Exciting news for us marketers: Facebook is experimenting with A/B testing for its posts. This will give all Social Media Managers the opportunity to test and evaluate their Facebook content, so they can make better educated decisions when deciding on their content strategy.
After Jane Manchun Wong noticed it in Facebook’s code, Social Media Today picked up the news and announced it on their blog. They describe that Page Managers will soon be able to try out two different variations of their posts, which will be shown to different people. Based on the results, they can decide to create more similar content, or even boost the most successful post for bigger reach.
Many marketers have already been using this principle in different marketing channels. In email marketing, for example, A/B testing your subject line or the sender can offer useful insights. But even on landing pages, content is offered in different variations to try out the effectiveness. And even though many articles have claimed that A/B testing is dead, there is definitely something to learn from the results.
We don’t know many details yet – Facebook hasn’t even announced it officially – but there’s predicted that managers will be able to select a ‘control’ and ‘test’ group, who would be exposed to two different versions of your posts. In the Facebook Insights, you would then be able to track which version is getting better results.
Are you as excited as we are? We’ll keep you posted on any updates!