The distinction between straightforward ‘marketing’ and ‘social media marketing’ has become increasingly blurred over the last decade. If you have a small business the chances are that when you think of marketing your thoughts now immediately turn to the internet and its social networks. For many, social media marketing simply means advertising on Facebook.
In the second quarter of this year (2016) Facebook had 1.71 billion monthly active users, eclipsing the bulk of the other social networks put together. Advertising on Facebook can cost as much or as little as you want it to (depending on your budget of course) and with rigorous geo-targeting capabilities and an ability to determine what its members’ interests are, advertising on Facebook can get you very cost-effective results. One of the most popular ways of reaching a target audience on Facebook is by ‘Boosting’ content.
Anyone who maintains a Facebook page to support a business will regularly be invited to “Get More Likes, Comments and Shares” and to “Boost this post for $10 to reach up to 2,200 people.” This is because when you add content to your Facebook page, it isn’t viewed by everyone who ‘likes’ your page. Depending on who you ask a post only reaches between 2.5%-5% of those who have ‘liked’ your page. To reach the rest of your page’s audience (and more), you have to pay, and that’s where ‘boosting' comes in.
When you pay to ‘boost’ a Facebook page, you can choose your budget, the numbers of days you want boosting to take place, and the people the boosted content reaches. Choices include ‘People who like your Page’, ‘People who like your Page and their friends’, or you can reach ‘People you choose through targeting’ (age group, location, sex, interests, etc.). Often boosting a page can generate a lot of ‘likes’:
Here you can see that this boosted post reached around 3,000 people, and of those people, 1.1K ‘liked’ the post. This of course is great news, but it’s a bit deceptive.
‘Liking’ a post is not the same as ‘liking’ a page. When someone likes a page, they join the audience of people that a page sends posts to. Someone who ‘likes’ a post however, simply ‘likes’ that post and does not become part of a page’s audience.
That can seem a bit tough when you think about it – you paid your money and although people might have clicked to visit your site, those who liked your post get lost in the ether.
Perhaps with that criticism in mind, Facebook has a feature that’s reasonably well hidden, but when utilized can in fact drive more people to your Facebook audience.
Click on the information that shows how many people liked your post (next to the raised thumb icon) and you are transported here:
Here you get a list of people who ‘liked’ your post. As you can see, next to the name is an ‘Invite’ button. Every time you click on a button, you are inviting that person to like your Facebook page in its entirety, and not just like the post you sent out.
And ‘like’ they do… The return for your effort (clicking on lots of buttons) is often substantial. Generally, we would say anywhere between 7.5% and 20% of those invited to like your page do so, but that might differ for your page.
You can’t hand out an infinite number of invites – keep clicking and eventually you will eventually see this:
However, that said, we have tried to count how many ‘invite’ buttons you can click on before you receive this message and frankly, we have never been able to keep counting that long… so it is a lot!
It’s surprising so few people know about this feature, but we are not surprised Facebook doesn’t advertise it as well as it could. It’s a great way to maximize return on boosting postings and as your audience grows in numbers, chances are your Facebook advertising will become more cost effective as a result of inviting people to like your page.
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