What to Do When the Algorithm Changes… Again
How to tweak tactics strategically instead of pivoting with your pants on fire (which damages your traction, credibility, and morale).
It’s the most exhausting part of social media marketing.
Just as your team finds their groove — bam. Yesterday’s algorithm bait is dead in the water today. How is a small team with limited resources supposed to keep up?
If you’re like the marketing leaders I speak to, you’d love a break from the grind.
Just last week, I was pitching a social strategy to a new client who asked, “Does having this in place mean we won’t need to keep reinventing the wheel each time the algorithm changes?”
The answer is nuanced:
A real strategy sets your long-term goals and direction. It’s not beholden to any particular channels. So the next time a billionaire buys a platform or tweaks its algorithm for greater profits, your strategy will bend, but NOT break.
How you execute that strategy, though, will always need to be tweaked and optimized.
Today, I’m sharing the framework my clients use to adapt calmly when everyone else is panicking.
We’ll cover:
- The consequences of constantly “reinventing the wheel”
- The difference between strategic, targeted tweaking and panicked pivoting
- My framework for discerning when a tactic is worth tweaking — and how to do so without burning through resources or team morale
The perils of navigating the algorithm without a strategy
Think of it like driving from NYC to LA to start a new job.
You plan a specific route, but on the way there are road closures. Or your car breaks down. So you re-route. Hop a bus. Rent a car. But since you know where you’re going and why, you’re not going to wind up spinning your wheels in Florida.
→ Platforms and tactics are just the vehicle, the road, the gas.
→ Your strategy defines where you’re going and why.
→ Algorithm changes alter conditions along the way, influencing which tactics are winning.
When your strategy is solid, you can more easily discern which tactical tweaks will take your org in the right direction. When you pivot, it won’t be from a place of panic.
But when teams confuse strategies with goals or tactics (my last newsletter clears up the difference), that’s when you have to constantly reinvent the wheel. And doing so has consequences:
- Everything is constantly up for debate. Even if the team has a general sense of the ultimate goal, no one is clear on the path to get there.
- You never get real traction. When you’re constantly switching up your content, the algorithm never learns who it’s truly for.
- Your brand credibility suffers. Disorganized visuals and all-over-the-place tone might be okay for a solo creator, but not for an org with a meaningful mission.
The power of a strategic, targeted tweak to get you back on track
We might have been a mosquito buzzing toward the deathly light-zap of LinkedIn video.
When my nonprofit client’s carousel posts started tanking, I could have jumped to the easy conclusion that educational carousels just didn’t work anymore. Fortunately, we’d already mapped our high-level strategy, and kept our tracking and reporting dialed-in.
Each month, we aggregated the top 20% and bottom 20% of posts by platform, allowing us to visually scan for patterns.
We noticed something that all our worst-performing posts had in common: stock images. Even good ones.
With LinkedIn pushing more ads into the feed, users were learning to skip anything commercial-looking. So we redesigned our branded carousel templates to contain zero stock images — just text and light illustrations. The result was closer to what an individual person might post, instead of a brand.
After that one simple tweak, reactions and saves ticked up again.
We did NOT have to:
- Completely rethink our approach to educational content.
- Frantically pivot to video (which every guru was evangelizing).
- Scramble to post more frequently to make up for lost reach.
Instead, all that changed was one attribute of one tactic in our LinkedIn channel strategy.
How to make targeted tweaks (not panic pivots):
a 4-step framework
Before you can tweak strategically, you first need solid reporting habits.
That means tracking the KPIs that actually tie back to your strategy. It also means checking them at a cadence that matches your needs, relying on data sources you trust, and assigning clear ownership for who pulls the numbers and who reads them.
If that foundation is solid and a metric dips enough to make you go ‘uh oh,’ here’s what to do next:
STEP 1: Diagnose the Dip
Look at what your bottom 20% of posts have in common, then evaluate them in context. Stumped? Check Reddit, LinkedIn, and private communities to find out who else is having this problem and what they think it means. Determine which factors are driving the pattern:
- External forces: Deliberate algorithm shift or platform change? Cultural/behavioral shifts among users?
- Seasonal shifts: Is your content getting lost in a competitive season such Black Friday/Cyber Monday, or a major news cycle?
- Factors in your control: Changes in style, format, tone, or frequency? Weaker hooks with less audience relevance? Engaging less with other users or commenters?
STEP 2: Assess the Damage
Run a reality check before panicking. Not every dip needs fixing.
- Zoom out: Look at a longer time horizon. Will the dip normalize over time? Could you do nothing and be fine?
- Question relevance: Is this actually hurting business goals? One of my B2B clients recently had their best quarter ever while LinkedIn engagement dropped. People were lurking, not liking — but still converting.
- Summarize findings: “Our [metric] on [platform] shifted from X to X (-XX%) likely due to [factors]. The actual business impact is [this].”
STEP 3: Prioritize and Align
Before jumping to solutions, determine if this deserves your limited resources.
- Check the ladder: What KPI does this tactic support? What organizational or communication goal does that ladder up to? How critical is this tactic to reaching that goal?
- Map your options: What other tactics contribute to that KPI and larger goal? What could you try? What resources would each option require?
- Calculate trade-offs: What would you have to stop doing to make room for a solution? For example, will fixing Instagram reach mean down-scaling LinkedIn? Are you okay with that?
STEP 4: Tweak and Test Strategically
If you’ve confirmed this dip is worth fixing — it impacts a high-priority goal and you can allocate resources — then begin testing one tweak at a time.
- Set your benchmark: Define what success looks like with a specific number, not just “improvement.”
- Run your test: Implement the solution for a defined period.
- Measure and iterate: Review progress against your benchmark, adjust or abandon based on results.
An algorithm change doesn’t have to be a crisis
Platforms will shift. Behaviors will change. Metrics will dip sometimes, even when you’re doing everything right. That’s the deal when you play in a system built on fast-moving tech.
What matters is how you respond. With your north star documented and this framework in your pocket, an algorithm change becomes just another data point on the road to your goals.
You get to evaluate it calmly, no pants-on-fire freak-outs necessary.
Until next time,
