#87: What is a Call To Action (CTA) | Audience Growth Accelerator Challenge PART 4

Welcome to Episode 4 of the Audience Growth Accelerator challenge! In this episode of our podcast mini-series, we continue our mission to support frustrated artists and producers in their journey to grow their social media audience and engagement. Are you eager to discover effective strategies to grow your following on social media? Do you find yourself wondering why your social media following isn't growing as expected? Are you seeking ways to increase your social media engagement? Look no further!

This five-part series is specifically curated to provide you with actionable steps that you can implement today to make a significant impact on your audience growth and engagement. In this episode, we dive into the world of CTAs (Call-to-Actions). We explore what a CTA is, how many CTAs you should use, and for how long.

CTAs play a vital role in guiding your audience to take desired actions. We break down the importance of using compelling CTAs and provide insights on how to strike the right balance in terms of quantity and duration.

To further accelerate your audience growth and engagement, make sure to download the "5 Essential Tips for Boosting Audience Growth and Engagement" guide. It contains valuable tips and strategies to help you achieve your social media goals.

If you're ready to unlock the secrets of social media success, this mini-series is tailored for you! 

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:01

You are listening to the Inside The Mix podcast with your host, Mark Matthews. Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark Matthews, your host, musician, producer, and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favorite synth music artist, music, engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing, and mastering music for over 15 years, and I wanna share what I've learned with you. Hey there folks, and welcome back to a new episode of The Inside The Mix podcast, and welcome aboard if you are a new listener and make sure you smash that subscribe button and to all the returning listeners. It's great to have you back as always. Now, welcome to episode four, the penultimate episode of the Five Day Audience Growth Accelerated Challenge. I'm getting used to saying that now after sort of four episodes of doing this. I'm bringing you a special series of podcast episodes, all about growing your fan base using social media. If you haven't checked out episodes 84 to 86, I strongly suggest you make sure to give them a listen before diving into this episode. So what are we doing today? Today we're exploring CTAs or call to actions and how you can use them. So let's dive in. So the first thing we're gonna do is this. We're gonna cover what is A C T A A C T A is a call to action. You've heard of me mention it a few times now. If you go to Google and you type that in, what is a C T A? It's gonna come out with something along the lines of a marketing term that refers to the next step. A marketer wants its audience or reader to take every bit of content you put out. You should have a cta. What do you want your audience to? Do. If you released a new song, you probably want them to go and stream it or at least share it. If you're about to release a song, you probably want them to pre-shave. Maybe you want them to subscribe, maybe leave a comment. Maybe you want them to let them know your thoughts. Maybe you want them to DM you, but you need some form of C T A. What do you want them to do? It could well be just subscribe, like follow. Anyone of those. So that is what a CTA is, and you should always have a CTA in your posts. So tip number two, how many CTAs should you use? Now I've done a fair amount of research into this and I've listened to various podcasts and red blogs and stuff, and I believe that you should only have one, one cta. I dunno if you, if you're anything like me, if I see multiple CTAs, I can get a bit bamboozled and I end up doing nothing. But if there's one clear CTA call to action that you want your audience to do, then put that in and use that call to action across all your social media, across all your platforms, whatever it is you're communicating. Have that one call to action, and you probably run it running for like three or four weeks, depending on what sort of project you are doing. But one cta, if you have too many, if you're saying follow, like, subscribe, share. Comment, whatever it may be. What you're probably fine, the more you have, the less likely you're gonna get any response or any action from your audience. But if you have one clear c t A, you're gonna get more results. So once again, just one clear c t, A across all your content. Okay, so here we go. The final tip in this episode, and it's probably two tips in one. So first, where should you use a C T A? The best practice for this I find is at the end of the video for like four or five seconds, but obviously it depends on the length of the video. You might have a shorter video. In which case you don't want it taken up the whole of the video and also in the text or description as well put your c t A in there. And the use of emojis is quite helpful with this as well as you're scrolling through, cuz suitable use of emojis can help sort of catch the eye as it were. But once again, one Ct A in your video and then another one in your actual description of your content and just stick with that one. Call to action. So the next bit is, uh, rather, the next question is, how long should you use the same C t A? Now it really depends on what you're doing. If you are doing a pre-safe campaign, for example, you probably want to use it for two or three weeks and just keep using it over and over again and be consistent with that one ct. A I find that, for example, if I'm gonna be launching something with the podcast, I will use a C T A for at least four weeks. In terms of pre-roll post-roll. So once again, you've probably heard me or rather the advert for this particular mini-series at the beginning and the end of podcast episodes for the last two or three weeks. But it's one call to action and you want that mirrored across everything. So it really, once again, there is no sort of hard and fast rule for this, but you want to give it a fair amount of weeks in terms of you are building up to a release or you're pre saving and be consistent with it as well. Be consistent. Keep banging that drum cuz I believe there is a sort of, there's, it's not necessarily a law of averages, but you need at least seven touch points, seven touchpoints generally before somebody will even consider taking action. So just bear that in mind when it comes to the length of how long you're gonna use a C T A. Okay, folks, now it's time to take action. Here's what you need to do off the back of this episode. Number one, create a single c t A that aligns with your audience and what you are currently trying to promote. Number two, use this C T A on all of your online content for the next three weeks. And then number three, make sure you have something at the end of the C T A. Now, I didn't touch on this just now, actually. But if you are directing them to something, your audience do something. Make sure there's something there for them to go to, not just a, uh, a blank webpage or a, or a broken link or something. Make sure there is something at the end. And of course, stay tuned for the final episode in our mini-series where we will be exploring why it's important to be social on social media. See you there.