Social media networks are practical for businesses to build relationships with their audience. That’s why many companies use social media to promote their brands. Whether it’s an investment blog, an eCommerce store, or a SaaS website, the rules are the same. Get more followers and engage with them.
Aside from promoting the business, companies can rely on the community to request feedback and build a better brand that meets users’ expectations. Therefore, social media is a helpful user testing tool.
However, getting the results you want requires detailed planning and strategizing. That way, you can hope to reach the right individuals ready to participate in user testing. There are several ways to achieve these goals. Keep reading to learn more about smart steps that will help you create a compelling user testing campaign.
Think of social media features that can help
The majority of social media platforms have great features for your user testing process. For example, you can use in-built polling options to enable your followers to vote about something quickly.
If you want to make the best use of this feature, you need to create a set of straightforward user testing questions. It will allow your users to understand what you need them to do.
The polling feature is available with:
The biggest benefit of using polls is the time they take to complete. So after a person visits the link where they can test your product, it’s easy to come back to your post and choose one of the answers. Because the whole process is short, you’ll likely get more interaction. That means you’ll end up with more user testing results.
The best part of running social media polls is that they’re not anonymous. The poll creator can see how you voted. Why is this relevant? Well, you can see how people from different industries tested your product. It might lead to some patterns, helping you find your target audience better.
Use a social media network that works best
Every business needs a social media profile for building awareness through following and a community. Additionally, it’s an effective way of offering customer support, as the lines of communication are already open with your followers.
You’ll quickly see which social media platform works best for your business as you run your profile. If you want to have successful user testing, opt for one with the highest engagement rate.
So if your followers on Twitter like to engage with your tweets, it might be a good idea to post your user testing request on that platform. Still, as this is slightly different from other content you generally publish, you should post it on all social media channels.
It might turn out that people on Twitter like your everyday content, but Facebook followers are the ones who want to share feedback. Try different approaches and see where your followers are most likely to engage with your posts. Don’t forget to give Instagram a go. It’s one of the social media networks with the highest engagement rates.
Pick the right hashtags
Hashtags work the same way on all social media platforms. If you’re looking for a way to get free exposure, you need to add all the relevant hashtags. Use hashtags that describe what you’re testing and how you’re testing it.
In general, you should use around ten hashtags to make your post more discoverable. People will be able to find your post in two ways — in the hashtag feed or if they search for terms you’ve used in hashtags.
If you’re using social media for user testing often, you should create your hashtag. People interested in providing more feedback to your business can easily find you. Plus, you get to keep all the user testing posts under one hashtag.
Create groups
One of the best ways to get returning testers is to establish a social media group with a specific interest. Start building your user testing group by inviting your followers to join it. Besides adding your followers, you can add other platform users one by one. As more people join the group over time, you’ll have a bigger number of test participants.
The benefit of building a group is that you can achieve an incredibly higher engagement rate. People who want to participate in your test are there. It might take some time to build up your group to count thousands of members, but still, it’s a worthwhile investment if you’re planning to conduct user testing often. Plus, there are other benefits to consider.
Aside from creating your own user testing group, explore what’s already out there. You’ll likely find plenty of communities of UX testers that are already active. Additionally, exploring forums can be beneficial for finding communities. Consider searching for them on Reddit, where the site has communities dedicated to everything.
What’s in it for the users?
Your post needs to include some sort of reward for those who decide to participate in testing. Creating an incentive will depend on how long the test takes. If posts are longer, offering a gift such as a discount code or eBook is a great way to attract more testers.
Aside from including the reward details, make sure your post contains information about the test. Help the user understand what they’ll be testing and why. Once you give better context and purpose of the test, more people will be willing to participate. Also, include that it would help improve your product.
That approach lets you connect with your followers and leverages personal touch. If you write that you need help, many people will come and assist you by participating in testing.
Analyze the results
Gathering the results is easy, but analyzing them is different. You need to implement other tools that will show user behavior clearly. The best option is to rely on a tool that provides a heatmap, which shows how your participants behaved during the test.
Additionally, using link shorteners like Bitly can help you measure the number of clicks on links on your posts. Why is this relevant? You can more easily conclude which social media platforms result in the most engagement. In the future, you can focus more on those platforms to get more people to test your product.
Concluding thoughts
Given that social media has billions of active users, it’s apparent that it should be in your next search for user testers. While it might be a bit challenging at first, as you build up groups around your testing needs, you’ll start getting better results.
Easier user testing is just one of many benefits of building a community on social media. Don’t forget that you can automate the process by scheduling posts with user-friendly tools such as JARVEE. Be creative with your strategy and monitor every step of the way. You’ll end up with plenty of people willing to participate in your next user testing.
About the author
Lindsey Allard is the CEO of PlaybookUX, a video-based user feedback software. After seeing how time consuming and expensive gathering feedback was, Lindsey made it her goal to create a solution to streamline the user feedback process.
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