When it comes to Facebook for business, you have to pay to play. As annoying as that is, unless you have a large following (and even then, not everyone is going to see all of your posts), boosting a post on Facebook is a necessary part of Facebook advertising. In this week’s blog, I am going to show you step-by-step how to boost a post on Facebook by targeting a specific audience. First thing’s first… Make sure that your post includes an eye-catching photo and an informative and engaging caption. Once you have the post you wish to boost, click the “Boost Post” button at the bottom right corner of the post.
Once you click ‘Boost Post,’ Facebook will bring up a page with several options for boosting posts. You will want to click the ‘People you choose through targeting’ option in the top right corner to make the most of your boosted post. Since you probably won’t already have your audience you will need to click ‘Create New Audience.’
The next step requires a little more thought. Choose a name for the audience that you ideally want to see your post. Pick the location of your intended audience; Facebook even gives you the option to add ‘x’ amount of miles outside of a particular city. Next, click on the age groups of your intended audience. We chose the minimum & maximum age for this particular post, however you will need to think about the age groups of your intended audience. If the post you are boosting is for a restaurant that sells alcohol, a bar, or alcohol in general, you must have 21 as the minimum age, otherwise, Facebook will not approve of your boosted post. As far as ‘interests’ go, it is in your best interest to be specific as you can, and to think about the interests of your intended audience. For this post, which is about an upcoming play in Charlotte, I chose the following interests: North Carolina’s Blumenthal of Performing Arts, Discovery Place, Performing Arts, Theatre, Acting, Plays, William Shakespeare & Oscar Wilde; these ‘interests’ are intended to target people living in Charlotte that are interested in plays, acting, and have kids that are interesting in these activities.
Once you have created an audience for your post, the next step is to choose your ad budget. First, think about how long you would like for your post to run; Facebook requires you to spend at least $1 per day that your post is running. Our post is for a play that is on Thursday, Friday & Saturday, so we boosted it on Wednesday to run for 3 days through Friday in hopes that the audience will schedule the play into their weekend plans.
Now that you have set up your targeted audience, a budget and timeline for your post, click ‘Boost.’ You will then see that your boosted post is being reviewed by Facebook and will take approximately an hour to start reaching your intended audience. Once your boosted post run time has ended, you will be able to check out the results and see how many people were reached, how many interacted, clicked on a link, etc. It’s a good idea to look this over and learn what you could possibly do different/better for next time!
Boosting a post on Facebook gives your audience a better chance to see and interact with your post. Without paying for Facebook advertising, you are only able to reach a certain amount of people who ‘Like’ your Facebook page, so it critical to pay for boosting if you want the right people to see you page, event, etc. If you want to run ads through your Facebook page for more page ‘Likes,’ Facebook will take you through a very similar process as the one above. As long as you’ve taken the time to think about who your audience is and budget correctly, you will start seeing results on your business Facebook page.
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