You will produce a monthly review that turns your numbers into decisions about the next month.
Most people who post regularly never look back. They make the next video, and the next, each one based on whatever idea feels good that week. A year later they are making the same kind of content they made at the start, with the same results, and they cannot say what has worked.
A monthly review breaks that loop. Once a month, for about half an hour, you look at what you posted, decide what the numbers are telling you, and change next month's plan because of it. This exercise walks you through your first one.
Open the sheet you set up in lesson 9.2, Compare posts fairly and look for patterns. Make sure it has a row for every post from the last month, with at least eight posts. If you have posted fewer, include posts from earlier, and note that the review covers a longer period.
Each row needs the tags, which are pillar, format, hook type and length, and the main numbers: reach, average watch time, saves, shares and profile actions. Add a column for watch time as a share of the video's length, and one for saves per 1,000 views, so you can compare fairly as lesson 9.2 showed. Add a column for messages or enquiries from your log, and one for sales if any came from social.
Priya's first review covered nine posts from her first month, as an example.
Decide what top and bottom mean before you sort. For most small businesses, the best measure is the one closest to sales: profile actions and messages. Use saves per 1,000 views or watch time as a second measure when the action numbers are too small to separate posts.
Sort the sheet and pick your top three and bottom three. For each, write one sentence on why you think it did well or badly. Look at the tags first: did the top three share a pillar, a format, a hook type? Then watch each video again and look at the retention graph: where did people leave the bottom three?
Priya's top three, as an example, were all teaching videos with mistake hooks, and two of them brought in messages from parents. Her bottom three included both of her talking-to-camera videos about the centre's history. Her one-sentence reasons were guesses, and she labelled them as guesses. That is fine. The review is where you form ideas, and next month is where you test them.
Now turn the review into three decisions. Each one should be specific enough that you could check next month whether you did it.
Keep: something that is working and should continue or grow. Priya decided to keep her teaching pillar at two posts a fortnight, with mistake hooks.
Change: something that might work better with one adjustment. She decided to change the centre history videos into a reply format, answering a real parent's question about why she started the centre, with the question on screen as the hook.
Stop: something that is not working and is not worth adjusting. She decided to stop posting holiday greetings, which took time and got almost no reach, saves or messages.
Three decisions is enough. More than that and you will not be able to tell which change made the difference next month.
Decisions that stay in the review sheet change nothing. Open your pillars from lesson 2.4 and your 30-day calendar from lesson 6.4, and change them to match. If you are growing a pillar, give it more slots. If you are changing a format, update the ideas that use it. If you are stopping something, delete it from the calendar and move its slots to something that works.
At the bottom of the review, write the month's totals from your log: how many conversations started on social, and how many became customers. Over a few months, this line is what tells you whether social media is worth the hours you give it. Views can rise while enquiries stay flat, and enquiries can rise while views fall. Only the log shows which.
Priya's first month, as an example, brought six enquiries from social and two trial lessons. It was a small number, and it gave her a baseline to measure every following month against.
When you finish, you should have a review sheet covering at least eight posts with tags and numbers, your top and bottom three each with a one-line reason, three specific decisions, an updated calendar, and a line recording enquiries and sales from social.
Now run yours: complete the monthly review sheet for at least eight posts and write three decisions for next month's calendar.
Complete a monthly review sheet for at least eight posts and write three decisions for next month's calendar.
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