Should I boost my Facebook Posts?
I have been experimenting with boosting Facebook posts for some of the brands I manage and have found some interesting results.
Boosting Facebook posts is what the original Facebook promise was. Getting your message in front of the right kind of people. However this is not a post to complain about Facebook's pay to play. In fact I get why it is pay to play. Facebook is a business and on the stock market therefore like all businesses it needs to make money. It has an amazing asset in that in has our attention and eyeballs and that is what they are going to sell. Right or wrong this is not that post.
Back to boosting.
What is it? To understand this you first have to understand a little bit of the basics about how Facebook determines what we all see in our stream. In a nutshell Facebook gives each post that "could" be in your stream a score and only the items with the highest score get into your feed. This scoring system is evolving and is doing its best to only show you what it thinks would be most interesting. Are you still with me? Good. By boosting a post not only is it more likely to appear in your friends streams by bypassing this ranking but also with pretty much any kind of audience you want.
For example you can select to show a post to your friends and their friends too. You can filter by location, by interest, by all kinds of things. The more you filter the more it costs to reach more people. However this all depends on your objective with the post.
To boost or not to boost.
It does not cost much at all to start boosting. You can spend as little as £1 to get started. The question is when to boost? If you are looking to sell something then you might have to spend a little more but equally if targeted well enough could get results. If you are looking to increase awareness then spending a little on something interesting well get you more clicks and traffic. Boosting a blog post or podcast with the right kind of targeting can work. Its a longer game but gets your content in front of the right people. Its then down to the quality of the title and then the content itself.
Does it work?
So far...yes. With the right content and the right audience it can work..if...... you measure it right. Understanding your sales cycle is important. If your sales cycle takes a few visits and and a few weeks or months then judging a single blog post by sales may not the be the best way to measure success. Measure it by awareness first and see how many new visitors you can get to return and consume more content. Then measure by sales for those that return.
Boosting Facebook posts is a relatively inexpensive way to get your content in front of the right people. If you think even 5 or 6 years ago how expensive it would have been to do this and get your message and content in front of these people and today it can be started for just £1. Be selective about your posts and get your targeting right in order to now waste money.
Next post will be on how you can re-target those that visit your site with adverts on Facebook. Make sure you join the mailing list if you have not already to ensure you don't miss this next post.
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Author- Speaker - Consultant. Passionate about all things digital.