Social media A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a post or element in content to see which variation resonates best with the target audience. This is a crucial tool for optimizing a social media strategy, as it can help brands and businesses achieve their desired results.
In this article, we’ll discuss the steps involved in social media A/B testing and highlight the various elements you can use in your evaluations. Additionally, we’ll explain how you can interpret results and share important dos and don’ts to follow when conducting social media A/B testing.
Let’s start!
What is A/B Testing in Social Media & How Does It Work?
A/B testing in social media is a method used to test variations in content to improve results, such as engagement, follower-to-customer conversions, and general user experience. It works by simultaneously running two versions of the same content with a minor difference to see which one performs better.
For instance, if you want to improve conversions from Instagram Story ads, you can test two types of calls to action (CTA) to determine which copy is more effective. That said, CTAs aren’t the only part of your strategy that you can use in social media A/B testing, but we’ll talk more about this later in the article.
For now, let’s dive into the reasons why you should conduct this test in the first place.
3 Crucial Reasons Why Social Media A/B Testing is Important
Social media A/B testing is important because it allows businesses to make data-driven decisions about their marketing strategy and boost their overall performance.
Moreover, social media A/B testing can provide several additional benefits, including:
- Improved engagement. With social media A/B testing, you can determine what content, visuals, and topics interest your audience. This will allow you to create engaging posts that promote interactions.
- Boost in website traffic. Experimenting with different styles, CTAs, and designs will help you identify the parts of your content that resonate with followers and encourage them to visit your website. By using these elements in all future posts, you have a better chance of boosting website traffic and improving conversions.
- Increased sales. When you know what content delivers results, you refine your strategy and increase your sales over time. A/B testing is also crucial for maximizing return on investment (ROI) on social media campaigns, as it can help you allocate resources more effectively.
7 Key Social Media Elements That You Can A/B Test
Similarly to A/B testing in digital marketing, you can test every element of your social media profile, but here are the seven key areas to focus on for starters:
#1. Images & Videos
Since visuals are immediately noticeable on the feed, they are one of the most impactful elements you can use in social media A/B testing. Moreover, according to Ragan Communications, content with relevant visuals receives up to 94% more views than posts with only text.
There are several ways to compare your visual content, including:
- Posting the same visual format, e.g., two images with differences in color palettes or two videos with varying lengths
- Posting similar formats but different styles, e.g., photos of real people or animals vs. graphics
- Posting completely different visual formats
#2. Posts
With social media A/B testing, you can experiment with post length, tone, style, and punctuation to find the best way to connect and communicate with your audience. The texts in your posts can be quite tricky to nail right away, especially for brands and businesses that don’t want to seem too casual or too professional.
We also recommend testing posts with and without emojis, as research by Mladenović et al. (2022) found that emojis can increase the effectiveness of content in marketing campaigns, which results in higher conversions.
#3. CTAs
As we mentioned earlier, you can test two types of CTAs to find which one is more effective at converting your audience. But, aside from the actual text, another way to use this element in social media A/B testing is to change the visual of the CTA button. You can do this with the subscribe button at the end of a YouTube video or when adding a link to an Instagram Story.
#4. Hashtags
The simplest way to conduct A/B testing on Twitter or any other social media site with hashtags is by posting with and without this element. Hashtags are used to improve your content’s discoverability on the platform, but they can also make your post look more cluttered and unappealing to the viewer.
While there are some tricks to hide the hashtags on Instagram posts, if they don’t make a difference in your content’s views and engagement, you may consider leaving them out altogether.
Other ways to evaluate hashtags with social media A/B testing include:
- Using only one hashtag vs. multiple hashtags
- Using branded hashtags vs. generic hashtags
- Using broad hashtags vs. long-tail keyword hashtags, e.g., #pet and #petsupplies
- Using hashtags you find manually vs. recommendations from a hashtag analysis tool
#5. Headline
When cross-posting published articles from an external website to social media, your post will come with a headline that you can use to entice the viewer to read the rest of the piece. Because the headline is immediately visible, it’s essential to conduct social media A/B testing to find out what formula works best for your audience.
Testing different lengths, styles, and tones will help you optimize your headlines to get more clicks and views and drive traffic to your website.
#6. Profile Elements
Aside from the actual content you post, you can also conduct social media A/B testing on your profile to make it more engaging for viewers and help grow your followers.
For instance, when A/B testing your Instagram business profile, you can try a variation with your complete business information in the description to see if it would encourage more users to visit your website and avail themselves of your services. You can also test different Instagram fonts, profile picture variations, and descriptions.
#7. Posting Time
Posting time is an element you shouldn’t skip when conducting A/B testing, especially if you want to improve your organic traffic on social media. The Facebook algorithm, for instance, factors a post’s recency when ranking content on the feed, so it’s important to optimize your posting times to match your audience’s active hours.
That said, instead of just trying random posting times, try to follow the best times to post on Facebook to see if it makes a significant difference in your performance. You can utilize a social media scheduling tool like Publer to make this process much easier and allow you to target inconvenient times, like early mornings or late nights.
In addition to post-scheduling, Publer compiles your content’s key performance indicators (KPIs) across social media apps to determine your audience’s peak hours on each platform. Try testing these against the industry-recommended hours to elevate your posting schedule.
How to Effectively Conduct a Social Media A/B Test in 6 Steps
Conducting social media A/B testing is pretty straightforward, but if it’s your first time doing so and you’re unsure of where to start, here’s a simple step-by-step guide you can follow:
#1. Determine Your Objective
The first thing to do before social media A/B testing is to determine your objectives for the test; this will serve as your guide for the rest of the process.
Common goals usually include improving engagement, conversions, or another metric, but regardless of your choice, it’s important to set clear goals to guide your test. You can even conduct a social media SWOT analysis to help you establish measurable goals.
#2. Choose a Metric to Focus On
Once you know your goal, the next step in social media A/B testing is to choose the metric you will use to gauge your success. For instance, if your goal is to increase engagement, then the metrics you can focus on are likes, comments, or shares.
#3. Identify Variables
Next, you need to identify the variable that you would be changing during social media A/B testing. This can be one of the social media elements we discussed above or any other metric that you can use to test your goal.
When selecting a variable, it’s best to start small, as even the most minute changes in your content’s visuals or text can lead to significant changes in its performance. Plus, this will allow you to easily pinpoint which part of the content resonated with the viewer.
#4. Create Variants
Finally, we can start testing social media strategy by creating two variants, Variant 1 and Variant 2. Variant 1 will be the original version of your post—this can be an existing post you want to improve or a completely new one. Meanwhile, Variant 2 will be your modified version.
Aside from the variable, make sure that the rest of the elements in your post are the same, as they can also affect the test’s results.
#5. Set Up and Run the Test
With all the elements and variants ready, it’s time to set up and run your test; fortunately, most social media platforms already come with built-in A/B testing tools that you can use.
These include:
- Facebook. If you’re wondering what A/B testing is on Facebook, it involves comparing two different variations of ads in the platform’s Ads Manager. This feature allows you to run two versions of the same ad to see which one performs better.
- Instagram. You can also use the Ads Manager for Instagram social media A/B testing, as you would for Facebook ads.
- LinkedIn. The LinkedIn Campaign Manager functions similarly to the Facebook Ads Manager and lets you conduct social media A/B testing right on the app.
We recommend letting your test run for a significant amount of time so you can gather sufficient data. Stopping the test too early means you’ll only be recording the initial engagement your posts receive and not how they perform over time, which doesn’t offer an accurate representation of their effectiveness.
#6. Implement Results
Lastly, you would need to put the results of your social media A/B testing into practice to benefit from your experiment. You can incorporate the change to your social media strategy right away or keep it in mind for future campaigns.
However, remember that what works now may not work in the future, so it’s important to conduct A/B testing often to keep your strategy optimized.
How to Interpret Results from Social Media A/B Testing
Before you can implement the results of social media A/B testing, you should first learn how to interpret them properly.
Here’s how to do it:
- Compare variation results. Simply looking at your content’s results will tell you which variation is more successful; remember to base this comparison on the metric you chose earlier in step two. However, if there’s only a slight difference between the two versions, it could likely be due to chance and not the actual variable. In this case, it’s best to conduct more tests to determine the best option.
- Conduct audience segmentation. You can also interpret the results of social media A/B testing by conducting audience segmentation to identify what content resonated with what demographic. This way, if you plan to market to a different audience, you’ll have an idea of what strategy to use to appeal to their interests.
3 Important Dos and Don’ts to Follow When Conducting Social Media A/B Testing
To ensure you get actionable results from social media A/B testing, here are some important dos and don’ts to follow:
Social Media A/B Testing Dos
- Keep your goals in mind. The purpose of social media A/B testing is to help you achieve better results in a specific objective, so it’s crucial to keep this goal in mind during the entire process to measure your success accurately.
- Monitor important metrics. While keeping track of your chosen metric is vital for social media A/B testing, monitoring other metrics is equally important and will help you achieve online success over time.
- Test only one element at a time. Testing multiple elements at a time can lead to unclear or confusing findings, so we recommend only focusing on one variable per test.
Social Media A/B Testing Don’ts
- Using a limited sample size. When conducting social media A/B testing, it’s best to use as large a sample size as possible to gain more accurate insights into your content’s performance and allow you to improve results significantly.
- Not recording results. Record the results of all the tests you run to continuously optimize your strategy over time. This will also help you keep track of what content variations you have already done and avoid wasting time on duplicates.
- Ignoring variations that didn’t work. Don’t disregard the underperforming variation just because it didn’t deliver the desired results; instead, use it to gain insights into what your audience doesn’t want and refine your overall strategy.
Key Takeaways
- A/B testing in social media is used to compare two variations to determine which option resonates with the target audience.
- Social media A/B testing is important as it can help improve your performance on social networking sites, including engagement, website traffic, and sales.
- You can test different social media elements, including text posts, CTAs, images, and videos, to name a few.
- To conduct social media A/B testing, you should determine your objective and choose a metric the test will focus on. Next, you’ll need to identify your variables and create the two variations to use. Lastly, after running the test, you can interpret the results by comparing the versions and conducting audience segmentation, then implement them in your strategy.
- Some important dos to keep in mind during social media A/B testing include focusing on your goals in mind, monitoring important metrics, and only testing on one element at a time. Meanwhile, some don’ts you should avoid are using limited sample size, not recording results, and ignoring failed variations.
Ervin Kalemi
