This is a guest blog post and is being posted with permission from Sarah Best of Sarah Best Strategy
Today, in our social media audit series, we’re sharing a quick tip that you can tackle in five minutes, to improve the effectiveness of your social media content.
Are you asking people to do anything?
We all know that strong calls to action, such as "buy now" or "sign up today" are critical for getting people to do the things that we'd like to see them do as a result of seeing our social media posts. But it's important to check your posts to make sure that you're actually remembering to include them.
Here's what you should do in the next five minutes: Take a look at your five most recent social media posts and see how many of them include a specific "ask" to do something, whether that's read an article, sign up for your newsletter, or purchase tickets to an event.
If the answer is "no", here are some follow up actions you can take to improve your posts.
Use Short, Clear Calls to Action
Short, clear calls to action are the best way to pop the question. These include phrases such as: book now, sign up, buy tickets today. Terms like “now” in calls to action improve success because urgency drives people to take action. Turn “I’ll take action at some point” into “I need to take action RIGHT NOW.”
Make it Easy for People to Take Action
If you want to increase email newsletter sign ups, for example, send people to a dedicated sign up landing page. Don't make people hunt for the form in the bottom of your website.
Create Reusable Calls to Action Focused Social Media Posts
For calls to action that support your main goals, such as "sign up for our newsletter" don’t waste time writing Facebook posts or tweets related to these core calls to action messages over and over again. Instead, build a spreadsheet or Word document with reusable content in it, so that you deploy those posts again over time.
Sarah Best | CEO + Chief Strategist of Sarah Best Strategy, a digital marketing agency focused on social media + search engine optimization.