Facebook Boosted Posts and How They Differ From Paid Ads

Facebook boosted posts offer businesses a way to ensure that their organic social media content is seen by more users. Boosting posts differs from paid ads in that all of the engagement metrics happen on a post on the brand’s profile. Additionally, paid ad campaigns offer marketers the ability to test many different audiences, creative, copy, images and more within one campaign.

Which Posts to Boost

Use your social reporting tool or Facebook insights to analyze which of your organic posts is performing the best by either reach or engagement, and boost the top performing content. It’s recommended to avoid boosting posts that contain a large amount of text in the image.

How Often to Boost

There’s no rule on how frequently you should boost posts. However, Facebook recommends a flight of at least 4 days for the best optimization. It’s also recommended to avoid boosting multiple posts to the same audience at the same time, as this increases competition within the audience and drives up cost.

When to Boost

Boost posts at least 24-48 hours after the post has gone live to allow the content to gain organic traction. This will lead to a cheaper cost per result. 

Clickable Bar + CTA

Publish Facebook posts that contain links with a clickable bar. To get the clickable bar to appear, use a URL in Sprout Social (or your preferred publishing platform) and change the thumbnail image instead of adding a photo to your post. If you don’t use a publishing tool, paste the URL into Facebook and allow the link to auto populate. Do not include an image with the post. Include the desired CTA high up in your post copy. Ex. “Click below to read about boosting best practices.”

Objective + Targeting 

Choose an objective that aligns with post copy. For example, if there’s a link in the post, choose traffic. If you ask users to comment, select engagement. Target users based on interests that align with the post. 

To learn more about paid social and how to promote content on social media, contact us.