The 4 Most Effective Calls to Action on Twitter

twitter calls to action

twitter calls to actionHave you ever wondered what you should be tweeting on Twitter to increase your engagement? Depending on your unique goals and target audience, certain types of tweets have proven to be extremely effective.

According to Twitter:

You are what you tweet. The quality of your content – how interesting, conversational and useful it is – ultimately determines how engaged your followers will be.

Although there is no single greatest solution to achieve maximum Tweet effectiveness, but Twitter has analyzed their internal Tweet engagement data to give us some best practices to work with. And now they’ve shared these insights to help marketers craft the most engaging Tweets via four effective call-to-action strategies. The study analyzed approximately 20,000 Promoted Tweets randomly selected over a three-month period in 2012, comparing how various types of calls to action in Promoted Tweets did in comparison to a baseline of Promoted Tweets using no calls to action.

#1: Ask for a download

Do you have a new product to promote that’s available for download? Or are you looking to generate more leads via downloadable content from your site? Fortunately for you, tweets that explicitly ask people to download something accompanied by a link increases your click-through rate by an average of 13%. Give people a clear direction and incentive to click and they will! Also make sure to only use hashtags and @handle mentions sparingly to avoid distracting folks from focusing on your main call to action: downloads.


 

#2: Ask for a Retweet

Offer your followers a compelling reason to retweet your messages! Some great ways to do this include leveraging contests or sweepstakes to incentivize retweets. Promoted Tweets that ask for a retweet, show an average retweet increase of 311%! And the best performing Promoted Tweets were twice as likely to spell out the word ‘Retweet’ as opposed to simply using the term ‘RT’. Also, Twitter indicated that a call to retweet action at the beginning of a tweet works better than at the end.


 

#3: Ask for a follow

Are you looking to reach out to new audiences on Twitter? You can do by simply asking for a follow! Promoted Tweets that asked for a follow showed an increase of follows by an average of 258%! A few tips include highlighting your most exclusive content, or once again sweetening the incentive to follow with some contest or prize-related promotion.


 

#4: Ask for a reply

Looking to further increase your engagement on Twitter? Try posing a question to give people more motivation to engage one-on-one with your Tweets. Promoted Tweets that ask for a reply generate an average of 334% more replies! Twitter recommends humanizing your brand by using a conversational tone which makes users more comfortable responding back to you.


 
Lastly remember that Twitter is all about conversation. Make sure to reserve these forward calls to action mentioned here for only your most important and action-oriented campaigns. In order to avoid turning people off with too much promotional content, always balance your calls to action with other types of interesting and entertaining content!
 
So what works for you on Twitter?

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

10 comments

  1. This is really interesting as I find these tactics work for clients I help on Twitter – however if asked to download or RT personally it has to be something I’m interested in. Maybe I’m choosy. But this info is really handy to know. Thanks for sharing on Bizsugar.com.

    1. I feel the same way Sian, I won’t be swayed to take action because I was prompted to, however we appear to be the exception as opposed to the rule 🙂

  2. Except for the first tip which is a case of informing your audience that the link will direct to the downloading page, the 3 others work on incentive. People don’t reply, retweet or follow because you tell them, but because they have something to win.

    1. Actually as the data here suggests, and every other similar study I’ve seen, shows that people do retweet and follow you because they are asked to, regardless of incentive!

  3. Thanks for the information Daniel. Always looking for great information to continue adapting my own social media plans for the small nonprofit I work for.

    1. I see 2 things wrong by looking at your twitter. Your Tweets are protected so you are locking out potential leads and conversions and you only have 874 followers. You need more.

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