Calibrating Social Media Performance for Clients

Creating content for different social media platforms is like serving pizza to the world’s pickiest diners. Twitter only wants thin crust. LinkedIn demands deep-dish supreme. Instagram gets mad if the pepperonis are touching.

One slice won’t serve all, and running a social media calendar means balancing consistent publishing and optimization. You can do this by building incremental testing into your content plan.

Bite-sized experiments

Pumping out content for every platform and giving the necessary time and attention to optimizing details is overwhelming. This workflow can help you improve performance for clients without losing your sanity.

Step one: Pick your spotlight platform

Pick your platform to focus on. This should be a platform that already performs for your client, where the target audience is.

Step two: Look at the data

Figure out which pieces of content performed better than average on your chosen platform. Then look at underperformers. List all the differences between them from every angle.

Step three: Do some recon

Look around on a broader level. Check out your competitors' content, browse platform trends, and examine best practices. Add small tweaks you notice to your list.

Step four: Create tiny experiments

Start with the first tweak from your list to test out. Create a hypothesis, testing strategy, and time frame. For example:

“I think longer videos resonate more than shorter ones. I’ll test 2 longer videos in a week and keep 3 shorter videos for two weeks.”

You’re only choosing one item from your list at a time rather than doing everything at once to keep results clean and the optimization process manageable.

Step five: Add to calendar

Add your first test to the content calendar! As you experiment, maintain all other content normally. Keep running tests on one element, at one time, on one platform, and add your learnings to your updated content plan.

W.W.R.D?

• Use this workflow to design tiny, constant optimization tests for social
• Focus on buildable change over time rather than overhauling entire strategy at once