A successfully written call to action can reap benefits for your business by increasing your web traffic, growing your email lists and, ideally, leading to increased revenue for your company. CTAs are normally found at the end of social posts and on blogs, web pages and landing pages. A properly crafted call to action encourages your readers to take action. This can range from prompting them to download a resource and clicking for more information to signing up for emails and attending events.

In most cases, calls to action are either social CTAs — when you ask your fans to like, share or comment on your post — or link CTAs, which bring your reader to a landing page. But how do you break through all of the “social noise” on your platforms to really grab your community’s attention? How can you design your calls to action so that they do just that: get your reader to take the action? It’s more difficult than it sounds, and it takes practice, research, adjustment and knowledge about your customer base.

Read on to discover the secrets to crafting a call to action on your social posts.

Use actionable language

Use short action verbs to coax them towards the physical action you want them to take. What do you want your reader to do? Call, click, discover, buy, subscribe, review or find?

Make your call to action clear and concise

Keep it simple! Don’t use too much language or include more than one link in your social posts. Your readers will be confused if they don’t know what to do right off the bat, and they will move on. Keep the message clear, brief and concise. Explain to your readers what you want them to do: click, like, share, comment, download or [insert other action here]. And make your benefit extremely clear. What does the reader get for doing what you ask them to do? If the benefit isn’t clear, the reader won’t bother.

Build urgency and tap into human emotion

Humans are emotional mammals. We respond to urgency, motivation and the “fear of missing out.” Appeal to this emotional side by using psychological triggers that imply exclusivity, immediacy or impending expiration. Craft your copy using phrases that intensify emotion and elicit action: Don’t Delay; Enter NOW!; Expiring Soon!; Order Now & Receive a Free Gift; or Last Chance! (And use exclamation points. It is proven that posts with exclamation points receive higher engagement than those without.)

Make it personal

Build trust with your reader by speaking to them personally. By using the pronouns ‘you’ and ‘your’ in your CTAs, you will add a human touch and begin forming a relationship with your reader. Which do you prefer: “Accelerate your blog’s growth” or “Gain more followers?”

Be design savvy

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create a shareable, action-worthy CTA. However, there are some basic principals you should heed when crafting your next post.

• Use contrasting colors. Add contrast between the CTA and the background. Studies show that red and orange buttons get the best conversion rates.
• Use clear and legible fonts. Your copy should be large enough to read, but not large enough to be considered obnoxious. Be brief. Try to keep the “action” part of your CTA text between two and five words.
• Align your CTA copy with your webpage copy. The imagery, language, brand and vision of your landing page should match that of your call to action. If it doesn’t match up, your visitor might bounce right back out.

Make your call to action trackable

CTAs are especially useful because you can track and analyze the behavior of your community. Simply by mixing up a few phrases, moving your CTA to another location on your post, or changing up the offer, you can find out what language and incentives your community responds to. You’ll learn what’s working and what’s not working, and you’ll be able to use this information to adjust your next CTA. What better way to track consumer behavior?

Writing a well-crafted call to action is an essential component of marketing. From growing email subscribers to gaining contest entries and conversions, most of your marketing efforts and content will need some type of call to action. Invest some time and effort into practicing this type of copywriting. You’ll be surprised at the results!