3 Easy Ways to Tell People What to Do in Social Media
Over the past 5 years or so, social media marketing has catapulted to become an important channel within the traditional marketing mix. Not every social network is appropriate for every business, but usually there is at least one that can and should be leveraged to reach various marketing goals.
Whatever those goals may be, some marketers are missing an essential piece in their social media efforts that they would never miss in other forms of advertising: the call-to-action.
Products like Skittles (over 24 million Facebook fans), Coca-Cola (over 63 million Facebook fans) or a company like Whole Foods Markets (over 3 million Twitter followers) do not gain these absurd numbers by passively posting or tweeting without reason. Each uses various methods of call-to-actions to increase their fan base, and therefore, increase their potential customer base as well.
Marketers can easily fall into the thought trap of engaging in various social media while believing that a basic activity level or visibility will bring fans. In most cases, this is not always true.
Similar to other forms of marketing, social media activity should be consistent with the brand positioning while clearly defining what the user is to do next. More specifically, if a larger fan base in a defined market is a desired objective, the social activity should actually vocalize this in some way.
Here are some easy examples of how to use clear social media call-to-actions:
- Contests/Sweepstakes – Target a specific contest/sweepstakes to a desired market with an activity and prize that are relevant to this audience. Then clearly ask users to follow your company as part of, or through the follow up to entering.
- Fan Gates – These are activities that can only be seen or completed by your fan base and can be a promotion, specialized content, or contests/sweepstakes. Simply ask users to like or follow your company in exchange for access.
- Cross Promotions – Use other forms of advertising to grow your fan base. By highlighting secret promotions, content or contests/sweepstakes only visible to followers, the target audience will be motivated to follow your company.
By leveraging these types of clearly-defined calls-to-action throughout your social media activities, your marketing goals can easily be reached.
By Modern Postcard
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