I have had a lot of clients and other organizations I work with suggest we pay to boost posts on facebook or use facebook ads to gain likes on. I always tell them it’s a bad idea, but I haven’t used the scientific method to prove my theories. I didn’t want to risk the reputation of these people or the brand to prove my theories either. Below is a video from Veritasium who demonstrates how these ads work, and how they work against you. The video is about 9 minutes, but it is completely worth the watch. Being involved in social media is a great way to grow your brand, but the best way to get ahead is word of mouth, being engaged with your audience, not paying to boost your posts.
This also is good advice for how you promote your page. When pages first started you needed 50 likes to get a custom URL, so when you started a page you would ask everyone you knew to like it. Now you don’t want to do that, you want to suggest people like your page only if you think they will interact with it. If I had a page that was for a Vegan restaurant for example, I wouldn’t ask my husband, a staunch Meatatarian (meatatarian; one who doesn’t like vegetables and eats mostly meat and starches) to like the page. His like wouldn’t help me, because when the page shared it’s latest Tofu dish he wouldn’t like the post or comment on it, nor would he share it. His lack of interaction would tell facebook that the post is un interesting and unwanted, so they wouldn’t put it on other people’s news feeds. Now if I were to invite my Yoga Instructor, or Chef friend, while they may not be strictly vegan, they may be more open to the latest Tofu dish and would comment or like it, telling facebook the post is interesting, and let it spread to others.
Facebook is insidious in trying to get you to buy these ads and pay to boost these posts. In this screen capture you can see that they tell me that 27 of my friends have paid for post boosts. I have to wonder how accurate that is. I know a few people who have admitted to paying to boost posts, they all told me how their engagement went down after too, but 27? That seems like a high number. I have to wonder how true this number is. Even when you open a page they build a payment method into the creation of the page, skip that, always.
How about you? Have you ever paid to boost a post on facebook? Does this video change your mind, or confirm it, on how advertising works on facebook? Let me know in the comments.
