I hope you don’t think I’m cheap. I’m not. Okay, maybe a little. I’m happy to pay for something when I feel like it’s a good investment. But, like many of you, I remember the good ‘ol days on Facebook (two years ago), when we didn’t have to pay to have our content seen.

It’s all good–I get it–Facebook has come up with an impressive monetization scheme. It still makes me a little angry, though, because I put a lot of time and effort and work (and money) into building my FB page, and now I’m challenged with getting views on every post.

But this is not a wingeing post. This is a (hopefully) solution post.

So. You want to get your content seen on FB?

1. You need to start with great content. Post things that your audience will find valuable, and want to like, comment upon or share.
2. Ask questions: the more engagement you get on each of your posts, the higher you will rank on Facebook’s algorithm. So, post things on your page that provoke a discussion.
3. Post video: video is being given really high weight these days on Facebook. Ideally, in order for this to work the best, you need to upload your video to FB, but if it’s not yours, linking will also do the trick.

Okay. So, what if you are doing everything right, and you are still getting zero views on your post? It might be time to do the $5 Facebook Post Boost. You have $5, right?

Let me share with you a case study from last week.

One of my clients is The Wellness Show, and we are gearing up for the show in just a couple week’s time. It’s a really busy time of the year for me! One month before the show opened, I decided to put a contest on our FB page (we have 2,000 fans). I posted a photo of one of our swag bags, and offered it up, along with a pair of tickets, to our fans. To enter the contest, you had to comment on the post.

I PM’d a couple of my friends to ask them if they could help me out, and enter, just to get it started, but a couple hours after I had launched it, this was the sad situation:

I’d had 20+ comments on the post, and only 300 views??! I was frustrated.

I decided to do the $5 Facebook Post Boost. Here’s the thing about boosting, you guys. Don’t do it all the time. You don’t need to. But if there’s a really important post (in this case, we were trying to get the word out about an event), then it’s totally worth it.

But here’s the important part: FB gives you a choice of three audiences to target: people who already like your page (who are important to me, but they probably already know about the show, so I don’t need to heavily target them), People who like the page and their friends (better–we’re reaching out to “warm leads”), or a target audience that I define. What you’ll notice is, for the same amount of money, if you choose the second or the third options, your reach is much higher. My reach to just people on my page was estimated at 370-870, to people who like the page and their friends, 2,100-5,600, and to a target audience I define, 1,800-4,700, so always choose the second or third options. It’s a better bang for your buck.

I chose the third option, because I wanted to introduce the business to a new audience as much as possible. I gave FB $5, and two days, and defined my audience as women who live in BC (we are not a virtual business), between the ages of 18-65, who are interested in health and food.

The results? Awesome. My post reach soared to 1,600, and I got a ton more comments, as well as a few shares.

The best part, though? I got at least a half a dozen comments like these ones:

My advice: every once in while, it can be completely worth it to give Facebook $5.