This Is When You Should Use Facebook's Promoted Posts

The smart folks over at Convince and Convert put together the awesome image below which outlines a clear set of rules for knowing when to use Facebook’s promoted post feature.

This is a great best practice for any company that is doing business on Facebook.

The promoted post feature is a great one on Facebook, but it is really too easy. Being able to simply click and send a post to more of your fans is too enticing.

Consider the below rule set from Jay Baer and the very smart STIR acronym before your next promoted post.

S – Shelf Life - Will the post be relevant in 4 days?

T – Time - Has the post been live for 6 hours or more?

I – Impact - Does the post include a link or other call to action (beyond a like)?

R – Results - Has the post exceeded a 1 percent engagement rate already?

If all four of these bullets fall into place, take your promoted post budget and turn up the volume, you have a recipe for success. If not, consider your options a little more carefully.

Basically what this allows you to do is to avoid reinvesting in a poor performing piece of content. Promoted posts are most successful when your content is already on fire. And to borrow one of Jay’s favorite analogies, the promoted post becomes your gasoline.

One Last Tip

Use Facebook’s Power Editor to really get value from your promoted posts. When doing a promoted post from the timeline of your page, your options are limited to fans or fans + friends of fans. These are not very refined targets.

In the Power Editor you can target who exactly gets to see your promoted post. Maybe just your US fans? Or women over the age of 25? Your money will be working for you in much smarter ways when you refine the audience even more.

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