Boosted posts: what they are and their advantages

In digital marketing, it’s common to hear about boosted posts. The truth is that in a competitive scenario, it’s a necessary strategy. In fact, it’s one of the ways a business can make its presence felt on the platforms users use the most.

On these platforms, you can boost posts in a targeted manner in order to attract the right audience. This way, brand awareness is created and leads can be captured at the same time.

In the following article, we’ll cover the concept of boosted posts, their advantages, and how to use them with caution, since any mistake might be bad for your business’ health.

If this subject interests you, read on to learn about this digital marketing strategy.

What are boosted posts and what are they used for?

Let’s start with the basics: the concept of boosted posts. Boosting a post is merely a way to increase its original reach. Therefore, instead of your post being shown only to those who follow you, boosting a post allows it to be displayed to other interested users.

In other words, this is a form of enhancing the viewing of what has already been posted. Even with a good strategy and while attracting leads through organic traffic, a lot of social media networks are still limiting, causing engagement to be lower.

Boosted posts are very practical for those who want shares, comments, and reactions from a segmented group. If your goal is to achieve conversions – i.e., to get more people to buy your product – it’s probably best to plan a campaign with sponsored ads.

What is the difference between boosting a post and creating ads?

The two are quite different: when creating ads, a marketing department will plan a campaign and create posts specifically for that purpose; boosting a post, on the other hand, serves to increase the reach of an existing post, so that the brand is viewed by more people.

The main difference is the end goal. While boosting focuses on engagement and reach, ads are created to make conversions. Both are useful and should be studied and planned carefully.

For those who are just starting out, for example, the best thing to do would be to boost existing posts, rather than running ads. This is because a new business needs to increase its visibility and brand awareness.

So, you can build your reputation early on with posted boosts and then make plans to advertise on Instagram and create an effective Facebook Ads campaign.

What are the advantages of boosted posts?

Now that you know what boosted posts are and the difference between boosting and running ads, it’s time to understand some of the advantages and why they should be used to strengthen your brand on social media.

Impact a greater number of users

As we mentioned earlier, one of the advantages is the possibility of impacting users. We also mentioned that a post’s organic reach is limited by the social network, and therefore, it can be boosted for greater reach.

This way, even people who don’t follow your page can see your content and learn more about your brand.

Segment your audience

With this feature, you can segment your audience and work on specific actions to attract their attention. This helps your post reach the right people, instead of showing your content to people who don’t have the slightest interest in your product or service.

But why is segmenting your audience so important? You need to understand that in US alone, Facebook and Instagram have millions of users. With so many people, the goal becomes to reach the right group of people to view and consume your brand.

The chances of this happening are very slim, which is why it’s crucial to segment your audience. This is the only way you can make your posts reach your ideal user, the one who needs what you have to offer.

Increase engagement

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges in digital media nowadays is keeping audiences engaged on a brand’s pages. But with boosted posts, the chances of engagement and interaction increase. In fact, this is one of the strategy’s main goals.

Generate leads

Boosted posts displayed to the right people can generate business opportunities. But for that to happen, you need to plan carefully, boost the right posts, and segment correctly.

Although not everyone will be impacted by your posts, many people will be interested. When people get to know your brand, they have a real chance of becoming leads and starting down the sales funnel towards the decision to buy.

But remember, the focus here is not to convert sales. Instead, boosted posts seek to generate leads and nurture them, with more educational content about the users’ pain points, as well as your business and your product.

Strengthen your brand’s presence

One of the goals of boosted posts is quite attractive for any brand: to strengthen its digital presence. Because, in order to sell in today’s competitive environment, you need to be seen, right?

This is especially true in today’s increasingly connected world, where all of your competitors are looking for ways to stand out on social media. This makes sense since, according to WeAreSocial’s 2021 statistics, typical social media users spend 2 hours and 25 minutes on social media every day.

Boosted posts help you be relevant, gain credibility and build a relationship with users, become a benchmark, and stand out from the competition. 

How to boost a post

If you’ve gotten this far, it’s because you’re probably already considering this strategy for your business. So, it’s time to put it into practice and understand how to boost posts on social media works.

The first step is to determine which post is most relevant to your goal. Think about which content will interest your target audience, and pick something that already performed well organically.

Afterwards, on Facebook, go to the bottom right corner and find the option to boost your post. On Instagram, the process is similar: just go to your page and locate the post you wish to boost and click promote.

Next, define your goal. This makes it easier to define the users who will view your post. The options are:

• People selected through targeting: allows you to specify the types of people who will view your post by location, age, gender, and interests.
• People who liked your page: this option displays your post to people who have already liked your page.
• Friends of people who have liked your page: both those who have liked your page, as well as their friends, will be shown your post.
• People in your area: this specification is based on your business’ location and allows you to define a radius, in kilometers, in which the post will be promoted.
• Custom audience: this is an ad targeting option to find audiences that already display an interest in your business.

Now it’s time to establish the budget and how long your post will be boosted. You should know that boosting posts requires investment, and as such, you should plan carefully.

There are a few variables for the post’s reach, such as information based on the chosen audience, total budget, and how long the campaign will run. Facebook itself provides a simulator for you to get an idea of the size of your reach depending on your budget.

Before you publish, you’ll get a preview of what the post will look like. On Facebook, you can see how it will look in the News Feed, on desktop and mobile versions. For Instagram, the previews are for stories and the feed.

Remember that you need to track the post’s performance to know if your goals have been achieved. This way you can understand what worked best, what impacted users, and where you went wrong.

Increase your business’ reach with boosted posts

If you want to increase engagement, impact users and generate leads, then boosted posts are the way to go. All you need to do is plan carefully, choose the right posts, and invest and target correctly.

In the digital age, you need to always be aware of strategies that can help your business. One example is paid traffic, which refers to the creation of ad campaigns. Would you like to learn more about the subject? Read our post and stay up to date!