Content testing is an evaluation process that involves a deeper behavioral analysis of viewers using a range of experiments and tools. This eventually boosts viewer engagement and helps you achieve your marketing goals.
We understand that various YouTubers aspire to make it big in the content creation journey. Hence, our blog will take you through various strategies to help you achieve your dreams!
What is Content Testing and Related Strategies?
Content testing provides crucial insights for video improvisations. With constant testing and observation, you can draw the required inferences backed by in-depth data.
Content testing helps you achieve these outcomes:
- Readable Text and professional video appeal.
- Easy-to-understand content.
- Well-optimized videos for YouTube algorithms.
If you want to elevate your YouTube engagement further, then walk through the leading and up-to-date YouTube testing strategies with us.
1. Preview Videos – Optimizations & Quality
There are two ways of previewing videos: either through Creator Studio before publishing the video, or post-publish while keeping your videos private.
Look at the following aspects while previewing videos:
- Description, Title, and Tags.
- Keywords and Hashtags.
- Thumbnails and CTA placements.
- Intro, Outro, and Background Music.
- Video quality and Flow of Script.
- Placement of Ads.
2. Experiment With Visuals For Contest Testing
Here are visual or graphic aspects to experiment and observe the impact of:
- Test different lighting and camera effects.
- Choose from various motion graphics and transitions.
- Experiment with lenses and camera angles.
- Try Color blocking or experiment with different accents of colors.
3. Pattern Interrupts Or B-roll – Content Testing
Your videos don’t have to have just one shot of you staring into the camera lenses and sharing your thoughts. You can introduce different video cuts at regular intervals to break the pattern and hook viewers.
For this, you need to know:
- In what segments of your videos do the viewers tend to lose their interest.
- Where it’s going overbroad
- What kind of pattern interrupt video will go with your videos
4. Content Testing With YouTube Analytics
Each video gives you an opportunity to change something a little and see how it impacts your viewers. They also give you a chance to learn something new about your subscribers.
YouTube will provide these insights on regular videos every time you change your style:
- Comments left by viewers.
- View count and Watch time.
- Number of clicks and shares.
- At what segment of your video the views are dense.
- And which section of your video is the most replayed.
- End-screen click rate – What links mentioned within the video were clicked.
- Demography, geography, language, and devices.
- New viewers and repeat viewers insights.
- Custom reports to see which topics or playlists are doing well.
5. A/B Content Testing For Optimizations – TubeBuddy
With Tubebuddy and various other third-party tools, you can conduct A/B testing on various aspects of video optimizations. You also get more insights for analyzing the results!
Creators can find the following metrics being tracked for their tests:
- Watch time, CTR – Click-through rate, and Traffic Sources
Where can you perform A/B testing?
- Titles, Descriptions, Tags, and Thumbnails
How does it work?
- Set up the test on TubeBuddy and give two variations for the same video.
- Video can vary in terms of Title, thumbnail, description, and tags.
- In essence, with TubeBuddy, you can experiment with keywords, hashtags, and tonality for your title and description.
- Specify the test duration – minimum 14 days and maximum can be as per your needs.
- Tubebuddy will alternate between both versions while gathering audience insights.
- Whatever video version wins in the end, you can implement it.
6. A/B Testing For Thumbnail – YouTube Feature
Let’s know the features of this tool, and what’s more? It’s free!
- With the YouTube tool, you can test 3 variations of thumbnails, unlike other platforms, which allow only 2 variations.
- But data tracking is mostly limited to watch hours.
- The test will run for a minimum of two weeks, after which you can either use the winning variation or retest both varieties.
7. YouTube Ad Content Testing
With Google Ads you can create multiple versions of your own promotional campaigns on YouTube videos.
How To Do A/B Testing For YouTube Ads?
- Pick the element you want to conduct this test for – headline, Keywords, CTAs, or description.
- Upload multiple varieties of ad copy with regard to any aspect of your choice.
- Google ads will display both varieties of your YouTube ad to the target audience.
- Google A/B testing will track – Clicks, Views, Conversions, Cost per view, Cost per click, skip button clicks, and comments.
- Once it is determined which version of your ad is getting better responses, you can proceed with the winning version.
You can test bidding strategies too:
- This would be slightly different from your regular A/B testing.
- Basically, you can create different ad groups for your campaign.
- Each group will target a different audience based on their demographic details or geographic locations.
- These groups can be based on different customer personas.
- Based on how each group responds, you can refine your targeting and bugging amount.
If you want to promote video on YouTube, then this knowledge will be extremely crucial for you!
Why Testing Content
The content you deliver to your audience should be of optimal quality, and conducting content testing ensures this. You must have formulated factors based on your audience. Conducting content testing provides an opportunity to confirm whether your audience’s needs are adequately addressed in the content.
You can see whether the content is strong enough to generate CTRs or conversions. Let’s say your focus is on reducing the bounce rate; then, content testing can be conducted to determine whether the content effectively hooks the audience from the start.
What Type of Content Should You Test
Let’s discuss various types of content testing. This will help you determine what is working for you and what small changes you need to make to your content to make it publishing-ready.
Blog Posts: Conduct content tests for various blog lengths, post formats, styles, and other elements. This will help you determine what resonates with your audience. Select what fulfills both your role and the audience’s needs.
Email Campaigns: Try doing a preview or an A/B test with different subject lines, descriptions, CTAs, visuals, or text-based content. See what giving you more open rates and conversions and act on it.
Social Media post: Test each type of content post, such as polls, infographics, video snippets, and images, to determine the most effective approach. Perform a dimension test; not every post will be suitable for every social platform.
Podcasts: Analyse your podcast length to determine if it is optimal for your audience. Extract viral content from a video podcast. Examine whether you need to adjust your audio settings.
Ebooks, Whitepapers, & Case Studies: These types of content are too long to proofread, so use AI tools. An AI tool can assist with grammar checks, tone, readability, and other aspects.
Why You Should Do a Content Test
The content test is a natural integration when forming a content marketing strategy. Here are a few points why a content test is needed:
Contest tests at Intervals: Conducting content tests at regular intervals keeps you on track and delivers the content into the next phase with the necessary structure.
Necessary check: Even if you publish content regularly and have been on the platform for years, still do content checks for the essential elements. For example, checking the subject line, preview line, and CTAs while doing an email campaign.
Content Audit: If you have spent hours on a piece of content, you may think everything is perfect. However, when you review it the next day or after a few days, you might notice some adjustments. This is why it’s essential to conduct a content audit at regular intervals.
Underperforming Content Test: It’s obvious to do a content test for underperforming content. A possible revelation that needs to be addressed to get content back on track.
Based on Feedback: Content needs to be updated based on audience feedback. Feedback and review can be integrated into the content test.
How to Test Your Content
Several critical steps and practices must be considered when conducting a content test:
Clear Objectives: Predefine what your content goals are. What goal do you want to achieve with this content test? For example, engagement and conversions.
Select the right content: Choose the right content to test. For example, an article, webpage, campaign, creatives, etc. Test content that brings value.
Monitor your test: Content test is a recurring process. You have to do a test for every content every time. Monitoring will give you insights into what is absolutely necessary and what is trend-based.
Prepare content for the contest test: You can’t just hop onto every content and do a test. This will break your content strategy rhythm. Include content selection for testing in your strategy.
Conclusion
Content testing for YouTube is a continuous process. It helps creators maximize viewer retention. In the content world, viewers are the king, so catering to their needs is important. However, they may not be able to vocalize their thoughts all the time. Hence, testing tools are helpful! These tools give you hints that viewers are incapable of pinpointing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the best content for New YouTuber?
A newbie can start with video highlights, recipe videos, video essays, DIYs, life hacks, event coverage, and live streams.
Q2. What strategies do successful YouTubers use?
The most used strategies are: sharing videos on social media, videos in newsletters, forum discussions, links to landing pages, and staying in a niche. Many also purchase YouTube subscribers from reputable providers.
Q3. How do new YouTubers get views?
By uploading videos with an engaging title & thumbnails. Adding relevant tags, keywords, and hashtags. Organizing videos into playlists. Reading viewer feedback. Covering content gaps not addressed by other competitors
Q4. How to go viral on YouTube?
Following trends and utilizing them for your videos with a personal twist. Automate your video titles and descriptions, you can simply use AI YouTube description generator and AI YouTube title generator!. Collaborating with other growing influencers.
Q5. What is the role of AI in content testing?
AI tools enable fast, reliable, and adaptable content testing. Based on the content, the AI tools can be automated to generate test results.
