The Algorithm Is Your Greatest Survey: How We Got 122 Million Organic Views on Facebook

In God We Trust. Everyone Else Must Bring Data.

This is one of our Facebook pages. 122 million views, organically. But most importantly, 24 percent growth in the last 28 days. And no, this is not a screenshot. Many people can fake screenshots. You are looking inside my actual platform.

Eric Schmidt, one of the greatest technology developers in the history of this planet, has a saying I love: in God we trust, everyone else must bring data. Which means that if you want to show me something is working, don't tell me it's working. Show me it's working. Because if I can see it working, I can understand it without a romantic idea of what I like or don't like.

At the end of the day, your opinion or my opinion does not matter as much as the opinion of the algorithms of the social media platforms. They are the ones that decide whether they push you out or keep you small.

Where the Data Lives

Here is exactly what I do. Inside Facebook, go to your page and click on Content. That opens your content library, and in that library you get to see the data. But not all data is equally important, so you have to know what to look at.

I set my filters: all post types, all placements, last 90 days. Then I sort in sequence from the most views to the least views. What had the biggest impact over the last 90 days of our content for this particular brand?

This page happens to be my father's content that we have taken responsibility for. We lost him almost five years ago, but he created thousands of videos that we are now responsible for putting out there, because they help people every single day and they help us get attention so we can keep pushing his legacy out and helping more people.

The Two Metrics That Matter Most Right Now

The first video in that sorted list had 2.5 million views and reached 1.8 million people. Views and reach. Those are the two most important metrics in this particular era. A piece of content is good if it has views above the normal and reach above the normal compared to your own content.

And notice what I said there: compared to YOUR content. Don't start comparing yourself with competitors or other people, because that's going to drive you nuts. If you start looking at what everybody else is doing instead of looking at your own stuff, you're going to start hitting yourself against a wall. Only compare yourself with your own content, and use that data to evaluate what you should do more of and what you should do less of.

One more thing on views versus reach, because people confuse them. Reach is humans. Views is how many times people watched. One person could watch a video once or twice, and if they watch it twice the views go up. So when a post gets 1.8 million views watched by 990,000 people, that reach number is your number one metric in regards to attention. The third metric I watch is interactions: people commenting, liking, sharing, actually participating with the content itself.

The Non-Follower Signal

Here is the signal most people miss. I clicked into that 2.5 million view video and checked this out: 71 percent of the people who saw it are not following the page yet. I have 6.2 million followers on this Facebook page, and still 71 percent of the viewers were new people.

You know what that means? That's a great piece of content, because it's helping me reach more people. When you see a post generating 60 or 70 percent of its views to non-followers, that means Facebook liked the content so much, the algorithm liked it so much, that it's pushing it out to new people. And when you see that, go create more of that.

This is survey data on steroids. Historically, you used surveys to find out what people want more of. Well, the algorithm is your greatest survey friend. It gives you data at scale on what's working and what's not working, what people like and what they don't like. So when I see something like this, I immediately give it to my editors and my team and I say, go ahead and create 10 more of these.

What the Data Told Me to Push Next

Right now the data is pointing me at two things. First, short form videos are performing really well. People are watching over 15 seconds, and one video pulled 53,000 interactions worth of engagement, likes, loves, you name it. Somebody's even mad in the comments. That person must be very lonely. But it all tells you people are participating.

Second, text-only posts. One text post published on August 19th got almost 1.8 million views and reached 990,000 accounts. Another one about stress reached 1.573 million people, with 66 percent of them non-followers. I also run what I call text thread posts, like six reasons to use coconut oil, where I post the reasons in the comments so people have to jump in and search for them. The comments jump all over the place, it triggers the algorithm, it reaches a lot of people, and I get a lot of new followers.

When I see numbers like 2,500 shares and 8,500 likes on a post, I take it to my graphic designers and I say, look at the data, this post did really well, create 10 more of these. That's the whole system. You start operating with data.

Luck Is Preparation Meeting Opportunity

People see 122 million views and call it luck. There's a quote by the great philosopher Seneca: luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So yes, I got really lucky with 122 million organic views. But it's because I keep consistently getting myself prepared with data like this.

And everything I just showed you inside Facebook, you can do everywhere. Instagram has the same data because Facebook and Instagram are one company. LinkedIn has a dashboard. YouTube has one. TikTok has one. They all have metrics showing you views, reach, and accounts reached, so you can do more of what's working and less of what's not.

This is how you win. Stop assuming what people are going to like or not like. Use the data to determine what's being accepted and what's not being accepted. Then go make more of it.