Five Crucial Tips for a Successful Boost Post on Facebook

On Oct 4, 2019

In 2018, Facebook announced a “shift ranking to make News Feed more about connecting with people and less about consuming media in isolation.” While the move was designed to benefit the Facebook users, some businesses were left out in the cold, seeing giant drops in the amount of fans that saw their posts.

The drop in organic reach continues in 2019, with little hope of coming back up and Facebook has continued to tweak it’s algorithm.

In a blog post I previously wrote, I indicated that while it is possible to slightly improve this percentage through higher quality content, Facebook Advertising offers more effective ways to improve post viability, for a price of course.

Today, I will be focusing on “Boost Posts,” a type of Facebook Advertising that allows companies to choose a post and have it distributed in the News Feed to anyone they want, based on interests, demographics, etc. While this may seem like a simple concept, there are certainly challenges.

In this post, I am going to go over five tips to maximize the effectiveness of boost posts on Facebook.

Have a strategic goal in place

First, it’s important to understand what needs to come out of promoting a post on Facebook. There are many reasons to boost a post, such as:

Increasing brand awareness
Increasing brand engagement (Shares, Comments, Likes)
Boosting website traffic
Promoting new content or blog posts

Companies can spend money fast boosting a post, so having a specific goal in place is necessary to use that money effectively. The next tips will go into specific ways on how to successfully reach these goals within Facebook.

Maximize targeting options

It’s easy to boost a post. It’s hard to effectively boost one. The key lies in who you are targeting. Based on the goal, companies have the ability to target anyone they want on Facebook. When boosting a post, Facebook offers the following targeting options:

Audience (fans and/or friends of fans)
People in your local area
Location
Age
Gender
Interest

If the post is focused on information only relevant to current fans, it’s important to target only those people. On the other hand, if the goal is to interact with potential new customers, that needs to be reflected in the targeting.

Find the best time to boost a post

Time of day is another factor to keep in mind when boosting a post. For companies that have been actively running a Facebook account, knowing what days and times their audience is online should be common knowledge. For companies that have yet to make that determination, it helps to test out posting at various times of the week to get a feel for when their users are most active, and when they are not.

Once companies have figured out the best time to boost a post, they should focus boosting activity at these times to increase its effectiveness.

Choose the right post

I have stressed this point in the past, but it’s worth stating again the importance of using a high quality image or video. When boosting a post, especially to users who might not be familiar with the brand, the image will be the first piece they see. It needs to be eye catching and engaging at the same time.

In order to determine if a certain post is performed well enough to boost, it is essential to check post results in the Insights tab on the Facebook business page.

Using data found here, an advertiser is able to tell what posts are seeing the highest “engagement rate”, which is the percent of users who interact with a post. Identifying and using these high-performing posts is imperative in having a successful boost strategy.

Understand all available options and limitations on Facebook

Before hitting that “Boost Post” button, it’s critical to look back on the previous four tips to figure out if boosting a post is the best course of action.

Facebook offers a variety of different advertising options. While they make it easy to boost a post and move on, it’s important to know what options they have and see if there is one better suited for the target audience and goals.

For example, if getting “Page Likes” is the goal, Facebook offers a “Promote your Page” ad. This type of ad is much more effective at getting “Page Likes” than a boosting a post would.

On the other hand, Facebook retired the ability to target some specific ad formats via boost post on September 15th, 2017. The objective behind this initiative was to give advertisers ad formats that drive engagement and sunset those who didn’t achieve the standard.

To learn more about the various Facebook Advertising options, please feel free to read a previous blog post of mine.

Conclusion

While boosting a post may seem as simple as pressing a button, there is a lot more to consider in order to effectively use it and see results. To avoid irrelevant clicks and visitors, advertisers need to understand who they are targeting, what the goals are, and why users should care about the post.

In today’s Facebook world, where organic reach is dwindling, boosting a post is a fantastic way to improve visibility and reach to targeted audiences. It is absolutely essential, however, that there is an effective plan in place to maximize the potential opportunity.