Dear Algorithm, We Need to Have a Talk: An author's ongoing battle with social media.

By Chris Livemore

I am going to take you back to 1415, a muddy field in France and the famous battle of Agincourt. A formidable French army vastly outnumbered King Henry V's English force by at least 5-1. It looked like the could only be one winner. That is the best medieval analogy that I can come up with to say exactly what it is like for small accounts trying to battle against the algorithms of social media giants to get seen. Fortunately there's a much, much smaller chance of getting struck by a crossbow bolt of longbow during the battle, but you'll see what I mean.

I have spent months and months of my time writing five complete picture books, editing another three, writing about unicorns, building a website, teaching myself to illustrate, growing a community, researching and writing blogs about medieval history, mythical creatures and broken legs.

Last week I even learnt what the word whimsical actually means and vowed never to use it in anything that I do.

It turns out that none of this is what the algorithm across social media giants actually wants. Instead, it appear to want videos of me pointing at things, showing off fake tans and generally not talking about The Good Knight picture book series. And in these videos I need to have a look of complete surprise at another staged event. The world has really changed. And it has left me pulling the remaining hair that I have out of my head, wondering where everything went wrong.

My discovery of the algorithm

I published a blog post about the Hundred Years' War, written by Princess Charlotte. I spent a fair bit of time researching the subject to make sure it was historically accurate, had all the main players, was funny(ish) and highlighted that it was actually a 116 year war and not a 100 year war that the title suggests. The social media posts promoting the blog hardly got any views.

Previously, my Yorkiepoo dog had a social medial account. Ok, so technically it wasn't my dog posting, it was me, posting as my dog. Looking back, that really isn't normal behaviour, but that is beside the point. I could post slightly blurry photographs of my dog and get at least ten times more views, likes, comments and outreach. Admittedly my dog is very cute, but the quality of my photography was so poor that it should have nullified the cuteness. And there was zero effort in the photos.

A post that had zero effort, zero thought and an extremely photogenic dog would get acknowledged by the algorithm, but posts that had a lot of thought, lots of effort wouldn't get a look in. When you are trying to grow a social media presence to promote a future picture book series this is super annoying.

What does the algorithm actually want?

Short answer...who knows anymore. I have spent quite a lot of time trying to understand the rules, in much the same way medieval scholars probably studied texts they found baffling and alarming. I have followed Instagram accounts who say they are experts at knowing the rules, only to admit the next day that the rules have changed again and to undo everything that they recommended.

The workings of today's algorithms are about as transparent as the instructions for assembling IKEA furniture written by a medieval monk, in a foreign language who has been found it more pressing to illustrate giant medieval snails in the margins than write the instructions. Nobody seems to really know the rules, well, at least for very long.

As far as I can work out these are the current best practice rules are as follows:

• Post consistently

• Make videos

• Be authentic

• Don't be authentic

• Hook people quickly

• Encourage comments

• Get shares

• Get saves

• Don't focus efforts on getting saves, get shares instead

• Keep people watching (not by force)

• Don't post too much

• Don't post too little

• Post when your audience is online

• Post during peak hours

• Don't post during peak hours after a successful post

• Use the latest format

• Don't make everything about selling

• But also, obviously, sell something

• And above all, be yourself

Just make sure you are being yourself in precisely the format currently favoured by the platform.

There is a certain contradiction here. I am a children's author. I would quite like people to discover my books because they like the books, get to know the characters, but instead it seems like I might need to purchase some full on knight armour and start pointing at things to get some views. If I can persuade my wife to let me buy some armour then I am totally happy to do this - or maybe I should buy some armour for my dog instead and let her take over the account!?

There is, unfortunately, a more sensible possibility. Maybe the algorithm isn't entirely wrong. People do like short videos. They do like seeing the person behind a project. They like funny stories. But they mostly like dogs. The key is surely to not spend every waking hour trying to work out what the algorithm wants, but to keep making things that are worth finding and have fun doing it. So, I will keep telling the stories, making the books and write silly facts about medieval history.

Oh, if you didn't know King Henry V won at Agincourt, so maybe there is a lesson there in the analogy, the bigger, meaner algorithm doesn't always win.

Join Jack's Shield Wall at thegoodknightbook.com/shield-wall.

No algorithm required.