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10 Best Social Media Call-to-action (CTA) Examples and How to Use Them
Trying to raise conversions via your social media posts? What if we told you that compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) are the key to boosting them? With strategic placement and enticing language, CTAs can guide your audience toward the specific actions you want them to take. This could be anything from making a purchase or downloading an e-book to people sharing your content with their networks.
It’s also worth noting that text-based CTAs can boost conversion rates by 120%, according to surveys. So, if you leverage them correctly, you can significantly impact your customers’ behaviors on social media and grow your business.
Considering this, today, we’ll be discussing CTAs, where you can use them, the top 10 social media call-to-action examples and how you can write them in a way that increases conversions and drives traffic.
So, let’s get right to it.
What is a social media call-to-action (CTA)?
Social media CTAs are simple prompts that encourage readers to take a specific action. They could ask your audience to subscribe to a newsletter, follow a purchase prompt or engage with a social media post.
Why is the right CTA important on social media?
Over 90% of individuals who read a headline will proceed to read the accompanying CTAs. Successful businesses know this. They understand the importance of CTAs and use them strategically.
When you add a CTA, you’re basically informing your audience about what they’ll be getting when they perform the desired action. How? By adding the words and phrases that prompt them to follow your lead. Your focus should be creating CTAs that are meaningful for your audience and driving their attention.
Where to use CTAs in social media
CTAs must be positioned strategically on social media to guide your audience and prompt them to act immediately. Here's where you can place them:
- Bio/Profile: Add a CTA in your social media bio. You can ask users to visit your website, contact your business or view a shop of cataloged items. This introduces your brand and tells users how to engage with it.
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- Captions on posts: CTAs added to the captions of posts typically ask users to engage by sharing, commenting or liking the content. Such CTAs encourage engagement and interaction and increase the reach of your posts.
- Reels and stories: You can add the CTA in your stories or reels to drive immediate engagement. This encourages your audience to tap or swipe up to explore the fuller content behind what you’re showcasing. You can prompt them to participate in a contest, quiz or a poll or visit your website to find out more about a product. Use a link sticker to make the CTA clearer for your audience.
- Advertisements: CTAs are an essential part of social media ads. They encourage users to take action by asking them to download an app, sign up for a service or purchase a product. Advertisements with CTAs help customers take the desired action, increasing the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and driving conversions.
Read More: Social Media Advertising: In-Depth Guide and Proven Tips
Common types of social media calls to action
CTA type | Purpose |
Follow | Adding a prompt like "Follow" invites the audience to join your online customer community. Users who follow your account will see your stories, updates and posts and will not miss any important announcements. |
Like/React | When you ask your audience to like or react to your post, you invite them to show appreciation. Reactions indicate the engagement level of your post, signaling to the platform algorithm that the content you share is relevant and valuable. This increases your content's reach. |
Share | Urging users to share your content is a powerful way to expand your reach. When your followers share your content on their accounts, it reaches their followers, who may not be your direct followers. This increases visibility and organically acquires new potential customers or followers for your business. |
Comment | Prompting users to comment on your post means inviting them to participate in a dialogue with fellow community members and your brand. Comments allow you to interact directly with your audience and build rapport with them. Responding to your audience's comments shows that you value their input and opinions, strengthening their trust and customer loyalty. |
Click | When a CTA asks users to click on a link, it must guide them to a webpage, external source or landing page. The linked source in the CTA should provide valuable information that aligns with users' interests, compelling them to explore further. It could be anything like promotional offers, informative articles, instructional videos, etc. |
Sign up | You can add a "Sign up" prompt if you want your audience to register for an event, webinar, newsletter or a membership. Whether it is a unique discount, exclusive access to premium content or educational resources or a fantastic networking opportunity, the value proposition should be compelling enough for your audience to share their contact information. |
Contact | You can facilitate direct communication with the audience by prompting them to contact you via direct message, a contact form or email. Each inquiry you receive can be a potential lead for business growth or a successful collaboration that gives you the outcome you are looking for. |
Related Read: Social Media Engagement: What You Need to Know!
10 Best social media call-to-action (CTA) examples
Now that you know why CTAs are important and where to place them, let’s dive into our curated list of the 10 best social media CTA examples to inspire your next campaign.
1. Throw a challenge
Adding challenges as a CTA can be a great way to engage and encourage your audience to participate. Brands can create interactive experiences by presenting challenges that garner the audience's interest.
In this call-to-action example for social media, KFC created an exciting challenge for foodies and prompted them to “tag a friend.” Who can resist enjoying the Nashville Hot Saucy Nuggets if the bill is on a friend? With this smart train of thought, KFC managed to create a sense of excitement among participants through a CTA challenge.
Pro Tip 💡: Add a personal touch to your CTAs. Incorporate words or phrases that align with your brand and resonate with your audience, such as "Level up now!" (if you’re part of a gaming or edtech company) or "Discover your next adventure" (if you’re in a travel or hospitality firm). Your conversion rate can increase by up to 200% if you add a personalized CTA instead of clickable images.
Read More: Social media challenges: Meaning, benefits, examples and tips
2. Create a sense of urgency
Creating a sense of urgency prompts your audience to take action immediately. In this example, the business provided a 50% discount and extended the offer for a day. Just enough to create a buzz among potential buyers.
Such tactics drive immediate conversions and increase sales by striking your audience's fear of missing out (FOMO) chord. Using the words “today" or “now" can create a sense of scarcity and urgency. Your audience feels they will miss out on something if they don't act immediately.
Pro Tip 💡: Use Sprinklr's social listening tool to uncover actionable insights about your customers, top words of discussion around topics and trending themes on social media. With this knowledge, you can write CTAs that create a sense of urgency in your audience. This tool also allows you to perform sentiment analysis, which allows you to gauge people's thoughts and sentiments (positive, negative or neutral) about your brand, product(s), advertisements and competitors across digital platforms.
3. Encourage activism
Inspire your audience to stand up for a cause. It's also good for your ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance rating. In this example, the first CTA encourages activism by asking users to tag people who are interested in seeing sustainability posts.
On this front, you can create a CTA that asks your audience to sign a petition or join a movement that contributes to a positive change. Adding compelling graphics and visuals can further help you increase engagement.
Pro Tip 💡: How can you find out the causes and issues your audience is concerned about? This is where an AI-powered social media management solution like Sprinklr can help you. With it, you can find out what topics or issues are trending across the globe and analyze those trends based on brand, country, topic and severity.
4. Share exciting pre-announcements
You can inspire a sense of anticipation in your target audience by making exciting pre-announcements. These could be teasers or hints about your upcoming announcements, launches, events, etc., before they are officially out.
Nike created a buzz among shoe lovers by sharing a review of its soon-to-be-released product range. As you can see, the number of likes is over 93K. Here, Nike has successfully built excitement around its new launch and asked its audience to tap the link in the bio for a preview of all the variants in the product line.
Pro Tip 💡: Build public interest through a CTA by gesturing toward what lies ahead. It could include phrases like "Ready for an amazing reveal?", "Can't wait to see?" and "Excited for what's next?" This can spark conversations, drive curiosity and encourage your target audience to stay tuned for more information.
5. Target social issues
Dove acknowledges black history month and focuses on community representation. In a social media post, the brand asked users to share books that make young people feel represented. It went on to ask its audience to recommend children’s books for black history month in the comments. CTAs like this encourage dialogue and engagement and promote brand values.
You, too, can choose a CTA that supports less-represented issues or promotes a movement or event that happened in the past and has significantly impacted society.
Pro Tip 💡: Double-check the content of your post. It shouldn't hurt or demean anyone. Leverage advanced technologies that flag anomalies and inconsistencies in your social content. Sprinklr's AI-powered compliance and smart approval tool aids brands in mitigating the risk of approving inappropriate content. It identifies flagged content that requires updates before publication.
6. Target demographic segments
To showcase its commitment to women's health and the well-being of its followers, Whisper posted on Instagram asking its audience to share their queries on feminine hygiene in the comments section and promised to answer them in detailed posts.
In the image, the tagline "Trade Offer" with alert emojis is catchy. It grabs the attention of readers and makes them stop scrolling and read the post.
Pro Tip 💡: Create CTAs that take your customer to a safe dialogue space and encourage your audience to share their challenges and personal experiences. Provide links or resources where your audience can seek further support, such as self-help books, podcasts, online resources, hotlines or help numbers. Recommend online support groups or forums where your audience can connect with others.
7. Organize a contest with prizes
Draft a CTA that prompts your audience to answer. A contest based on general trivia or exciting questions that allow followers to show their expertise can be an excellent CTA for social media.
Prestige posted a word search contest, asking its followers to answer a few questions from the puzzle. The post encouraged the audience to follow the page and mention three of their friends in the comment section. The winner of the contest was eligible for an exclusive Prestige hamper. This way, the brand incentivized its audience to engage with its post by including the hamper.
Related Read: 7 Effective Social Media Contest Ideas for 2024
8. Share educational information
Prompting your followers to register for a webinar, workshop or online session is a meaningful social media CTA, as your audience is pulled into the opportunity to learn from a limited-time event.
In one of its LinkedIn posts, Deloitte announced the second edition of its PSU Transformation Conclave with a link to register for it right away. The post mentioned the speaker's name, designation and topics to be discussed in the conclave. The goal? Invite domain experts to the event and establish their thought leadership so audiences become more knowledgeable in their field of interest.
9. Embed download prompts
Download CTAs prompt the audience to click on an embedded link. You can ask them to download a document, software or any type of digital asset. It encourages the audience to act immediately.
In this example, EY posted stats on India's influencer market booming. The post briefly explains some exciting numbers based on their research. Here, the CTA prompts the users to take action by downloading the full report and promises them valuable content. This strategy centers around fulfilling the audience's immediate expectations for the promised value, thereby boosting the likelihood of them responding to the prompt and downloading said asset.
10. Seek suggestions
Another social media CTA example that can boost your engagement is seeking suggestions from your audience. Inviting users to share their thoughts generates a sense of inclusivity among them. The audience feels heard, pushing them to engage with your post.
The US-based home goods store Caraway shared a post seeking suggestions from its followers. The post asked the audience to share the product they want to see added to the brand's existing range. People asked them to add a glass lid to see their rice boiling, and some suggested adding a range of products in a particular color. Others wanted them to add a mini cupcake pan. The comment section was lit.
Pro Tip 💡: Seeking suggestions leads to crowdsourcing fresh ideas that you might have missed otherwise. Clearly outline what type of suggestions or ideas you seek in your CTA followed by the actual action prompt. This could include phrases like "We're looking for your best travel tips" or "Got a story to tell?" It can help you deliver what your audience expects from you.
How to write social media CTAs
Social media posts are about garnering maximum engagement through likes, shares and comments. As such, before you write CTAs, you should know your audience's preferences and what you want from them, i.e., to visit your website or a landing page to purchase, participate in a contest, create an account or sign up for an event.
To ensure you get the desired results, keep the following points in mind:
- Add actionable words: When creating your CTA, remember that words matter. Start with action verbs that lead to quick engagement, such as "'Learn more," "Shop now" and "Join us." These words prompt action and motivate your audience to act.
- Specify the action: Be as specific as possible with your CTA. Communicate what the target audience is expected to do. Instead of writing "Shop now," write "Shop now to avail yourself of 50% off on our apparel” if more detail is possible in the content format. Avoid adding multiple CTAs to a post. Make sure that you do not leave any room for ambiguity.
- Evoke a sense of urgency: Adding CTAs like "Don't miss out," " Act now" or "Limited time offer" can tempt your potential customers. Such phrases compel users to take immediate action to get what they want at the best price.
- Incentivize the action: Discounts and offers remain the biggest attraction for buyers — for example, "Get 20% off on pearl jewelry” and “Get $5 cashback on your first purchase." You can incentivize their actions by offering them a value-add that does not have to be expensive as of such.
Pro Tip 💡: Adding photos of satisfied customers or clients and their experiences can boost conversion by 10%. Use social proof to prove your points. Ask satisfied customers to share a few words explaining what they liked about your offerings. It can work wonders for you.
To conclude
Social media platforms have transformed from mere connectivity tools to valuable business platforms, and CTAs facilitate this transition. But crafting impactful CTAs for a large online presence isn't easy. You also need to know how and where to place them strategically.
Apart from that knowledge, you also need a tool that can support you through the entire content creation process. That's where Sprinklr Social does the trick. It enables you to create a content repository and stick to a publishing schedule. Its unparalleled channel coverage, in-depth social listening and enterprise-grade configurability can be easily adapted to suit your brand's unique needs.
What’s more, when it’s paired with Sprinklr AI+, it can level up your social media game further with advanced generative AI capabilities that can assist you in writing compelling CTAs.
Wondering how you can make your CTAs stand out with Sprinklr Social?
Frequently Asked Questions
You can place a CTA in your profile/bio, post captions, story or in the comment section.
Yes, CTAs drive conversions and increase engagement. Do add a relevant CTA to all your social media posts
Some examples of good CTAs are learn more, register today, book your slot, shop now, swipe up, add to cart and download now. You can also add long CTAs for events such as an end-of-season sale that read “Get 40% off on all products and an extra 5% off on the bill paid online.”
