Dan Zarrella recently conducted a study of over 1.2 million updates from the 10,000 most Liked Facebook Pages and found that updates that had CTAs got more engagement than updates that lacked a CTA.
Dan suggests:
“Phrases like ‘leave a comment/Like this post/share this post if …’ may do wonders to spark engagement among your Facebook Page fans and visitors.”
Emotion versus Logic
You and I don’t take action based on reason alone. We take action when an emotion is triggered deep inside our brain.
Asking fans to “share if” (conditional sharing) gives Facebook users the precious opportunity to express something deeply personal. Especially if it triggers emotions like love, longing, fascination, sadness, anger or rage.
Make Sharing Emotional and Personal
The Facebook update pictured above employs conditional sharing (“share if you know someone impacted by breast cancer”).
It’s also one of The Ellie Fund’s best Page updates ever!
Here’s another example from 350.org (anger) and another from the Obama campaign (belonging, righteous anger).
[...] conditional sharing. Post a photo a compelling photo related your cause and ask people to share if they’ve been affected by the same [...]