boosting posts on Facebook and Instagram: Is it worth it?
In a word, yes! Boosting posts is a great first step to increasing your audience reach and engagement without spending too much time, money, or effort. Adding a social media boosting strategy into your organic social media promises to garner more engagement, reach, and brand awareness at a minimal cost to your business.
The Problem: Without Boosting Posts
You may have noticed that over the past few years, it’s become more difficult to grow your organic engagement on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
You’re not alone. If you’re not spending any money on social media boosting, only around 5-10% of your audience is actually seeing your organic posts…yikes.
In simple terms, this is because as social platforms expand their user bases, more and more content is being uploaded. The platforms then need to prioritize content in an attempt to tailor each user’s experience by showing them what they believe each person wants to see.
The Solution: Boosting Posts
For small businesses to fully leverage these platforms and reach your audiences, you need to be throwing down some cashola, moula, cheddar. Long gone are the days where just having cool content and a quality page setup are enough to break through… unless you’re a parrot playing the drums (that stuff will always work). But for the 99.9% of people without a pet bird named Polly that shreds, you need to put a little money into a social media boosting strategy.
Boost Post vs. Facebook Ad
So what the heck is “boosting posts”? Well, if you’re talking about Facebook, a boosted post is just a post you’ve created for your feed that you apply money to in order to reach a bigger and more specific audience. While a boosted post is considered an ad (because money is being spent), it’s different from an actual ad campaign that you build in Ads Manager. Boosted posts are simpler to create, and typically you have different goals and expectations for a boost vs. an ad campaign.
At Blue Moose, we like to use boosted posts to augment and prop up our organic content purely to reach more than just the 5-15% of our local audience that we typically reach without boosting. This leads to more likes, comments, shares, and overall brand awareness. In contrast, we create Facebook ad campaigns to achieve goals more closely related to conversion and sales.
In short, we boost posts because it’s simple, cost effective, and helps us engage with a larger portion of our online audience; this is especially valuable for reaching a local audience as a small business.
If you’re still trying to decipher the difference between a boost post vs a Facebook ad, think of it like this: A boosted post will run as an ad. After the “boost” is over, that post will go back to living as an organic post somewhere in your social media account.
An ad, on the other hand, does not live in your grid or page. An ad is ONLY served to the people you’ve targeted. After the ad is over, it’s gone from the feed and other placements you selected.
Like we mentioned, each opinion has different goals attached to it. Social media boosting should be used to push through the wet blanket AKA the algorithm. Ads should be used to target specific demographics about a specific offer, product, service, or promotion.
Boosting Posts on Facebook (A simple way)
There are lots of advanced ways to utilize boosting, and we teach those in our courses… but first, we’re going get you going in a simple manner by showing you how to boost your posts in Facebook.
Check out the step-by-step video OR the step-by-step guide below!
Step 1: Head to your Facebook business page.
You may notice that you can boost a post from your page and also in Meta Business Suite. The process is (usually) the exact same in both places.
Step 2: Choose the post you want to boost.
Click the large blue “Boost” button in the bottom right corner of the post. Remember, we recommend boosting every post going forward!
Step 3: Choose your goal.
In the goal section, click “Change”, and we suggest a goal of “Get more Engagement”, so select that and click “Save”.
Step 4: Set your button to “no button”.
Why? Well your goal is simply engagement, and adding a button can make your posts seem more sell-y which can turn people off of engaging. You can do a better job of selling later with targeted ad campaigns.
Step 5: Select your audience.
Facebook audience targeting is incredibly powerful, but don’t let that overwhelm you when you’re first getting started. There’s plenty of time down the road for you to learn detailed targeting strategies, and we spend a tonne of time building them ourselves.
For now, Facebook gives you a few great options to start, and you can let Facebook decide who to deliver your posts to in order to get the best results.
Hopefully, you see an option that says “People who like your page and people similar to them”. This is ideal because your content doesn’t always reach your very own followers. If this option is not available, you can choose either “Advantage Audience” or “People in your local area”.
Step 6: Define your duration.
A good place to start is boosting posts for the average time you have between posts. So if you’re like us and posting roughly 3 times a week, we typically will boost each post for 2-3 days. This means our boost carries our reach for us on the days between posting.
Bonus: Because your boost ensures that your post will remain alive in the feed, you can rest easy knowing that you don’t have to create as much content — for the same or an even better result. Social media boosting strategies for the win!
Step 7: Define your boosting budget.
You might be wondering, “ What does boosting a post on Facebook cost?”
Obviously, the more you spend, the more results you’ll get, but every industry and business is different. You’ll notice along the right side, Facebook is estimating your daily results based on your timeline, budget, and its historical data. Keep an eye on that estimator, and be realistic about what your goals are; there’s no right or wrong budget here.
We find it’s better to boost every post with a few bucks a day than it is to boost infrequently or sporadically. The minimum spend is $1.30/day, but try something like $2-3 per day to start. Even at that small amount, you’ll definitely start to see some results. If you think it’s a particularly important post for your business, feel free to make it more like $5-10!
Step 8: Edit your placements.
When boosting a Facebook post, you have the option to send it out to Facebook, Instagram, or both. We typically recommend removing Instagram from our Facebook boost placements to start. No right or wrong approach here, but we like to spend our budget on the platform the original post was made on. We choose to deselect Instagram here, and you may want to as well.
Step 9: Congratulations on boosting a post on Facebook!
You’re all done!
Click Publish.
Boosting a post on Instagram (A simple way)
Step 1: Head to your Instagram account.
Notice that you can boost a post from Instagram and also in Meta Business Suite. The process is (usually) the exact same in both places.
Step 2: Choose the post you want to boost.
Click the large blue “Boost” button in the bottom right corner of the post. Remember, we recommend boosting every post going forward!
Step 3: Select a goal.
Here, you will choose which result you are seeking. You’ll notice that the options are limited compared to boosting on Facebook. You are boosting with an intention of more engagement and reach to bust through that algorithm, so we recommend choosing “More profile visits”. Select that and tap “Next”.
Step 4: Select your audience.
Instagram gives you the option to select an automatic audience or create your own. An automatic audience is simply allowing Instagram to target people like your followers. This is comparable to selecting “People who like your page and people similar to them” on Facebook. Select that and tap “Next”.
Step 5: Define your budget and duration.
Just like Facebook boosting strategy, a good place to start with Instagram boosting is boosting posts for the average time you have between posts. We typically boost each post for 2 days.
You’ll notice that as you increase your duration and budget, your estimated reach will increase or decrease. Keep an eye on that estimator, and be realistic about what your goals are; there’s no right or wrong budget here.
The minimum spend is $3/day, so feel free to start there. Even at that small amount, you’ll definitely start to see some results. If you have a larger audience, feel free to make it more like $5-10!
Step 6: Review
When boosting a post on Instagram, you can preview the ad in all of its placements. This is helpful in case some of your creative is covered by the button placements on the app.
Step 7: Congratulations on boosting a post on Instagram!
After you’ve reviewed your selected boost options and payment methods, tap “Boost post”.
You’re all done!
Ok, now what?
You’ve passed Social Media Boosting 101! Great job. Do this for a while, get comfortable, start to gather some results and see what you could refine to make your boosts even better. Then, once you’re ready to get a little more advanced and continue your learning, check out these articles!
- What Can You Do With A $1,500/Month Marketing Budget?
- 7 Steps To Creating An Effective Campaign Brief
- 5 Key Reasons To Send Your Ads To A Dedicated Landing Page