Category: Tools

There is one way that I’ve found to maximize the bang-for-your-buck with boosting Facebook posts: Timing.

Since the beginning of Facebook, there have always been 2 sides to paying for advertising: Advertisers want to pay as little as possible to get as much exposure as possible, and Facebook wants to make as much money as possible… Facebook also has a balance on their hands – they don’t want to give you too much exposure for too little money, or too little exposure for too much money and at the same time, they don’t want news feeds to be covered in boosted posts from pages you didn’t like.

If you pay $100 to reach 5 people, Facebook may be happy that they made $100, but you won’t like do that again.  If you reach 10,000 for $5, you may only spend $1 next time to get the reach you’re hoping for, then Facebook investors wouldn’t be happy, and the people actually using Facebook, may see so many ads that they choose another platform, then nobody is happy…

Once you’ve decided in your audience, budget and duration, there’s one more way to get the best reach possible for your advertising dollars, and that is WHEN you decide to boost.  Pay for your boost AFTER your organic reach has run its course.

How Organic Reach Works:

When you post something to your Facebook status, Facebook uses a REALLY complex set of algorithms to decide who they will show your post to. Again, they’re trying to create the best experience possible for their users so they continue to use Facebook.  These algorithms can be over-simplified into:

• Post type (images and video get way more engagement than just text)
• Previous engagement (someone who liked, commented or shared your last status will likely also enjoy this one – have you ever noticed it’s the same people who keep liking your posts?)
• Date posted (What you see in your news feed is usually from the last few hours? Sometimes if a post is getting a lot of engagement, it may have been posted a few days ago. Not much shows up from last month or last year without some new engagement or boost.)

So organically, your post will gain some exposure on it’s own for free… LET THIS HAPPEN!!

Don’t boost your post before it hit its organic reach… if you do, you’re spending money paying Facebook to ‘boost’ your post to people who would have seen it for free.

Check out this recent video that we boosted:

You can see the organic reach was 2764 and the paid reach was 1044.  It would have been a complete waste or money to post the status, then immediately ‘boost’ it – we may have only had 2000 people see it AND have paid money for that!

Once I saw the organic reach start to fade away, I tried a few other opportunities for engagement.  I asked questions about comments that people had left on the post.  When they respond to those questions, Facebook sees engagement and will show it to a few more people.

I sent a link to the video to our staff and asked if they would like to share the video (it was a clip from our last service where our Pastor was sharing some thoughts and it resonated with some of our staff specifically).

THEN… after letting it play out organically, engaging with the comments, and asking people outside of Facebook to visit and share the post (don’t do this all the time to the same people… it could get annoying) , I chose to pay for a boost.

In this case, I posted September 29, then let the organic play out.  By October 1, it was dropping drastically, so I added a boost October 1.

When you decide to do the boost, Facebook will ask about your audience, budget and duration. Here are some tips on making the most of those options.

Use the comments below and let me know how this has worked for you!

No matter the size of our budgets, we all want to get the most out of them, especially with something digital – like Facebook boosts.  It’s different if you choose to buy a sign (like from churchbanners.com) and spend $X and end up with 5 new signs for your church. But, when it comes to digital, we not only have to aim to get the most from our posts, but often we also have the justify those costs to someone who doesn’t understand how Facebook advertising works.

There are 3 aspects to getting the most from your Facebook Post Boost: The technical details, the content of your ad, and your timing strategy.

Heads up: There is a difference between a Facebook ad (like what you see in the right column on desktop) and boosting your Facebook post.  This article is just about hitting the “boost” button on a status update on your Facebook page.

The technical details of promoting on Facebook:

It seems really easy to just hit the “Boost” button on your status update, but then it becomes really easy to get overwhelmed by the details Facebook wants in order to start promoting your ad.

The 1st question is your target audience:

Your audience.  You can see from my screen shot that I currently have 8 audience demographics setup.  Once you create one, Facebook automatically saves it for future use (and if I was more organized, each audience type would already be labelled instead of “audience 1…” but, y’know…)

Think about who you’re trying to reach with this post.  Don’t assume you always want to target “People who like your page and their friends.”  This use to be the only target audience, (like back in the day when I was a young lad…) but then when Facebook did their IPO in May 2014… (yes, I remember how that changed everything…) they opened up the options.

If your post is about a fall carnival, or an outreach event, or a workshop to attract people to your church, then I would recommend creating a target audience for your event and your region. (Age group, geographical region, similar likes, etc.)

If your post is targeted to something like “This weekend’s potluck” or “A message from Pastor” then you may choose to target just people who like your page.

A boost for “People who like your page and their friends” is something that I would say is mostly for businesses (ie. bring a friend this weekend for 2-for-1 ice cream) where you may want to not only reach people who have engaged with you, but also people who are their friends.  In some cases this may be applicable, but other times, if it’s not applicable to your ad, you could be spending boost dollars on people from out of state, or friends of friends who are not your target demographic.

2nd Question – Budget and duration:

Specify your budget, and how long you’d like your ad to run.  This works on a “behind the scenes” auction based on attention. Facebook doesn’t want to overload timelines with advertising, so your ad is competing for space with other ads.

(If you open your phone, and scroll to the top of your Facebook feed, you’ll see one post from a friend, then a status boost, then friends posts.)

This exposure is based on how specific of an audience you’re targeting. If you’re charging “people in your county” then Facebook can slap your post on just about anyone’s news feed who’s not falling into anyone else’s targeting.  If you’re targeting 18-20 year olds in your neighborhood who have attended college and work at McDonalds and like Michael W Smith’s page, your audience is going to be a lot smaller, so to come through for your specs, Facebook has to take away other ads from that audience and give it to you… you’ll hit a much more specific audience, but your reach will be far less.

Your duration will spread out your budget.  If you have a an event coming up this weekend that you need more registrations for, then you could choose to make your duration 1 or 2 days and have lots of people see it in a short amount it time.  If it’s a generic boost like “Come check out our church” then it may not be urgent to have every ad be seen tomorrow, so you could spread it out over a few days.

After your ad, you’ll get to see some insights on your post – some will be organic (the amount of exposure your post got just from being posted through likes, comments and shares) and paid (the amount of exposure your post earned because of your boost.)

Read about the #1 trick I use to make the most of my Facebook budget!