Social Media Lab June Wrap Up

June wasn’t as productive in the Lab as the previous months because we decided to only publish every other week over May, June, and July.

This was partly due to some hiccups on experiments and because our team was on a company retreat in France.

Attempting to get work done over those 7-10 days was near impossible but we had an amazing time!!

Our team retreat

Let’s take a look at the 2 posts we published since our last wrapup.

Scientific Proof on the Follow/Unfollow Strategy: Twitter & Instagram

follow unfollow strategy

This is a very controversial subject that many in social media marketing don’t talk about — and definitely don’t admit to using!

In the experiment, I tested the idea of following users on Twitter — targeting certain hashtags and users’ followers all with the hopes of getting a follow– and subsequently unfollowing those that don’t follow back.

Our Hypothesis

social media lab

You can listen to the podcast for this post below or go read the full experiment on the Lab.

Should Instagram Hashtags be in the Post or Comments?

social media lab

This is another highly debated topic that loads of users have asked us to test the last year.

In the experiment you’ll see there are many differing opinions on this, which is why we wanted to test it.

Our results will make you rethink your strategy.

The Hypothesis

instagram hashtags hypothesis

You can listen to the podcast below or take a look at the full experiment in the Lab.

What is the Lab Working on for July?

We’re hoping to publish these experiments before our next monthly wrapup:

  • Do the nature of comments affect an ad’s performance?
  • 30 hashtags on Instagram posts – yes or no?

What Is The Social Media Lab?

The Social Media Lab is a project powered by Agorapulse dedicated to spending $15,000 per month to bust the myths, rumors, and stories related to social media marketing.

We’ll test mainly organic reach but will also run paid experiments on occasion.

The experiments are conducted by myself, Scott Ayres, and Jason How.

We typically publish 1 blog post and podcast per week.

The podcast is co-hosted by Richard Beeson and myself.

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