Organic Video Post Testing Trialling Within Creator Studio 

Let's be honest.

We all hate Facebook Creator Studio.

It's a frustrating, buggy, mess of a piece of software, which shatters dreams on an almost weekly basis for Page admins and community managers.

However, redemption could well be close at hand for the much-maligned social media tool, in the form of Facebook's new Organic Video Post Testing feature, which has just been announced.

Residing within Creator Studio, the new feature, which is in the early stages of being rolled out, lets you test 2-4 variations of a non-ad video post to see which one your audience likes most.

During the test, the posts are circulated to your audience, but not posted to your Page. When the test ends, the winning post is automatically published on your Page.

Paresh Rajwat, Facebook Head of Video Products

"We are also in the early stages of rolling out a new Organic Video Post Testing tool to help partners A/B test aspects of a post, including thumbnails, titles, descriptions and video content so they can better determine what works best for their audience."

Halleluiah.

Could Struggling Facebook Video Be Making A Comeback?

While standard testing has long been a feature of Facebook Ads, this is the first time we have seen it extended to unpaid posts.

Suggesting that finally, organic Facebook video might be about to get its mojo back after nearly three years stuck in the doldrums of social content.

Facebook video ruled the roost until the start of 2018, before Facebook's game-changing algorithm shift.

Adam Mosseri, Former Facebook News Feed Head, Jan 2018, via Wired

"There will be more friend content and family content. There will also be more group content. Group content tends to inspire a lot of conversation. Communities on Facebook are becoming increasingly active and vibrant.

There will be less video. Video is an important part of the ecosystem. It's been consistently growing. But it's more passive in nature. There's less conversation on videos, particularly public videos."

The news of the video testing tool coincides with a series of updates tied to Facebook Watch, which while appearing to be picking up momentum still hardily sets the world alight.

However, with Facebook trying to push Watch harder, perhaps this could offer a route to reviving flagging organic social video results for marketers. Fingers crossed!

Paresh Rajwat, Facebook Head of Video Products

"In France, national broadcaster M6 has seen a 2.5X increase in one-minute video views in nine months, while organically acquiring more than 6 million new follows across its network of Facebook Pages including France's Got Talent, Top Chef and Les Marseillais.

In Germany, ProSiebenSat.1 has more than doubled its one-minute video views in 11 months, while organically acquiring 2.5 million new follows across its show Pages such as The Voice of Germany and Galileo, rallying new audiences."

With Watch occupying a much more prominent position within the new FB5 Facebook design which launched in 2019, Watch is in effect offers yet another News Feed, alongside the Stories feed, Group feed and Messenger for marketers to try and unlock.

How Does The New Video feature Work?

The new video testing tool can help you choose the video post your audience responds to best, discover trends, and/or understand what kinds of creative content your audience responds to the best.

You'll run full posts against each other in a post-test. That means you can test any aspect of the post, including:

• Different edits of the video
• Post content
• Headlines
• Thumbnails

For a truly scientific approach to testing, you'd only have one variable per test.

When you run organic video post-tests:

• Each test is shown to a subset of the audience of a single Page
• You will choose how long you want the test to run for, and you have the option to schedule when the winning post is published to your Page
• You will choose the metric that you want to use to determine the winner

For example, you might choose to run your test for 10 minutes and select 1-minute views as the key metric. After 10 minutes, Facebook will post the variant with the most 1-minute views to your Page's timeline.

The test is not an algorithmic estimation. Page followers and potentially non-followers will see the post variants that you set.

For example, if you're testing thumbnail A and thumbnail B, some people will see A, and some will see B while the test is running.

At the end of your test, Facebook automatically posts the winning post to your Page. If you want to manually end the test, you must do so before time expires. You can also change the winning post to another variant after the test has ended.

Currently, the post testing tool is only available to specific partners. If you have access, you can find a Post Testing tab in the Content Library in Creator Studio, so keep your eyes peeled.