Facebook has more than one billion users on its roster. This makes Facebook one of the most important advertising opportunities available today.
Thanks to the enormous profit potential, Facebook has gotten very good (and aggressive) about suggesting you boost your posts.
At first glance, boosting Facebook posts seems like a good way to increase awareness.
But think twice before you pay to reach some of Facebook's one billion users. Let's talk about why…
Boosting posts on Facebook can quickly become a money waster. Your fans' friends may not be interested in buying your product or service. If so, you're paying good money to show your ad to the wrong audience.
Adding insult to injury, targeting the wrong audience can hurt you more than help you. Users who are not interested in seeing your content can:
- Hide your posts/ads from their news feeds.
- Choose to stop seeing them all together, or
- Report your posts/ads as spam (lots of people do this).
Whichever route they choose, it will negatively affect your Facebook account. It can kill your organic reach and make your future ads more expensive. In other words, fewer people will be seeing your free posts. And worse, Facebook will charge you more for the posts you do pay for!
There are much better and more powerful ways to target your ideal Facebook audience.
For example, my friend and author Bob Burg has 21,730 fans on his Facebook page. If Bob reaches an audience similar to mine, I could target his fans from my page. And if there are others who've written books similar to mine and whose audiences are like mine, I can target their fans as well.
Now Facebook ads I pay to boost are targeted at people with a higher propensity to care about my message.
This can have two very significant effects:
- A well-targeted audience is more likely to do what I want. They'll visit my webpage, buy my book, invite me to speak at events, or ask about my branding firm working for them. And,
- Their potential interest suggests they will click on my information without reporting me to Facebook. This will improve my Facebook standing and reduce my future advertising rates.
By the way, these techniques work equally well on other social media sites.
For example, after I write my posts my assistant picks LinkedIn users who would be interested in them. Then he posts the articles in the user groups where the interested parties spend time. Thanks to judicious placement, in less than 20 months my LinkedIn followers have increased from 5,000 to almost 70,000. This has created many interesting opportunities for me and my business.
With a little work – and a clear strategy – it can work for you, too.