Over the years, social networks have taken the online marketing world by storm. From Twitter to LinkedIn to Instagram, social media has become an integral part of top digital marketing companies all over the world.
Of course, anybody who is serious about digital marketing knows that the impact of Facebook cannot be ignored. With over 2 billion active users every month, Facebook offers businesses an incredibly diverse and targeted audience to share posts you want to promote. Literally a quarter of the world’s population is on Facebook, and that figure is only expected to go up in the future.
If you’re like any of the many businesses on Facebook, you’ve probably come across the Boost feature while planning out your social marketing campaign. You’ve also probably been tempted to take the leap and just go for it; let the boost feature do its magic and get you all the traffic, engagement, and extra reach you know you deserve. Unfortunately, it’s never quite that easy in practice. Here’s what you need to know before boosting Facebook posts.
Boosting Facebook Posts
The boost feature can be an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly, but it can also be a huge waste of time and money if you don’t really know what you’re doing. Like any tool, it’s very much dependent on how you use it. In this article, we’ll talk about how to use the boost feature to get the most out of it.
Let Your Posts Get Organic Traffic
Before you even think about boosting your Facebook posts, it’s important to let them get some organic reach first. This is because you want to know how well your post will perform before you put it in front of wider audiences. There’s really no set time for how long you should wait before boosting a post, but experts advise giving it around six hours. Once you know how your posts are performing, then you can move on to the next part of this article.
Boost Your Best Posts
This one should go without saying, but it’s surprising how many businesses make the mistake of boosting posts their audience doesn’t find particularly interesting. It’s understandable to want to increase the reach of your personal favorite posts, but remember that it’s what your audience wants that really matters. The people who have already liked your page are not just your fans; they’re the perfect test audience. They can tell you definitively what posts deserve to be boosted.
Find posts that perform well with your current organic reach. The more likes, shares, comments, and views, the more popular it is. That’s why it is very important to let posts get organic reach first. It gives you the chance to determine which posts deserve your hard-earned dollars to get boosted. These are the posts that you should be investing in when it comes to using the boost feature of Facebook. You already know these posts are great performers and garner a lot of positive responses – now it’s time to get them in front of more people.
By being selective about what posts you choose to boost, you get your money’s worth and get the most out of the boost feature. Use the boost feature to further invest in your best posts as opposed to using it as a crutch for underperforming posts. Remember that you’re basically expanding your reach to new audiences. You want them to see the best that you have to offer.
Define Your Reason For Boosting Facebook Posts
It can be incredibly tempting to use the boost feature indiscriminately for all your posts. After all, who wouldn’t want to reach more people? Larger reach means more engagement and better brand awareness, so why not just boost everything?
For starters, it’s because just boosting every post your page may have can get really expensive, really quickly. Secondly, and just as important, it’s incredibly crucial to approach your digital marketing campaigns with a well-thought-out plan. If you don’t have a structured plan you are following, you are just throwing money away. You might as well just start a fire and toss bags of cash into it.
In line with this reasoning, it is only prudent that you define specifically your reasons for boosting certain posts. Are you looking to create more brand awareness? Maybe you want to increase the amount of traffic on your website. Or perhaps you are just looking to get more likes on your Facebook business page. Whatever the reason may be, having it clearly defined will help you choose which posts to boost.
Who Do You Want To Reach?
We covered identifying your best performing posts and investing in them. We also talked about clearly defining what you want your boosts to achieve. Now it’s time to figure out what audiences you want to reach.
Facebook boost offers diverse targeting options. This includes fans and/or friends of your fans, age, interests, gender, and location. This is incredibly important as Facebook literally allows you to target custom audiences whom you want your boosted posts to get in front of. Google ads may give you a much wider audience, but nobody does targeted advertisements better than Facebook. That’s one of the reasons why many online marketers have been investing so much money on Facebook advertising. It only makes sense that you take advantage of this and figure out exactly who you want your boosted posts to reach.
Remember when we talked about defining your reasons for boosting? Knowing what you want your boosted posts to achieve will let you make intelligent decisions on whom you want to target with your boosts. And since you already know what your best performing posts are, it’s a simple matter of matching the post to the audience.
Facebook Advertising Experts
As a digital marketer, it’s important that you keep up with the newest emerging trends. If you’re looking for expert advice on social media engagement, contact Double Up Digital today. After all, if you want results, it’s always a good idea to work with experts who know what they’re doing.
