Social Marketing Revolution

Excerpted from article by Heidi Cohen published on Social Media Examiner:
"Here are seven steps for crafting calls to action to get your social community to do what you’d like them to and transform your social media marketing to get the results you want.

#1: Determine What You Want Prospects to Do:
Your call to action should encourage readers to engage with you further.
Make readers an offer they want. You can consider offering white paper downloads, ebooks, ongoing emails, discount coupons and/or free consultations.

#2: Create a Great Hook:
You’ll need to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” This is what your prospects want to know.
And your request must make sense to them. This means not asking prospects to purchase if they’re still in an information-gathering mode.

#3: Motivate Prospects to Act:
Remember, you want to give your readers a reason to act.
Provide sense of urgency. Make people an offer they can’t refuse. Give them a one-time offer to encourage a response. Realize, however, they may only buy when you provide coupons going forward.

#4: Optimize Your Call to Action:
Like other aspects of your content, formatting matters! Here are some points to consider.
- Use a contextually relevant presentation;
- Make your call to action stand out visually;
- Qualify your offer;
- Limit selection choices;
- Place calls to action in multiple locations on your pages;
- Keep calls to action above the fold;
- Put call-to-action options in order of importance;
- Include social sharing.

#5: Maintain a Consistent Presentation on Landing Pages:
This is one of the biggest reasons calls to action don’t work. Send prospects to the appropriate step in the purchase process.
Make sure you use the same wording and graphics. The goal is to show continuity. Don’t let the reader think that you’ve sent them to the wrong place or they’ll leave.

#6: Test to Maximize Results:
Every element of your call to action can be tested. When testing, only modify one factor at a time or you won’t know what caused the change.

#7: Measure Results:
How can you measure your results? You want to track the impact of your social media calls to action back to your original objectives. Here are some metrics to track:
- Impressions;
- Click-throughs;
- Click-through rate;
- Completions;
- Completion rate..."

Each step is analyzed with detailed information. Read full article here:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-improve-your-social-media-calls-to-action/

Via Giuseppe Mauriello, Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com