Winners and their variants

A winner is a post, carousel, script or ad that beat its channel’s baseline with enough posts to compare, won a test, or that you marked as having worked. Multiply it and the team writes variants that each change exactly one thing, labelled, for you to approve, edit or drop. Approved variants run as a test with its criteria locked, and the best one becomes the channel’s champion.

What worked once is the best evidence you have of what will work again, and it is usually left alone because changing it feels like a risk. Changing one thing at a time keeps the risk small and makes the result mean something: when a variant wins, you know which change did it.

That only holds if every variant really changes one thing. So the change is written to a value, checked by code against the winner, and refused if anything else moved. A variant must also read differently enough from the winner and from what you posted last month, because the networks penalise duplicate posts.

Nothing goes out without you. An organic variant is scheduled only when you approve it, an ad variant shares the winner’s own budget so spend never rises, and a video variant is a script until you choose to render it.

1. 01The winner multiplier waits behind the winner_multiplier flag. Once it is on for your account, open Posts, Published, and turn it on for the venture.
2. 02Winners appear at the top of Published with their badge, the number against the median they beat and the posts behind it. Mark another one with This worked.
3. 03Press Multiply this winner. Choose what may change; suggestions come from your own past tests and the Almanac. Choose how many variants, then press Make variants.
4. 04Read each variant beside the winner. Approve the ones to test, edit one (an edit that changes more than its one thing is refused with the reason), or drop it.
5. 05Press Start the test. Posts are scheduled at least the spacing apart on the same account; ads share the winner’s daily budget equally.
6. 06When the clock runs out the result is read from the numbers: a new champion, the winner holds, or too few numbers to call it.
7. 07With formats on too, Save this structure as a format on the variant board keeps the winner’s shape (its kind of opening, its steps, its kind of close) as a format for this venture. It starts untested and earns its rank from its own results (see Formats).

• Posting and scheduling
• Live answers
• A channel