EXPERIMENT AND ADAPT: HOW TO TEST AND REFINE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT FOR BETTER ENGAGEMENT
I think we can all agree that social media is an extremely powerful tool. It’s allowed us to connect in ways we never thought possible. These days we can easily connect with our audiences, promote our products, and build a strong online presence. But what if you are putting forth all the effort and getting nothing in return?
Standing out in the crowded digital landscape requires a well-crafted social media strategy that speaks to your audience and gets them to connect with you in return. And in order to get better engagement and reach on social media platforms, it’s essential that you continue to test and refine your content on a regular basis.
HOW TO TEST YOUR CONTENT AND ADJUST YOUR STRATEGY
Here’s how you can effectively test your content and leverage your findings to change your overall strategy for the better.
Understand your audience: Do you have a full understanding of who your audience is? Make sure you research and identify their preferences, interests, pain points, and communication styles. Make sure to take advantage of analytics tools and insights from your social media platforms to gather valuable data about your audience.
Define clear objectives: Before you can even start testing your content, you need to establish clear and specific goals for your social media campaigns. What is your end goal? Are you trying to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, boost sales, etc? Having goals you are able to measure against will help you to evaluate the success of your content and change it accordingly.
A/B testing: This is a great way to compare two versions of content and see which performs better. Create some variations of your social media posts by using different headlines, CTA’s, imagery, etc, then take a look at what got more engagement, comments, shares, likes and so on. This is a great way to see what it is your audience likes and responds to.
Timing: The timing of your social media posts matters quite a bit. So experiment with posting at different times of the day, and different days of the week. You can easily do this with a social media scheduler. I like loomly and have a great post here about how and why you should be using this too. By using something like this, you can easily post when you aren’t around, then see what is performing well with your audience and figure out when they are most active.
Content formats: Change up your content formats to keep your audience engaged and interested. Yes, reels still seem to be the most loved, but make sure you are testing different types of content like images, videos, and carousels, then monitor how each performs and adjust your future content based on the results. You may be surprised by what your audience responds best to.
Analyze data: Knowing how to run data analysis is crucial for refining your social media content strategy. Use available analytics tools to measure the performance of your content. Pay special attention to engagement rates, follower growth, website traffic, and conversions. Try to find patterns with what is working so you can better adjust your strategy.
Remember, testing and refining your social media content is ongoing and will require continuous experimentation and analysis in order to make the most of your online presence. But having this type of insight into your audience can really help you cater better to their needs.
And above all this, don’t forget that social media is not a one-way street. In order to use these suggestions effectively, you have to listen to your audience and their feedback. Make sure you engage, respond to them, and even ask them what they want. Use their feedback to constantly improve your content. Sure, analytics are great, but your audience is always going to give you the best feedback.
If you could use some help figuring out your strategy, audience, or even how to best make changes based on your data, we’d love to help. Reach out and let’s talk!