When it comes to content creation, no one gets it right the first – or every – time. here’s how to test your content for success.
When it comes to any content creation, there will be bumps in the road.
You might have a brilliant content idea that you think has legs, but then falls flat on its face. No uptake, no fanfare.
Don’t give up on that piece of content just yet. Your idea might be brilliant but it may just need tweaking, put up on a different platform or channel, or released at a different time.
You only know if you try a few different approaches. (If it still tanks, then it probably does suck.)
Why you should test your content
We always recommend you test your content for the following:
- Usability: Is your copy succinct? Is it clear what readers need to do?
- Readability: Are you using the same language and vocabulary as your audience?
- Navigability: Is it well-structured? Can readers find what they’re looking for?
- Searchability: Is it optimised for search engines?
Even if you don’t have a decent customer base to test it on yet, ask your friends and family members.
How to test your content
A/b tests
Create two versions and see which your customers prefer/click. This could be landing pages or conducting a focus group among your top customers. You always need to compare apples with apples though, so only change one variant at a time.
Cloze tests
Take away the main words in your tagline/message and see if it’s still memorable to your reader.
Highlighter tests
Ask your audience to highlight content in different colours into four different buckets:
- what’s clear
- what’s interesting
- what’s dull
- what’s confusing
Then you know exactly what to work on!
Recall & comprehension / five-second tests
Ask targeted questions to your audience about the content they eyeballed.
This will identify if it’s easily understood and clear.
A few other tools
Dive into raw data
Much of the time answers can be found in the patterns of our analytics.
Set up clear goals that automatically track and measure success.
Follow the ux journey
Identify how your customer navigates around to find out where they convert and where they drop off through heat mapping of your website. You can then tweak accordingly.
Use content tools
There are plenty of nifty digital gadgets that can help you with content testing, whether that’s checking the punchiness of a headline and key message, or identifying the right hashtags or SEO keywords.
We subscribe to a range of tools that help us test content, including ones that scrawl through entire online pages of content to check things like SEO or readability, so you don’t have to!
Keep track of content do’s & don’ts
There’s a lesson in each piece of content creation or marketing campaign you do. Why not use digital sticky notes to file all your learnings in one place that you can then refer to when creating anything new? This is what we do to ensure we don’t repeat old mistakes and instead solely focus on what works.
Use a content checklist
If you’re creating regular content, then it’s always worth having a checklist, if not a style guide, to help you maintain standards.
We obsess over checklists before publishing anything, so that nothing gets missed and to ensure consistency across everything we do.
If you’d like that kind of precision with your content creation, get in touch with us!
Wordsmithery 
