You may have noticed posts from brands in your News Feed with a nice little call-to-action button included in the post, under the link title and above the description. This is the result of one of Facebook's latest features, a small change that could potentially make a big difference for brands.
Love them or hate them every social media marketer worth his/her salt understands the importance of the call-to-action. We know from testing that users are more likely to act on a post when prompted to do so, making the CTA a necessary evil when chasing the all important engagement metric.
The important thing to note here is that Facebook has made the CTA buttons available for native posts as well as ads. A decision that can only be good for click-through rates.
The introduction of CTA buttons offers two immediate benefits for marketers. Firstly, and most simply, we no longer have to worry about including a call-to-action in the post text. Calls-to-action within post text can come across as a bit pushy or salesy so by adding a CTA button to the post instead you can focus on writing inspiring copy and let your post sell the CTA for you. Secondly, and more significantly, marketers have historically tried to squeeze in a CTA into a thumbnail image accompanying the post and as we all know Facebook has a very strict and equally frustrating 20% text rule within images. By utilising the CTA buttons we can remove call-to-action text from images and keep them fun and inspiring!
How do I get a call-to-action button on my posts? I hear you ask.
Well, before I go into how you can add them to your Facebook posts, you'll need to make sure you have a Facebook ad account. If you've not got one, just head to facebook.com/ads and follow their step-by-step instructions listed on their Business page.
Step One: Head To Power Editor
There's two ways of getting to Facebook's Power Editor:
1. Head to Power Editor directly
2. Go into your ad account and on the left hand side list, click the power editor button
Note: If you've not used Power Editor before, you'll need to download it first. Good news is, that it takes around a minute to download so you're not waiting around for it.
Step Two: Manage Pages
From the three buttons in the top right of the page, click on the first one, which would be your ad account. If you have multiple accounts make sure you've got the right account. Next, you'd just need to click on 'Manage Pages'
Step Three: Manage Pages
From your selection of pages along the left hand side, pick the page you'd like to create a post for. Once you've selected the page, click 'Create Post'
Step Four: Post Details
After you've clicked create post, you'll get served with this popup:
Here's what you need to put in every field:
URL - The URL of the page / post you want to link to.
Post Text - A bit like Ronseal, it's exactly what it says on the tin. This is the copy that'll be above your post.
Call To Action - Choose which embed button you'd like to use.
Link Headline - We'd recommend going with your blog title here. Just make sure it's different from the post text
Display Link - Pop in the name of your site, so whoever clicks on it knows what site they're going to be directed to.
Description - If you're sharing a blog post, we'd go with the first couple of lines of it in there. If it's a different page, give a description of where the user will be landing.
Picture - You can upload an image directly or pop in the URL of an image. If you're unsure about Facebook image post sizes then check out our latest infographic about 'How To Design Facebook Image Posts in Photoshop'.
Hopefully you should end up with something like this...
Final part of creating this, is to just change the radial button from 'This post will only be used as an ad' to 'This post will be published on the Page'
Step Five: Publishing your post
We're into the final stretch (that hopefully would only be a 5-10 min job).
Once you've tapped the 'Create Post' button and you'll see your post appear at the top of the list.
You'll need to click on it, so it becomes highlighted. Once it's highlighted, click 'Publish Post' (second button on the left). You'll be presented with two options, you can either publish straight away or schedule it for a future date.
Voilà, the final product...
We'd love to know if you start to see an increase in the amount of traffic you're getting after implementing the CTA buttons on your posts. If you've got any more questions or need any help, just pop us a message in the comments below
The post How To Add Call-To-Action Buttons To Facebook Posts appeared first on mycleveragency - Full Service Social.