WAIT on that Facebook Boost Button

Do you have a Facebook page?
Have you ever clicked on the Facebook Boost Post button to promote your posts?
If yes, I have some terrible news for you.
“Boost Post” is a waste of your money. If you’re using it often, you might be throwing hundreds or even thousands of dollars away.
Why?
In this article, I’ll show you exactly what “Boost Post” is and why you should never, ever use it to promote your content on Facebook.
What is Boost Post?Five years ago Facebook’s ad platform was still in its early stages and looked complicated to many business owners.
So in 2012, Facebook introduced a super easy way to sponsor your content – “Promote Post.” With it, you could now create a campaign without leaving your Facebook page:


A few years later “Promote Post” became “Boost Post” and received more updates. But its essence remained the same — offering a quick, easy way to spend money and reach more people with your Facebook posts.
As the organic reach has collapsed over the past few years, many page owners are turning to “Boost Post” to get their messages in front of their audiences.
But is that a good idea?
What Happens When You Boost a PostYou go to your Facebook page, find a post you want to promote, and click “Boost Post.”
You then choose your audience, budget and campaign duration, and click “Boost".

What you might not know: Facebook just created a new ad campaign in your ad account with the “Page Post Engagement” objective.
And that’s were things start getting wrong…
Why You Should Not Boost Your PostsFacebook optimizes your campaigns depending on which objective you choose.
If you go with Website Clicks objective, Facebook will optimize for link clicks to your website. If it’s Website Conversions – Facebook will analyze everyone who converted already and will try to reach similar people first.
But if you boost a post, Facebook will always, always optimize just for more post engagement – more likes, shares, comments and so on.
So even if you decide to boost a link post, Facebook will still optimize for engagement and not link clicks.
Very often you’ll see ads receiving a ton of post likes (especially with broad targeting), but just a fraction of those people will click through to your website:
Note: This was a link post promoted with “Boost Post.” You can see it received 2,791 post engagements (mainly post likes) yet just 141 link clicks.
Limited Targeting OptionsIf you look at Facebook boost post targeting, you have three options:

1. People who like your Page – advertising to all your fans,
2. People who like your Page and their friends – advertising to all your fans and all their friends,
3. People you choose through targeting – advertising to a specific target audience you choose.

Let’s break them down.
People who like your Page:If you didn’t do a good job with attracting high-quality page likes (very few business do), you’ll be immediately wasting a fraction of your money.
People who like your Page and their friends:No matter if you have super relevant fans or not, you’ll still be wasting your money – the Friends of Fans audience can have up to a million or even more people in it.
So there’s absolutely no way Facebook will be able to find the most relevant people within it. And it’s impossible for you to add an additional layer of interests to make it more specific.
People  you choose through targeting:Although you can choose specific interests, the targeting choices are still very limited.
For example, you can’t choose any behaviors. You can’t use Detailed Targeting to outreach to people who are interested in both Interest A and Interest B either. Plus, you can’t include or exclude your page fans or Custom Audiences from your targeting.
Now you see what I’m talking about?
No matter which targeting option you choose, you will be wasting your money. Whether it’s 10% or 30% of your budget, it can add up to thousands of advertising dollars thrown away.
And finally, you can’t control the placements of the ads you pay for.