The Basics of Boosting on Social Media

Social media is an amazing marketing tool for businesses today. It has many features that require little more than your time and effort. However, these platforms also offer various paid tools for businesses—particularly those in B2B-focused industries—who should consider integrating them into their strategies. Take boosting, for instance.

Why Boosting (or Promoting) Posts is Something to Consider

While there are a lot of benefits to using social media, it is very easy for your business’ voice to be lost in the crowd or otherwise go unheard. After all, only so many people follow your page, and they may miss something, either because the algorithm doesn’t serve them your content or they just didn’t log in at the right time. Unfortunately, most of what you post will not get many eyes on it without someone actively and regularly visiting your business' official page. Boosting a post can help change that. However, it is important to remember that boosting a post and running a paid social media campaign are two different animals, each with specific best practices. By boosting a post, you’re paying to reach a wider audience, so why not squeeze every last bit of return from that particular investment? To that end, let’s review what each of the major social media platforms offers in terms of boosting opportunities, as this is where your social media marketing activities will almost certainly be focused.

Boosting Facebook Posts

Of all the social media platforms to consider investing some of your marketing dollars into, Facebook is quite possibly the safest to turn to. With over 3 billion active monthly users as of Q4 2023, there is an excellent chance that your target audience has some significant representation on the social network. There are various options you have in terms of boosting a Facebook post. You can boost:

• To those who have liked your business’ page
• To those who have liked your business’ page, as well as their friends
• An audience based on identified criteria, such as age, employment roles, interests, or physical location

You can then use Facebook’s native tools to expand your reach even further, building up your audience through remarketing. You have two options to explore:

• Custom Audiences: collections of people who have interacted with your brand, potentially by visiting and purchasing on your website or people whose contact information you already have.
• Lookalike Audiences: collections of people who resemble your current audience members to help you find the most likely new followers.

With your audience set, you can apply a budget that the post will use until the funds are depleted, at which point the promotion ends.

Boosting Posts on X

Like Facebook, X also allows you to promote your posts to what the platform deems to be a relevant audience based on followers, post interactions, what has been reposted, recent searches, and other factors. These promoted ads are displayed around the top of a user’s timeline.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the go-to place for business decision-makers to find information. And, since users have their professional background on their pages, it can be easy to target your desired audience by company, job title, and job function and set things to reach within your company’s service area.

Boosting your content on LinkedIn will make your content appear in your selected audience's newsfeed as Sponsored Content. LinkedIn also allows you to run Direct Sponsored Content, which is a sponsored update that doesn’t appear on your company page. This allows you to test your promotional content without cluttering up your company’s own page.

YouTube

YouTube is one of the biggest search engines and most trafficked websites in the world. So, if you have video content on there, chances are you can achieve success by promoting your videos.

Because YouTube is owned by Google, you have to use Google Ads to promote your video. You’ll have to set up a campaign in order to have your video show up as a sponsored video; in Google Ads, a boosted video would be considered a Discovery Ad. Once you do that, you can define your audience by gender, age, parental status, and income. You can further narrow down your audience by creating Affinity audiences (groups of people based on their long-term interest in a particular topic), In-market audiences (consumers actively researching products), and use specific keywords, topics, and placements.

Instagram

Although Instagram is a much newer platform compared to the other four we’ve discussed, it’s a great way to target potential customers because it’s the social media platform users spend the most time on per day on average. Also, because Instagram is now owned by Facebook, you can manage your Instagram ads through Facebook’s ad platform or through the Instagram app.

Once your Instagram is set up as a business account, you can boost based on an objective of having people visit your website or giving your business a call/visit. You set your call to action button, choose your audience based on age, gender, location, and interests, and then set a budget.

X (formerly Twitter)

X can be good for businesses to use because the number one reason that people use X is to discover something new and interesting. X users do this often by searching for their topic of interest. Because they are searching for information, Twitter is able to use particular keywords to direct individuals to your advertisement, much as paid search engine ads.

There are two different ways you can promote your content on X

• Promote Mode: Automatically promote your Tweets (up to 10 per day) to the audience you specify, and promotes your account as a whole. You can target people by who they follow, specific keywords, or based on demographics (location, age, and gender) and behavior (device using, interests). With X promote mode, you pay a monthly fee that allows you to reach up to 30,000 additional people.
• Quick Promote: Promote each tweet individually, set your location you want to target and select your budget.

Need Help With Social Media?

If there’s anything you need in regards to your social media, whether it’s setting up your channels (USMR), generating content (SMaaS), managing your social media content (Social Center) or running campaigns, we can help. Contact us today to learn more.