There’s an old bit of wisdom that says ‘when you’re at the top of your game, change your game’. This lesson helped the New Zealand national rugby team, the All Blacks, to dominate world rugby for over a decade, and it’s no different when it comes to social media content.
The social media landscape and creator economy is always changing, whether it’s developed algorithms, brand preferences, or social media trends, you need to stay ahead of the game. One way in which you can do this is through Social Testing. Let me explain.
What is Social Testing?
Put simply, Social Testing is a process of identification, evaluation, implementation and reflection. It’s the process of experimenting new styles of content, or practices and then evaluating its performance in relation to your current content. Rather than just putting a finger in the air and seeing which way the wind blows, Social Testing is based on analysis and results.
Social media platforms are brilliant because they do half the work for you by delivering detailed analytics, helping you understand the metrics that mean success (views, likes, comments, shares, saves). Using these analytics platforms, you can easily test different variables to understand the best way forward.
But it is a game of patience, if something doesn’t work straight away that doesn’t mean it never will. That is where metrics paint the picture, for example, a YouTube video with low views but positive comments shows the thumbnail or title should be changed.
How do I start and what is the process?
Before you get started, it’s important to know what you want to achieve, this way you can have benchmarks to test against. Here are the general steps to start Social Testing.
Have a hypothesis
A hypothesis is essentially what you are looking to achieve through an assumption and a process. It helps you have a starting point that you can then build on.
For example, a logical hypothesis would be ‘content that includes trending music will get more Reach than content without’.
However, you must have one hypothesis at a time. If you begin testing various things at once then it’s impossible to understand what is making the difference.
Understand your target metrics
Every hypothesis needs a target or goal to strive for, and we measure these targets and goals through metrics. Some examples are:
- Impressions – how many people a post reaches
- Engagements – how many people interact with a post
- Traffic – how many people are driven to your account
Of course, a reasonable goal is just ‘more’ – more views, more comments, more likes – but when testing various things it’s important to be able to compare their impact.
Set a duration
Before running a test, you need to understand how long you want to run it for. Whether that’s measured in posts that you test it with, or time in days/weeks/months, having a timeframe helps quantify the impact of your test.
What can I start testing in my content?
No matter what type of content you do, there are countless elements that you can tweak and test. In this example we will cover YouTube (long-form video content), TikTok (short-form video content) & Instagram (feed post/image content).
YouTube:
- Thumbnail
- Title
- Description
- Video length
- Video topic
- Use of cards and endscreens
- Subscriber call-to-action
- Video structure
- Voiceover style
- Editing processes/transitions etc.
TikTok:
- Video length
- Use of subtitles
- Type of video hook
- Editing processes/transitions etc.
- Use of footage/images
- Video topic
- Video structure
- Video captions & descriptions
- Video thumbnail
- Use of music
- Hashtags
Instagram:
- Aspect ratio
- Image edits/filters
- Use of colour
- Quantity, size of text
- Post description and hashtags
- Post topic
- Carousel or standalone?
Now these are by no means exhaustive lists and there are numerous other elements you can test by getting more granular, however it’s a great starting point.
