Facebook Facebook Facebook. It seems like Facebook is changing their algorithms (how Facebook decides who sees what and when) all the time these days - they're not really, but it seems like it. Organic Facebook post reach for businesses is down (between 3 and 12%, depending on which report, and if the moon is in Virgo, or whatever). Here's the deal though, Facebook is a business, and they've figured out how to fund their business... by selling advertising. So, what's a business (your business) to do?

#1 - Make sure you're following our monthly map and writing great posts with images included.

#2 - Boosted posts.

But what?! How do I boost posts? How do I know which posts to boost? Have no fear! I'm here... to tell you!

When should I boost a post?

When a post is performing well! Facebook will send you a little notice that says "This post is performing 80% better than your other posts." If those are for your content, boost those - Your audience is already connecting with them, might as well give the post a little lift! If they're not your content, read the next section.
When you have something important to share. Do you have a sale? A new service offering? Boost these things.
After the post has already been posted for several hours to get the organic traffic so it will be posted to people who didn't see it otherwise.

When should I not boost a post?

When it's someone else's content. If you have posted an article or shared something from someone else, don't boost those... you're paying money to promote someone else, to send people to someone else's website. Don't do that - unless you really really want to... I'm not the boss of you.
If the image that you have used is over 20% text. This is a weird Facebook thing, they prefer pictures to text. You can still boost those posts usually, but they typically perform incredibly poorly - meaning they're expensive, or they don't deliver at all.

Who should I boost a to?

Facebook gives you three main options:

People you choose through targeting
1. If your goal is to drive targeted traffic to your website (or whatever your post content is), definitely choose this option. This option lets you select location, age and gender, and interests (including job titles, education level, homeowner, other pages that they like, etc)
People who like your Page
1. Choose this if you want to engage with the people who already like your page.
People who like your Page and their friends
1. This one is tricky because most of the friends of the people who like your page might not be interested in your content.

For this example, we're going to go with "People you choose through targeting," and click edit in the upper right corner.

Gender: Men or Women.
Age: 18 - 65+
Locations: Countries, states, cities, postal codes... it's up to you. You can even get down to your exact business address.

Detailed Targeting
- Define your audience. You can do this by selecting their interests, their education level, if they have kids or not, what other (large) social media pages they follow. Here are some examples:

Budget: This one is totally up to you. How much do you want to boost the post for and for how long?

So, what's next? Well, give it a try - boost one of your posts this week!

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