Your Guide to Boosting Posts on Facebook and Instagram

When asked in a survey, 82 percent of respondents said they discovered a product on social media and purchased it on their phones. With Facebook boasting 2.93 billion monthly users and Instagram following closely behind with an impressive 1.44 billion, your multi-location business must have a presence on local social. 

While organic reach is on the decline, it doesn’t mean that your multi-location business should ignore its local presence completely. Boosted posts are also a great way to expand your reach and engagement on many local social networks. Within this piece, we’ll explain what boosted posts are and dive into how your business can boost them on Meta’s social platforms. 

What are Boosted Posts? 

According to Facebook, a boosted post is a post on your Page’s timeline that you can put money behind to increase its visibility to your chosen audience. Boosted posts are a great way to expand reach without setting up an entire social media advertising campaign.  

Additional benefits of boosted posts versus organic content include, but are not limited to: 

• You can target a more specific audience. 
• It takes only minutes to boost a post! 
• Boosted posts give you a more detailed look at post performance. 
• You can extend your reach across Facebook and Instagram. 

How to Boost Posts on Meta Platforms

Now that you understand why boosted posts are a must, let’s get into how to boost them on Meta’s three platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. 

• Facebook

Your multi-location business must follow these steps to boost a post on Facebook: 

1. Log into the Facebook page you’d like to boost the post from. 

2. Once logged in, find the post that you want to boost. Note that the post must already be published on your feed to boost. 

3. Select “Boost Post.” You should be able to find this on the bottom right-hand side of your post. 

• If “boost post” doesn’t appear, this post may not fall within Facebook’s guidelines for posts to boost. 

4. Choose a goal to measure the results you want to see from your boosted post. You can let Facebook select the goal automatically or pick it manually — we recommend picking one, so it better aligns with your marketing goals.

5. Fill in the details for your boosted post. You can select the following details: 

1. 1. Audience: Choose one of Facebook’s recommended audiences or select an audience based on specific traits. 
   2. Total budget: Add in the dollar amount your business would like to spend for this post  
   3. Duration: Provide a specific date you would like to boost the post until. Facebook will then spread the budget across this time frame. 
   4. Payment method: Review and update your payment method to ensure it’s correct. 

6. After including your details, select “boost post now.” 

• Instagram 

The process for boosting a post on Instagram is similar to Facebook’s. Although many of the procedures remain the same, we’ll briefly recap below and highlight what differs. 

1. Again, select the Instagram profile your business would like to boost a post from. 

2. Select the post you would like to boost. Instagram recommends boosting posts under 8MB.  

3. Tap “boost” under the post’s image. 

4. Fill in the details of your boosted post. These are the same details as Facebook, which include selecting an audience, budget, duration, and payment method. 

5. Next, you have the option to link your Facebook account and boost the post on Facebook as well. Instagram allows you to choose an existing account to link or connect an account if you haven’t done so already. 

• If you’d like to skip this step, you can select “skip.” 

6. To complete the process, select “boost post” under review.

Dominate Your Local Social Strategy 

Boosting posts from your multi-location business’s local Facebook and Instagram pages is a great way to increase online visibility and ultimately win more sales. While setting up boosted posts across all your local social profiles can seem daunting, SOCi is here to help. 

Need the ability to boost high-performing posts in under 30 seconds? SOCi Boost PLUS empowers you to amplify the reach of organic social content instantly by boosting posts across multiple business locations at once. With SOCi Boost PLUS, your multi-location business can make the most of your ad spend, ensure efficient localization, and propel local ROI and growth.