Facebook's Organic Post Testing Tool is Getting an Upgrade to Help it Perform Better

Last year, Facebook launched its organic video post-testing option in Creator Studio and is now rolling out an update with a new layout and increased post choices to help you with your Facebook posting strategy. This post by social media specialist Matt Navarra shows how Facebook's new post testing platform now allows you to test several post types, including text, link, and image posts. This gives you more options to experiment with your audience.

If you want to measure something specific for each test, you can do so by selecting one of the following important metrics: Compliments, Reactions, Reach or Link Clicks. Once you have this information, you can design a test to see which variations of your post get the best response from your target demographic. Titles and thumbnails can be compared, as can image links and text postings, but video can only be tested on a like-for-like (video-for-video) basis because of the nature of the video. You can test for up to 24 hours before reposting or boosting the most effective version, giving you vital insight into audience preferences for future planning.

It's a lot like Facebook's Ad Experiments in Ad Manager, which lets you evaluate several ad creatives to see which one gets the best results for your money. It's a little different with organic post-testing because you're not paying to maximize the best performance, but the premise and approach are largely the same, with a preliminary sampling of audience response driving better posting options.

This is an improvement over previous iterations of Facebook's algorithm, which prevented organic post-tests from being shown to the same audience more than once. If your follower already saw the test post, they won't also see the final version you choose, and only that final variation will remain on your Page, while the discarded tests will be hidden.

While Facebook has been working on improving its organic post-testing tools since 2018, the first noticeable changes to organic post-testing were made that year. We've asked Facebook for more information and will update this piece if/when we hear back on whether or not they're sending out this updated version to all users. However, if you're granted access, it might be a beneficial alternative because it will provide you a better understanding of what Facebook users respond to and how you can either expand your audience or increase clicks, depending on your objectives.

If you do have access, you may test out the new features by navigating to 'Create Posts' > 'Create Post Tests' in Facebook Creator Studio.