Social Media A/B Testing: 3 Ways To Optimize Your Strategy

• Test duration: Anywhere between two days and two weeks, depending on performance
• Key metric measured: The winner is the thumbnail that generates the highest watch time

YouTube’s “Test and compare” tool lets you publish up to three different versions of a thumbnail on one video. After the test has finished, the winning thumbnail will automatically be selected for all viewers.

Tests can be created during the video upload process or run on older videos. Depending on the performance of your thumbnails, the test will have three results:

1. Winner: One thumbnail clearly outperformed others
2. Preferred: One thumbnail performed marginally better than others
3. None: All thumbnails performed similarly

What To Test

We’ve found this tool to be extremely useful as we develop our Website Builder Expert YouTube channel. The results showed a clear favorite among our viewers, which we used to optimize our future thumbnails. Areas that we tested included:

• Color palette
• Icons, logos, and other elements
• Font and text size
• Adding faces, including various facial expressions and poses

• Test duration: Open-ended, but results show after 24 hours
• Key metrics measured: Views, likes, comments, shares, saves, replays, accounts reached, watch time, average watch time

Instagram’s Trial Reels feature invites creators to experiment with their short-form video content by publishing Reel variations to non-followers. This approach means that you’re free to test without the risk of negative backlash, such as losing followers.

Trial Reels are created the same way as regular Instagram Reels, but before hitting share, you’ll need to toggle on the “Trial” option underneath the audience settings.

What To Test

Some of the best elements to compare with this Instagram feature are:

• Posting time: Posting the same Reel at different times in the day may make users behave differently
• Captions: Length, tone of voice, and formatting can change the results
• Hashtags: Comparing whether Reels work best with or without hashtags, as well as varying the number of hashtags
• Audio options: Does a voiceover, song, or trending soundbite work best for this video?

• Test duration: Open-ended, but at least two weeks is recommended
• Key metric measured: Clicks, CPC, CPA, ROAS

When advertising on Facebook or Instagram, you can create A/B tests for ad sets, campaigns, or directly compare the performance of published ones. These are a great way to optimize your advertising strategy for the best results at the lowest cost.

To set up an A/B test, you’ll need to duplicate an existing campaign in Meta Ads Manager. Within the campaigns tab, select the “A/B Test” button. If you want to compare the performance of published campaigns, this can be done in the “Experiments” tab.

What To Test

Similar to Instagram and YouTube A/B testing tools, you’ll be able to test variations in visuals and text. However, you’ll also be able to play around with the advertising settings, such as:

• Audience targeting: Test different segments, such as location-based vs interest-based vs lookalike audiences
• Placement: Do your ads work best on Instagram, Facebook, or Messenger?
• Bidding strategies: Compare the same campaign with manual and automatic bidding

Social media A/B testing is extremely useful to understand more about your audience and engage them. Here are my top tips to help you get the most out of social media testing tools:

• Select one variable per A/B test: Multiple changes will make it difficult to pinpoint exactly what your audience responds to. Wait until the entire test is complete before analyzing results
• For fair A/B testing on ad campaigns, use the same budget and campaign duration
• Have a clear objective and hypothesis before you start testing, such as increased comments, story shares, or lead generation

A/B tests offer valuable insights for social media strategy analysis, allowing you to alter both your short-term posts and broader social media strategy. Be sure to monitor your test while it’s running and pick up on any clear trends.

Once your test has finished, it’s important to analyze the results against your objectives and use them to direct your future posting strategies. 

Which social media A/B testing tools have you used? Are there any we missed? Let us know below.