While you’re putting in the time to grow your network on Facebook, there’s one more avenue you can use to reach a larger audience: boost your posts. Quite simply, this is a form of advertising which costs money but it’s a quick and more passive way to reach more people in a short amount of time.
Isn’t Posting Daily on Facebook Enough?
This answer depends on your end goal for your business. Posting and interacting daily will definitely grow your followers, but if you want a quick jumpstart add in a boosted post and examine the results.
One friend recently boosted a post for a total of $30 and it brought in $202 in sales. It was a “set it and forget it” process, and she set a monetary limit so as not to break the bank but she was very pleased with that result – so much so that she’s boosting the same post again (see the caveat at the end of this post before re-boosting a boosted post).
Why Should I Boost a Post?
No doubt you’ve noticed lots of changes with the Facebook algorithms lately, and you’ve probably heard lots of people complaining about those changes. Business page organic reach has declined drastically so you can’t depend on Facebook algorithms to get your posts seen, even if people have liked your page. So, instead of taking a passive, “I hope you see my posts” stance, let’s be proactive and boost a post to bypass the questionable organic reach of your basic post.
Boosted posts also allow you to highly target your viewers, so you are in complete control of the demographics (again, a highly proactive approach). You can set a certain geographic area as your target or a specific age range. If you have thought carefully about your target market demographics, this step will be easy to complete.
Speaking of control: you are in control of how much you spend on this boosted post as well as the length of the campaign. Theoretically, you could run a campaign for $1 per day (the daily minimum allowed), but if you spend more money each day, you will reach a larger number of people. When I boost a post, I typically spend between $20 and $30 and then analyze the results.
How to Create a Boosted Post
Most importantly: you can only boost a post from a Business Page, so if you don’t have one set up yet, get that done.
Step 1: Choose which Post to Boost
This can be a current post or you can write a brand new post. If you’ve been active on your page, you will even see recommendations for which posts to boost. The choice is yours, just think about the purpose of your boosted post, then choose the most appropriate post for your goal.
Step 2: Choose Your Target Audience
If you want to grow your name recognition, select your own demographics, geographic area, and/or age range. You can even create multiple audiences with different demographics by clicking on the “Create New Audience” link.
Step 3: Choose Your Budget and Campaign Duration
How much can you afford to spend each day your campaign runs? How many days do you want the boost to run? You will see Facebook’s estimated reach climb as your budget amount increases. This is still an estimate so make this decision based on what you can actually afford as opposed to the number of people who might pay attention to your boosted post.
Step 4: Setup Your Payment, Hit the Boost Button, then Analyze the Results
Seeing the results of your boost is exciting, because Facebook offers easy-to-understand insights for every boosted post. You will see your actual reach as well as how many clicks your post received. From there you can determine if you received any sales directly from this post or if you noticed an increase in friend requests during this time frame.
Luckily Facebook has made boosting a post very simple so once you go through it once, it’s much easier to understand. And once you set all the details, you can go about your day while your boosted post works its magic to bring you more target audience members.
Caveat: While boosting posts can be a quick way to increase visibility and interaction, it is typically slightly more expensive than running straight Facebook ads. Once I have identified a productive boosted post, I may use it as the basis for a full-blown ad campaign, rather than re-boost it. Of course, that depends on the specific results, as well as my desired goal.
Photo by Glen Carrie
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