Sometimes content is launched out into the world and simply…. falls flat. When moments like this occur, wouldn’t you like to know what went wrong?
Good news: with content testing, you can! Content testing allows you to evaluate the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of content based on user behaviors. When employed properly, it can not only salvage content that missed the mark on the first round but it can turn it into high-performing content with a few tweaks.
What Is Content Testing?
Content testing is a form of user experience (UX) research that measures the quality and performance of digital content by evaluating how well it is accomplishing its intended purpose. Content testing is frequently used to determine whether a piece of content:
- Speaks to the right audience.
- Provides all of the information necessary to solve reader pain points.
- Provides this information clearly .
- Prompts the reader to take an intended action.
Content testing can also be used to evaluate specific sections of content within a larger piece by, for example, adding or removing a single element of the content and then A/B testing both versions to see which performs better.
What Makes Content Testing Valuable?
Content testing is a great way to gather actionable data on what your audience wants from your content. By measuring many different aspects of your content, you can gain a data-backed understanding of which elements make content more or less successful.
The more information you glean from content tests, the more you can discover about how to make your unique content appeal to your audience and trigger the desired responses.
How to Conduct Content Testing on LinkedIn
There are several different approaches to content testing that vary widely in terms of their precision, effectiveness and resource requirements. LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers two types of content testing: A/B testing and brand lift testing.
Each of these methods is effective for content shared on LinkedIn because they generate quantitative data, meaning the information you receive about your content via these methods isn’t biased by anything outside the realm of what you’re testing. This allows you to get the clearest picture possible of how the element of content you’re testing is impacting your content’s effectiveness.
A/B testing
A/B testing compares how a single facet of a piece of content affects that content’s performance positively or negatively by creating two versions of the content that are identical in every way except the element you want to test.
This is a highly versatile form of content testing because it can be used to test virtually any element of content. One of the most common elements of content to A/B test is the Call to Action (CTA). A CTA is a prompt to get the reader to take some action as a result of what they’ve just learned.
By changing nothing about the content but the CTA and then monitoring how frequently the audience takes the desired action, you can learn which of the two CTAs appeals more to your readers.
Because A/B testing only works if you test one variable at a time, it is a scientifically-reliable but slow form of content testing. It also can’t provide a very clear understanding of how a piece of content is performing overall. That’s what brand lift testing is for.
Brand lift testing
Brand lift testing measures the incremental impact of your content on key brand metrics such as brand recall, brand favorability, and more. It accomplishes this by comparing brand perception between a group of audience members who have seen your piece of content during the ad campaign (the test group), and a group who hasn’t (the control group).
After the campaign, the brand lift tool sends a survey to a subset of both groups. It then analyzes differences in how the two groups respond to your brand in order to determine the causal impact of your content. Brand lift tests on LinkedIn can even provide benchmarks and demographic breakdowns of this information, provided there is enough data to do so.
Make Content Testing Part of Your LinkedIn Strategy
By using these two forms of content testing, you can effectively evaluate how specific aspects of your content affect its performance, as well as your content’s impact on brand perception.
The more content testing you conduct, the more data you can gather about how to make your content better, so be sure to reevaluate your content and experiment as frequently as you can. With the help of the right testing, your content can always become even better.
Learn more about testing in Campaign Manager.
Topics: Content marketing
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