Putting a small amount of budget behind your social media posts is a great way to grow your followers and levels of online engagement quickly – and can be done for as little as $10. If your social media pages are flatlining, this is definitely something you’ll want to do.

As you are probably aware, businesses have the opportunity to boost the reach of their Facebook and Instagram posts through boosted (Facebook) or sponsored (Instagram) posts. You can nominate the amount of budget you’d like to allocate, the audience demographics you’d like to target and the timeframe in which you’d like to spend the budget.

Who should do it

There are two types of business social pages that should consider boosted posts right now; those that are just starting out, and those that are performing poorly with low levels of reach and engagement (likes, shares and comments). FYI – engagement drives reach so those two metrics are very much related.

Why you should do it

If you are just starting out with social media pages for your business, or your existing pages aren’t performing well, it’s possible to get them firing by posting great content and not spending additional budget. But putting budget behind it will, for sure, speed up this process. And remember, if you increase your page followers early on, then all subsequent posts are more effective as they’ll be seen by more people. So there’s a clear case for ‘front loading’ your social media budget.

Another reason why boosted posts can kickstart a struggling page is that engagement drives engagement. If your past posts have been getting good interaction, the social media platforms’ algorithms will increase the reach of future posts – i.e. put them in front of more of your followers.

This is why some local pages continually do poorly and winners keep winning.

How far does $10 go?

Just like your regular or ‘organic’ posts, the level of interaction your boosted posts get will ultimately play a role in how much reach or boost your post gets. It’s the social media platforms’ way of encouraging good content. To give a guide $10 should see your post put in front of 1,500 – 6,000 people. Yes, that’s a large variance but indicative of what you should expect.

The best thing to do is to create a great post, put $10 behind it and then increase budget once you see the results you are getting. The great thing about advertising through Facebook and Instagram is how flexible and scalable it is.

How you should do it

Check out this Facebook article on how to boost a post https://bit.ly/1Ndj0ms

You might also want to check out this article on how to promote your page on Facebook and Instagram (good for growing your page followers) https://bit.ly/2MqKRE9