Boosted Posts

A boosted post is an ad you create from an existing post on your Facebook Page. Meta's help center says boosted posts differ from new ads because a new ad involves creating creative that has not been published on your Page before. You start from the post itself, press Boost, and choose a goal, audience, budget, and duration. Meta says boosting can help you get more messages, video views, leads, or calls, and may reach people who do not follow you but are likely interested. After boosting, you can see performance in the Ad Center tab on your Page, and you can re-boost a post that keeps doing well.

Mechanically, a boost still runs in Meta's ad auction with the same delivery system, but through a cut-down interface. You get a short list of goals and simple audience choices instead of the campaign, ad set, and ad structure in Ads Manager. Meta also notes that ads created by boosting a post are opted in to multi-advertiser ads by default, though you can opt out in Ads Manager. A fee notice matters on iPhone: starting February 2024, an Apple service fee of 30 percent of your total ad payment, before taxes and local fees, may apply when you boost in the Facebook iOS app. Meta says this fee is kept by Apple, not Meta.

Boosting sits beside other ways of advertising and the choice affects control. Meta Business Suite lets you create quick, simple ads or boost content, while Ads Manager is for more detailed, customizable campaigns with advanced audience targeting and offline performance tracking. Business Suite also covers boosting for Instagram content. Using Ads Manager lets you pick a precise objective, set conversion events, exclude audiences, and choose placements. A boosted post usually gives you engagement-style goals, so if your real goal is a purchase or a qualified lead, you are asking the tool to do something it is not set up to optimize for.

The common mistake is using boosts for acquisition. A post that got lots of likes feels like proof, but likes and comments are not customers, and boosting buys more of the same attention. Another is boosting a post that is not an ad: a casual photo with no offer, no link, and no call to action. A third is narrow targeting by accident, since the simple audience tools can hide how small the pool is. Also check whether anyone with Page ad permissions has boosted posts without your knowledge, because boosts bill to an ad account. Finally, remember the iPhone fee when boosting inside the app.

This week, review your Ad Center tab and your last five boosts. For each, note the goal, spend, and what it produced in business terms: messages that became customers, calls, leads. If the answer is nothing measurable, stop boosting for reach and move your spend into an Ads Manager campaign with a Leads or Sales objective. Keep boosts for what they do well: extending a post that already performs organically, promoting an event or announcement, or testing a message quickly. Boost from a computer where you can, to avoid the Apple fee, and write the post as an ad, with a clear offer and a call to action.