advertising on Instagram and advertising on Facebook. And if someone offers you a set number of followers as part of a package, read the warning signs in What does social media help cost?

What “Your algorithm” means for businesses

A big change in 2025–2026 is that users can steer what gets recommended to them themselves, and that they do it in ordinary words.

  • Instagram launched Your Algorithm in Reels in the US on 10 December 2025, extended it to Explore in April 2026 and to the whole app, including Feed, in June 2026. Users see an AI-generated summary of the topics shaping their recommendations and can type in what they want to see more or less of. A recommended post can carry a topic label, such as “From Running”. The feature is available globally in English. We have seen no announcement of a Swedish version.
  • Facebook has been rolling out Your algorithm since 13 October 2026. Users can add topics for Feed and Reels and describe in their own words what they want more or less of, and large language models interpret it. Meta doesn’t say in which countries.
  • TikTok has had Manage Topics since June 2025, where users can choose how often more than ten popular topics appear, and AI-powered keyword filters.
  • LinkedIn is testing an Interest Picker that lets new members choose interests when they sign up.

For a business, this means three things, in our view:

  1. Be clear about what your account is about. When users choose topics and the platforms put topic labels on posts, the account that clearly belongs to a topic wins. A salon posting about hair care, a baker about bread and a builder about renovation are easy to place. An account that mixes everything is harder to match.
  2. Say what the post is about. Language models read text. Say in the caption, in the on-screen text and ideally in what you say in the video what it is, rather than relying on a lone emoji.
  3. You can’t buy your way into a topic. The user chooses. The only thing that helps is content that belongs there.

One last piece of advice: don’t build your whole business on feeds someone else controls. Always link on to a booking, your website or a phone call. How social media connects with Google and your website is covered in Social media for local businesses.

Frequently asked questions

How does the Instagram algorithm work in 2026?

Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels are ranked separately. Adam Mosseri has said that watch time, likes and sends matter most, and that you should track average watch time, likes per reach and sends per reach. Likes matter slightly more for reaching followers, sends for reaching new people.

Why has my reach on Facebook dropped?

In Sweden, daily Facebook use has fallen from 54 to 45 percent since 2021. Meta also deprioritises unoriginal content, shows accounts with strings of hashtags only to their followers and distributes engagement bait to fewer people. Start by checking those three things.

How does a business get more followers on Instagram?

Reach people who don’t follow you yet, with Reels, trial reels and Collabs, and make the account easy to find with keywords in your bio, captions and hashtags. Check in Account Status that the account can be recommended. Ask the customers on your premises too, for example with your profile’s QR code.

Is it worth buying followers?

No. It breaks Meta’s, TikTok’s and YouTube’s rules, the platforms clear out fake followers, and bought accounts that never react pull down your likes and sends per reach. Your follower insights become misleading too. If you want to pay for reach, ads are the honest way.

Does shadowbanning exist?

Instagram says it is not its intention to hide accounts without explanation. But content that goes against its Recommendation Guidelines can stay up without being recommended to others. You can see this in Account Status. On TikTok, your analytics show whether a video is ineligible for recommendation.

Does follower count matter?

Less than many people think for reach, but more for some features. TikTok doesn’t count follower count as a direct factor, but requires 1,000 followers or a verified business account for a link in your profile. For a local business, where your followers live matters more: a few hundred followers where you operate are worth more than thousands somewhere else.

Sources

All web pages read on 15 October 2026 unless another date is given. The details are as of October 2026, and the platforms change their feeds often.