Proof: Social Calls to Actions Work [Infographic]

Calls to actions within your social media posts work, Hubsot’s social media scientist Dan Zarella wanted to prove that fact. Dan demonstrated his ability to recognize key trends within social data at the DrivingSales Executive Summit three years ago; he knows social and certainly knows the data behind it as well.

Dan dove deep into the activities and data behind millions of tweets, 50,000+ blog posts and the activity among the 10,000 Facebook pages with the most likes to find out if social media calls to action had an impact on activity. He discovered that it does in fact make an impact when you mention specific words or phrases such a comment, like, and share within your content.

Now comes the hard part: Which content do I add these specific call to actions to when I’m sharing. Here’s a great place to start, don’t do what everyone else is doing and simply share pictures of cats or bacon – or cats with bacon – and ask people to comment and like your stuff. That doesn’t serve a purpose other than wasting time.

I would ask people to share a picture of an event you’re having, or that customer who just bought a unique vehicle. Ask people to comment on a controversial topic or get them involved with a cause like texting & driving. Ask for feedback about a specific vehicle. There are plenty of emotionally charged topics that can encourage interaction and possibly drive more traffic to the links shared within the posts.

Bottom line, be different and don’t just post a picture of an 8-Track player and ask people to like it if they remember what it is. That’s not creative, that’s just lazy. If you want to do something like that, make it unique and fun – ask people to share a picture of their classic car that may actually have an 8-track player in the dashboard. User generated content has always been a great way to get new interaction. Get people involved and try to go beyond getting the simple like. Be memorable too.

Check out Dan’s latest infographic.