Creating effective social media posts is more than just simply posting pictures of food from your restaurant. Although that’s still important, what you ultimately want is for people to click on your links, make comments and eventually become customers. To make this happen, you need to be able to write strong social media call to action phrases that make your audience take action.
We’ve already explored what a call to action is and how to use it on your website. During this Call To Action (CTA) month, we want to get you ready for the busiest month of the year by making sure that you use the right phrases to urge your audience to act.
So today we give you tips on how to write a social media call to action and give you some examples that have impressed us.
How To Write A Call To Action for Social Media
Why should I share your post? Why should I click on the link in your bio? Or follow you? The same principles apply on social media as on your website. Not only do you need to tell you audience what to do, you need to give them a good reason to do so.
Here are a few tips to consider before crafting the perfect CTA.
Target Every Stage Of The Sales Funnel
Why are you creating this campaign? What do you want the audience to do when they see your post? Do you want to create awareness or convince your prospect to make a purchase? Your CTA will be different in each case.
A prospect who just became aware of your product or service is probably not going to buy just because you’ve put a strong CTA on your campaign. They might start by just liking your post, and then progress to sharing and even clicking on a link. When you think of putting a CTA on your campaign, make sure to target the buyer at each stage of the sales funnel.
Link It With Your Website
Social media should be used to support and drive traffic to your website. So whatever campaign you run on social media, make sure to redirect your followers to your website.
But, sometimes you want the whole campaign to run on social media. You’ve personalized the hashtags and worked out the different strategies for each platform. So driving people off your social media page is not the plan? Ok, I get you!
In that case, make sure that your social media page and website match. If I land on your website first, I should then be directed to your social media page. Your social media and website should always be working together.
Always Be Testing. Always!
Otherwise how will you know what’s working?
Change one thing at a time, so you know what to attribute the increase in the conversion rate to. These are some changes you can make on your campaign:
- Text – try a different headline to see if the click-through rate changes. Your audience might respond differently. Check out our blog on how to write a great headline to hook your audience.
- Colour – change the colour of your CTA button, or even the colour of the text on your advert.
- Graphics – keep the text the same and just change the graphics. If you’re using a picture, maybe think of using a slide show, video or a different picture altogether.
- Placement – move the placement of your CTA button around and see where it gets the best response.
But like I said, change only one thing at a time so that you know what to attribute the change to.
Choose Clear Over Clever
Tell your audience what to do in clear and simple terms. You might be tempted to use clever language, metaphors or make them read between the lines. Please don’t! This is not an English test. Be clear and direct to avoid confusion.
Track Your Analytics
Whether it’s a campaign on your website or social media, you should always be tracking how well (or not) you’re doing. Always!
On social media, we’re all obsessed with likes and followers. Don’t get me wrong, those are important but only to a certain point. Would you rather have a 1 000 followers with an 80% conversion rate or 10 000 followers with a 1% conversion rate? It’s a no brainer. The difference between the two is 700 customers, which is a lot.
Concentrate on the important metrics. Grow the number of followers yes, but with the end goal of turning them into customers. Don’t get carried away by vanity metrics.
Social Media Call To Action Examples
This week I’m going to do things a bit differently. I’m going to look at each category / industry and show you what has impressed me in the past few weeks. Your business will probably fall in one of these categories. So read on to get some inspiration!
Restaurant
Who doesn’t love a freebie? Fresh Yumm Cafe ran this promo about 2 weeks ago.
This campaign is perfect to get your audience in through the door. You have been creating awareness, your audience has been following and liking your posts, but they still haven’t pulled the trigger so to speak.
If they love freebies like I do then this might be what converts them from spectators to customers.
Product
Again, the magic of freebies. Castle Light put out a fantastic carrot to get contact details. I signed up thinking it was too good to be true. But we all got a surprise during the week with a free six pack. Social media went crazy, creating the hype they were going for.
Remember, if you’re going to claim to offer freebies, you have to follow through. Don’t use the promo to collect customers’ info and not offer anything. You will make a lot of people angry. And, you will lose credibility in the market. Angry customers are very quick to complain.
Service
As a service business, it can sometimes appear that we’re on the backfoot when it comes to what we can offer. But we have a lot to offer and you shouldn’t be shy to take advantage.
TrendER is running a promo to create awareness, increase website traffic and email requests.
Like I said, you need to target every stage of the sales funnel. This is a perfect example of targeting top of the funnel traffic. You are reaching out to people who don’t know about your company and you’re urging those who have seen your posts on social media to visit your website and get in touch. It’s a classic and clever way of targeting your audience on different stages.
At Wrapp Around, we ran a promo two months back offering a free website review.
We had been mostly targeting top of the funnel traffic and decided to try and move our audience a bit further down the funnel. We had a great response to our promo, and will be regrouping to come up with something better next time!
Events
We are all about on-line events now. Even as some countries are opening up and having in-person events, there’s still a big drive and demand for webinars and on-line streaming.
What I like about this post is that it’s very clear and to the point. You either want to learn about data-driven marketing or you don’t. If you do, they tell you exactly what you’ll learn during the webinar. It’s clear and concise. You are not going to waste your time attending an event only to learn nothing at then end of it.
Although email is not social media, I’ve included it here to stress its importance to your digital marketing strategy.
With email, you already have the audience. These people have given you their personal info because they like what you have to say and want more. It’s a brilliant place to be. That doesn’t mean you get to relax though. That unsubscribe button should make you work harder.
What I like about this campaign is that I feel like I’m part of the exclusive club who get to try the coolest products first before they are released into the market (although I’m not entirely sure that’s the case). But I feel important. This for me is one of the best ways to use email marketing.
It’s A Wrapp!
Whether it’s on social media or your website, your call to action needs to inspire action. Using the correct CTA can be the very thing that turns a spectator into a customer.
Please continue sending us examples of your CTA on social media or website. We will share and post them on our platform.
See you next week!
