This week, Blasting News wants to help you increase your audience reach. As you have probably heard, Facebook has decreased organic reach for pages over the years. Thus, in order to get more visibility within your community's news feed, you have to optimize by boosting Posts on Facebook.

If you're wondering if you should boost your posts on Facebook, the answer is it really depends.

You don't need to pay for every post, just pick the good ones. First tip, you should really only boost your post if your article already has significant reach. If your article is already doing well than we recommend you spend a little extra money to reach a higher audience level. You can pay as little as $1 USD to obtain a higher reach compared to sharing on your own.

Reminder, boosting posts is only applicable to people who have Facebook pages. In later weeks, we will discuss promoted posts, which are for those of you who don't own Facebook pages.

Below is a detailed guide of how to increase your reach on your Facebook pages...

Boosting your Facebook posts

If you don't already share your articles to Facebook then you're already doing something wrong.

Regardless of paying for boosts or not, you should always be sharing your articles to Facebook and other social media outlets. This gives you the potential for wider reach and for other people to share your content as well.

Now let's discuss how to boost your posts on your Facebook pages.

Step 1: Prior to clicking boost, make sure you're posting engaging content that an audience will interact with. If your article is not doing well in terms of traffic, we wouldn't recommend paying for a boost. Boosts are to help you heighten your reach, not create initial reach!

Step 2: Click boost post. On the right hand, bottom corner of the post, there is a button that states 'Boost Post'. Click that and a drop-down will appear for you to get started.

See picture below for visuals.

Step 3: It is time to choose your audience. Facebook boosts allow you to choose your reach. You have two options to decide between...

One tip for if you are deciding between whether to click 'People who like your page and their friends' OR 'People you choose through targeting'. If your overall goal is to drive some targeted traffic to your website, then choose the second audience option- 'People you choose through targeting'.

You can target by location, gender, age and interests. Be as specific to your audience level as possible! For example, if you writing about the state of New York, make sure to click off the cities surrounding New York as it is relevant to people who live around there, not someone who lives in Nebraska.

See picture below for details on choosing your audience...

Step 4: Pick your budget. For the amount you spend, there is an estimated reach associated with that amount. Be smart in choosing how much you want to spend. Blasting News recommends around $1 to $5 dollars. After testing the reach of that amount, you can decide if higher amounts are better or not.

Step 5: Set up your payment method. If its your first time doing this, go to 'Ad Manager' under settings. Go to the 'Ads Manager' tab and then click 'Payment Methods' on the left hand side. If its your first time, fill out the payment method section. Your ads will then be automatically billed to your chosen payment method filled out.

Once your boosted post is ready to go, you can see in real time the audience it has reached.

Step 6: Test your Facebook boosting process

Boosting is great if done correctly. In order to know whether your boosts are working for you, it is important for you to test the process. Start by tracking the progress on your current boosted post. If you notice that you are reaching a larger audience and they are clicking on your content, then you can continue to use the same custom settings for a majority of your boosts. On the other hand, if you boosts are not reaching as many people as you wanted (and if they are costing you more than you budgeted for), consider changing your settings to receive different results. This process differs for everyone, so test it out!

Things to keep in mind when testing out your posts...

  • Try changing up the pictures- Eg: images vs. words as the main image. How do your views differentiate with the changing of pictures?
  • Change the title to be a bit more sexy. Do more engaging titles work better your audience? These are all things to test out.

Step 7: Facebook is not the only trick! Try other social media outlets.

Facebook is a great social media tool, but it is best used in conjunction with other Social Media platforms. Many have reported that Instagram and Twitter are equally as valuable to them as a marketing tool, helping them increase their brand exposure and interact with their ideal audience.

Again, as stated throughout this article, this is only to teach people how to boost posts for Facebook pages.

In later weeks we will explain paying for general advertising on Facebook.

*Something very important to note is that Blasting News and Facebook do not calculate views and clicks the same way. Facebook calculates clicks while Blasting News counts unique views. Due to this difference in calculation, there will most likely be slight discrepancy between Facebook clicks and Blasting News unique views.

If you have any further questions along the way, email us@blastingnews.com for more tips. Thanks!