Social media – calls to action
Well everyone, that’s it for February 2020. Can’t quite believe that Christmas was over two months ago but there we are. Last month was hectic, with lots of trips into…
Well everyone, that’s it for February 2020. Can’t quite believe that Christmas was over two months ago but there we are.
Last month was hectic, with lots of trips into Chester, avoiding both Ciara and Duncan who did their very best to rip out the fences in the garden (but ultimately failed) and getting a start on the next steps for our new website.
We also tried out a wonderful co-working space in Warrington called The Outset, if you’re in the area go and check them out!
I hope that you all had an exciting February and that you managed to implement some of the tips that we set out in last months’ Google My Business blog post!
This month we’ll be taking a different look at social media posts, focusing on calls to action. I will abbreviate this during the newsletter for brevity. First up what is a call to action?
Call to Action – A way to transport your audience or potential customer from one point to another by making them take action.
When it comes to adding CTA’s there are often two different issues that people deal with;
They totally forget to put the CTA in the text of their post.
They feel like they shouldn’t add a CTA for a variety of reasons such as coming across as asking for too much or being spammy.
Focusing on that second point, a call to action doesn’t have to come across as spammy or annoying. In fact, when it comes to social media you want people to know what the next steps are and often that’s exactly what the reader wants themselves.
If possible, you should always have a CTA in place to lead your customer, client or reader by the hand in the right direction.
One of the best ways to use social media is to tell a story, think about the pain point of your audience, how will this content help them and then what extra information or product can you give them to help. This last part is exactly where the call to action comes in.
If thinking about it in that way doesn’t help then ask yourself this:
“What action do I ideally want the reader of this post to take?”
If you’re reading this then you probably own a business and you are using social media as a tool to elevate your presence or make sales.
When you have this goal, you must use the tool correctly. Calls to action can be used to help create buzz around your page, in fact they are a great way to open up engagement with people.
Actions that you want your customers to take:
Link to your website –
When linking to your website from social media make sure that you always link to the correct page. If you’re talking about beautiful hampers that you sell for couples, lead the reader through to that couple hamper sales page rather than your home page or contact page. Your website is your main touch point on the internet, it’s the only tangible thing that you own and are fully in-control of, make use of it in your social media posts!
Like, React, Comment, Share, Retweet, Vote –
All of these are actions that your reader can take on the platform itself. Commenting is a great one to ask for, especially if you’ve placed a simple question for them to answer and make sure you answer the question yourself!
Subscribe –
Subscribing will only work on certain platforms (Youtube & Twitch come to mind) but you could also use this one to get people to connect with your newsletter or be added to your mailing list!
Download –
This could be a link to a PDF, a spreadsheet or something else of value that you’ve created for your audience. When doing this kind of post I’d suggest you link through to a blog post on your website or landing which has the download link on it!
Watch this video –
Link through the the video sharing website that you’re using or ask your audience to watch the video that you’ve natively posted to the platform (native is always better).
Ask for feedback –
Get the reader to give their input on your business, content or products. This could be in the form of recommendations on LinkedIn, Google Reviews or just a simple Q&A video on Facebook Live.
Your actionable objectives for the month:
This month we want to get you used to using CTA’s on the majority of your social media posts.
There are three steps to this one –
1. Jot down your post ideas for the month, you can make this as detailed as you like but as long as you have an idea of what’s going out when you’ll be set.
2. Link each of the posts that you’ve come up with some sort of CTA – you can use the ideas that we’ve given you just above or come up with some of your own.
3. Keep an eye on your posts over the month and see which ones bring in the most engagement (whether that’s clicks to your website or engagement on the post itself).
Here is an example of ours:
Monday: A question about the social media platform you can’t live without.
CTA: Comment post, reaching out for engagement on social platforms to get some conversation going at the start of the week.
Tuesday: Post about being out and about at a meeting on pancake day.
CTA: Comment post, asking about people’s favourite networking places.
Wednesday: Email Marketing tip and Newsletter.
CTA: Promotional post – focus on the newsletter release!
Thursday: Pinterest Top 100 post.
CTA: Link through to the Pinterest top 100 post that we found.
Friday: FAQ post, how many posts per platform.
CTA: Link to the website where the reader can get more detailed information on the topic (blog).
As you can see, it’s good to keep a bit of a balance through promotional posts and those that are conversational.
Remember, the CTA is there to be a friendly hand guiding the reader to the next best action.
Catch up with us on social media and let us know how you get on with this month’s objectives.
If you enjoyed reading this blog post, check out similar ones in the sidebar. Feel free to get in touch with to chat about your latest project ideas - we love a good excuse for more tea.
