Phone Numbers as Social Media Call to Action

Facebook and Twitter, and any other social media network you can name, from Reddit to Pinterest, have made marketers weak. That's right - I said it... and I mean it. Here's why.

In place of tangible measures of performance, many times today's marketers gauge their success on the click of a like button. For anyone that has ever been responsible for the bottom line of a business (i.e. revenue and profits), "engagement" is an empty, meaningless way to evaluate. For a truer and deeper understanding of message targeting it's essential that a company forgo those vanity metrics (likes, follows, retweets, shares) and focus more on hard metrics including clicks to the website and more importantly, conversions from each of the platforms your company has a presence within. The problem is that, at least historically, these channels are often very poor performers, and there's a reason. The search channel for example (whether it is organic/earned or paid) is intent-driven, meaning your prospective customers are actually looking for what it is that your company provides. Within social, they aren't. They are often just mindlessly scrolling looking for something to capture their attention. That means social media marketers need to be far more creative - and sometimes aggressive - in their marketing.

More importantly, that means marketers must find new ways to track consumer engagement associated with their participation and activity in the channel. Most of the guidance available for optimizing for greater social media engagement however is shallow at best. Social media "experts" (and that term is often used quite loosely) will tell you to post regularly, add hashtags, interact with followers and share your most exciting content. They're not wrong - those are important processes in optimizing for engagement in the social media space - but their suggestions don't go far enough.

Ideas to Spark Social Engagement The most successful social media marketers do one thing really well - they provide their users with an opportunity to interact with a brand. That might mean including a poll in a Facebook post or asking an open-ended question on Twitter with some hashtags. But there are other ways you can spark engagement while aligning it with your business objectives. The two most obvious ways are to 1) always include a link back to your website, and 2) always (always!) include a phone number. Including a website link in social media updates at this point should be considered absolutely mandatory for marketers, but most still don't consider including a phone number. Whether it is for fear of potentially alienating their audience (which we could find no data to support) or not having the technical resources to accept phone calls, the presence of a phone number is a genuine way to "be unique and different." And if you purchase a tracking phone number, you'll have another data point to measure marketing performance. Social media has always been touted as where you go to engage in "conversation." You will stand out if you offer to step outside the keyboard and invite real conversation.

Start Testing New Ways to  General Social Engagement There's no question that social media is an important part of the digital experience today, but it's time that marketers start testing new ways to generate engagement (and sales) from their participation in the channel. A vanity phone number from RingBoost presents a perfect opportunity to do that. Explore the hundreds of thousands of available phone numbers, categorized for your convenience, at RingBoost and reach out to our support team to find the perfect match for your company.