With today's surge of social media usage, advertising on is almost a must-have in your Facebook marketing strategy for companies who are looking to attract new leads and convert them into customers.
But, if you're just looking for a quick way to distribute your content to a wider audience, you may be interested in what Facebook boosted posts has to offer.
What Is a Boosted Post, and What Makes It So Awesome?
A boosted post is a simpler alternative to creating a full Facebook ad.
A boosted post is basically a one-click way to share your post with a wider audience. It takes a pre-existing post on your company's feed, and with a few customizable adjustments, spreads your content to a larger, targeted group. Bam! More eyes on the prize.
Boosting a post is exceptionally helpful for companies who are launching new products or services or promoting events and webinars, as it encourages engagement with new audiences. Traditionally, only those who like your page will be able to see posts that you publish to your feed.
But let's say you want to advertise your new product: wouldn't you want more people to see it?
What's the Difference Between a Boosted Post and a Facebook Ad?
This question gets asked a lot, and while there are many similarities between the two, there are a few key differences that make them stand apart from one another.
A Facebook Ad is often considered a "dark" post. A Facebook Ad does not show up on your own company's feed but rather gets sent out as an ad on the feeds of the audience you've defined and targeted during the creation phase.
A boosted post is just a quick way to share an existing post with more people. It remains on your feed as an original post, but by boosting it, it will also pop up on the feeds of those who you've targeted.
While Facebook Ads do have more customization options and focus on a wider range of marketing objectives, boosted posts are the simple option for companies looking to boost engagement on the platform.
How Do I Create a Boosted Post?
Facebook makes creating a boosted post one of the simplest tasks. Here is a seven step guide to creating and publishing a customized boosted post for your business:
- Choose Your Post
- Pick Your Goal
- Add a Button
- Choose Your Audience
- Set a Budget
- Set the Duration
- Pay and Publish
1. Choose the Post You Want to Boost.
Aim to boost posts that will encourage engagement and inspire people to take a certain action, whether it's visit your Page, visit your website, or click on whatever offer you included (more on this in Step 4).
Once you find your post, look on the lower right hand side of the post. There you will see a "Boost Post" button. Once you click this, you're off to the races!
2. Select Your Desired Goal.
This is a newer feature to boosted post creation. Now, businesses have the opportunity to select a goal for their boosted post: what are you trying to gain from boosting this specific post?
The two goal-setting options to choose from are:
- Video views: get more people to watch your video.
- Messages: engage and chat with potential customers.
Picking a goal before creating a post allows you to hone in on the why. Why are you boosting this post?
3. Add a CTA button.
This new feature is awesome – it eliminates the need to add a clunky hyperlink in the body of your post. With just one click, interested consumers can:
- Shop Now
- Book Now
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Get Directions
- Send Message
- Send WhatsApp Message
Now, promoting your upcoming webinar will be a breeze. You can focus on creating a high-quality video to advertise your event to your audience, knowing that a trusty "sign up" button will be there to send those intrigued visitors to the exact place they need to be.
Select the best-fitting CTA button for the content you are boosting. Struggling to decide which to pick? "Send Message" is your best bet.
You can opt out of including a button by clicking the toggle to OFF.
Note: If you select the Messages goal, it requires you to use the "Send Message" button.
4. Choose Your Audience or Create Your Own.
The great thing about boosting a post is that you have the opportunity to reach more people, and you have the flexibility to decide who those people are.
When boosting a post, decide if you want it to reach:
- People who like your Page
- People who like your Page and their friends
- A niche, target audience you create
A customized target audience allows you to refine your audience by gender, age range, location, and even detailed targeting for your desired audience. Detailed targeting lets you include and exclude certain demographics, interests, and behaviors of your desired audience. This is a great way to expand on who you are trying to target.
If you’re a building software company and you're boosting a post to promote a new software for easy, online blueprint creating, you would benefit from including niche targets to share your post with the most interested candidates. When defining your audience, you should include people with an interest in architecture and building design, those who work in architecture, etc.
You can also save your customized audience as a preset option for future boosted posts. If you plan on targeting future boosted posts to the same audience, this is a quick and handy shortcut to use.
5. Set Your Budget.
Boosted posts do cost money; however, the increased reach you can potentially gain from a boosted post is well worth the extra green.
Be sure to budget for all boosted posts. What is the max you are willing to spend? You can either choose your budget from a drop down menu or write in a custom amount.
When deciding on the best budget for your content, look at how increasing or decreasing your budget affects the estimate of people reached daily. This tool shifts and changes as you adjust your budget so you can easily compare the difference of spending that extra $10 a day.
Here's a quick example.
If Bluleadz published a boosted post toward "people who like our Page and their friends" and spent a total of $75 over a seven day period, our estimated people reached is between 500 and 1,400 people per day.
However, if we wanted to double our budget to $150 over a seven day period, we increase our estimated number of people reached to 950 to 2,700 people per day. Look at that difference!
6. Set the Duration of Your Boosted Post.
The last step in creating a boosted post is to decide the running duration of your post. You can choose from their predetermined options or customize your end date in the “Run this ad until” form field.
Determining the duration of your post will affect how many potential people you will reach – do a few “tests” and play around with your budget and duration to see how the estimated reach changes.
Facebook says that even successful boosted posts begin to decline in results after a week, so try limiting your duration to no more than a week at a time.
It may take some trial and error, but over time your business will learn the optimal time frame for a boosted post and the benefits it provides for your overall engagement.
7. Pay and Publish.
This step is the easiest to grasp: pull out your wallet, flip through until you decide which card to use, type in that 16-digit card number and following information, press publish, and watch the engagement filter in.
Final Thoughts
With these seven steps in mind, you are on your way to growing your engagement on Facebook.
Note: For larger campaigns, I would suggest transitioning to Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads does offer more specific, targeted goals and customization tools that will help you hone in on your objectives and guide you on the right path to building new relationships, finding new leads, and acquiring new customers.
However, for boostworthy ad hoc content, why not test boosted posts out and expose your awesome content to new people? You never know what can happen or who will end up seeing – and loving – your content and your company.
Baylor Cherry
Baylor is an inbound specialist for Bluleadz. As a native Floridian, she enjoys soaking up the Florida sun, buying clothes she can’t afford, and dreaming about one day owning a dachshund.