Do you realise how few people are actually seeing your Facebook content? The case for “boosting” your posts and how to do it wisely

Posted on by Marie Page

So you have a nice little Facebook Page with a few thousand fans and you are merrily popping updates onto the Page at regular intervals. Bit too busy to be messing around with that Insights tab and whilst fan growth seems a bit stagnant, never mind, it’ll pick up.

Welcome to Facebook Marketing 2012 style. Back in the day, all we needed to do was have a Page, post some engaging content and Facebook did the rest. “Build it and they will come” was indeed the mantra.

However, the free ride has ended. With so many companies and friends competing for newsfeed space, an unfiltered newsfeed would be overwhelming – you’d have thousands of trivial updates, and spammy advertising messages shouting at you every time you looked at Facebook. So Facebook filters your feed, and for brands (that includes church Facebook pages), this means that “reach” (the number of people that Facebook actually serves the content too) is very very small.

Take a look at this graphic (it’s a robust piece of research by a respected company specialising in supporting brands on Facebook):

What these numbers are actually showing you it that the numbers of people (yes your fans – who have told Facebook they want to hear about you) who see your content is pretty small. For most of your posts probably less than 6 in 100 fans. Back in the day, this would have been probably 35 in 100, and for content that got lots of clicks, likes and comments it really wasn’t unusual to see reach in the 50-70% range. But things have changed.

Are you marketing in 2015 or 2012?

Far too many brands are marketing like its 2012. The game has changed and if you haven’t realised it yet, read on.

Are there any exceptions?

It’s pretty clear from the various Pages I manage that organic reach (that’s the percentage of your fans that see your content without you paying to boost or promote it) for very small Pages is higher than the statistics above. But take a look at your data and you’ll see that it’s far from 100%

You’ll also see from the data above that video content enjoys a higher organic reach than other types. It’s no surprise to hear that Facebook is favouring video – after all, YouTube as a social network has overtaken Facebook for number of visits. So you will see video posts given more exposure than plain status updates, links and photos (which nowadays are really in the doldrums). I will cover how to do video well on Facebook in a future article.

So what can I do to increase my Reach?

Facebook is now a “Pay to Play” medium. Sure you can create a Page for free, and that will be seen by a number of people. But if you really want to use the platform to get your message out to people, then you need to think about finding a little ad budget.

Take the recent example below from the Musicademy Facebook Page. We have about 11,500 fans and we’re pretty excited about our new Capo Positioning and Transposing for Guitar Course. So we’ve created a little video trailer and uploaded it to Facebook. 440 people saw it organically (that’s a Reach of 26% if you are interested but do bear in mind this was shared extensively so is not simply reach of fans, but includes viral reach).

In recent months Facebook has clobbered what it considers “promotional” posts and penalised their reach so it’s no surprise that only 440 people saw it. We therefore chose to “Boost” the post. It’s really simple to so this (Facebook really doesn’t make it difficult for you to spend money with them!). So far I’ve spent about $80 (my account is in dollars, yours will probably be in sterling) and over 19,000 people have seen it.

Facebook boosting a post

You don’t need to spend much money on boosting posts. Sometimes I’ll just spend a few dollars (honestly, just try £1 and see what happens).

What other advantages does boosting a post have?

As well as people seeing the post, a fair number ended up Liking the Page (so we increased the number of fans we have),  15 shared it to their own timelines and 36 people “Liked” it. There were also some interesting comments and of course a few sales!

If you are interested in how boosted posts perform in comparison with promoted posts and ads, check out the head-to-head experiment I did recently.

How to boost a post wisely

Whilst its very simple to boost a post, I would advise that you also adjust the targeting of the post otherwise you will end up spending money on showing it to people far outside your target market.

You’ll see that you have three basic options:

  1. Default audience (be VERY careful about using this)
  2. People who like your Page (great for reaching your existing fans)
  3. People who like your Page and their friends (perfect if friends of your fans are likely to be interested in what you do)

Facebook boost post audience

 

You then have the option to further refine your target audience:

  • Choose your target country or town(s) (you can choose a radius of up to 50 miles from the towns you select)
  • Define the age range and gender you are targeting
  • If you like, you can also add in an interest layer. As I am targeting people who like my Page and their friends I want to also be sure that they are guitarists (given the content in the post) so I’m adding in “Guitar” as an interest. Facebook will helpfully suggest some other possible interests which you can add in if you want by clicking the + button.

This takes the total of people I’m targeting down to a manageable level and also has the advantage of increasing the “Relevance Score” of my ad (this ad had a relevance score of 9/10 thanks to the tight targeting which meant I spent a lot less to reach people)

Options for more advanced targeting of boosted posts
Options for more advanced targeting of boosted posts

Obviously you need to choose targeting criteria that suits your target market. But I would strongly recommend that you target as tightly as possible. We all have limited budgets so best to target at the people most likely to respond.

Want more help with Facebook ads?

Check out my brand new course ‘Zero to Hero with Facebook Ads‘ in the Digiterati Academy. You’ll fast track all my knowledge of what’s working to create great Facebook ads right now and feel confident in your ability to run an effective campaign.

Zero to Hero with Facebook Ads Course

 

 

Marie Page

About Marie Page

Marie Page is one of the UK’s leading Facebook marketing experts. She is a founding partner of digital marketing consultancy The Digiterati and the Digiterati Academy e-learning portal for marketers and entrepreneurs. Her award-winning Master's Dissertation was the culmination of three years' academic research into Facebook that resulted in a book (and companion online course) 'Winning at Facebook Marketing with Zero Budget' that became an Amazon bestseller. Marie's work on the Facebook News Feed algorithm was featured in The Huffington Post. A recognised thought leader on social media, Marie is often approached by journalists for comment in articles such as this Telegraph article. She was also interviewed for ITV's Tonight show on Facebook privacy issues in relation to advertising. Marie is a regular guest on digital marketing blogs and podcasts including Social Media Examiner and Smart Insights. In 2018 she is speaking at Brighton SEO, Europe's biggest search and marketing conference. Marie is also author of two Smart Insights books: 'Smarter Guide to Facebook Marketing', now in its fourth edition, and 'Facebook Ads Guide', both edited by Dr Dave Chaffey. Marie is also a part time yoga teacher.

Comments