Digital Technologies for Creative Students

TRAIN THE ALGORITHM

The 'algorithm' is something we hear a lot about when it comes to social media, but what does it mean and why is it important?

All social media platforms operate on a business model that encourages users to stay online as much as possible, and in order to achieve this the systems have programmes running which can select the most engaging content to show you, personalised to you. The system does this by tracking your activity online and matching up what you already like to similar content, keeping you locked in with more and more of the same thing that it knows you already like.

As it stands, this system can lead social media users to lose hours and hours just watching funny videos or memes, but you can train it to show you content that you can use productively.

One of the most effective social media platforms to do this on is INSTAGRAM.

Instagram is targeted predominantly at younger audiences, with college age students sitting within the key demographic of the use base, meaning that finding ways to make time spent on Instagram productive can have real benefits to creative students.

To make more positive use of your social media feed, you first need to

FIND USEFUL CONTENT

Social media algorithms will learn from the activity you have on their platform, so by finding, liking and following creators that do similar things to you, your feed will start to reflect this type of content.

USE YOUR INTERACTIONS STRATEGICALLY

By liking content on a social media platform, you are telling the algorithm to show you more of the same. By actively trying to restrict your likes to creative content that links to your specialism, your feed will keep showing you more of the same.

Social media interactions beyond just likes are also incredibly valuable in teaching algorithms what content you like. The more you comment and share content, the higher value this type of content is given in your feed.

UNDERSTAND HOW THE TRACKING WORKS

Social media platforms aren't just tracking what you like and share. The algorithm takes into account every action you make on the platform, including the time spent scrolling past images, how long you watch each video clip for, what you search for and the accounts you interact with.

Being somewhat disciplined with your online activity will produce almost immediate results in the type of content you are shown.

CREATE A RESOURCE LIBRARY

Instagram, TikTok & Facebook all have features that allow you to save / favourite content.

By using this feature, not only does this teach your social media accounts to show you more of the same type of content, but it allows you to put together a bank of creative resources to use for skill development, creative inspiration, asset resources and much more.

Save on INSTAGRAM

Saving content on Instagram is simple. At the bottom right of each post in your feed is the SAVE icon. Tap this to save the post for later, at which point you get the choice to create COLLECTIONS. This is where you can really start to put the content to work, by creating a library for all the different types of content you can use later on.

Favourites on TIKTOK

Saving on TikTok is a little more involved, but still not too tricky. On a video you want to save, hit SHARE and then select the ADD TO FAVOURITES option. This then adds the clip to your profile favourites to view later on.

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