You may have noticed that getting organic engagement (unpaid) via your Facebook page isn’t as easy as it used to be. When Facebook made their latest algorithm change, they did so with the intention of encouraging businesses to boost or pay for posts to gain more visibility. If you want your Facebook posts to be seen these days, boosting them may be your best bet. Now, Facebook allows you to garner more engagement with your boosted posts by providing three audience targeting options. Here’s a breakdown of all three options:

Originally, you could only boost a post and push it to people who like your page and their friends. This option is still available and can be effective for content specific to your business. But, this option has been joined by two additional and powerful options that can get your content seen by people who may be unfamiliar with your business:

• People you choose through targeting
• People similar to people who like your Page

New option: People you choose through targeting

The targeting option is very similar to Facebook’s traditional banner and news feed advertising. You can choose the people you want to show your boosted post to based on their location, age, gender and interests. You can also create a specific name for this audience and use it in the future if you write about similar subject matters. This has been very beneficial for the team here at VerticalResponse, as we tend to write about similar subjects on a consistent basis.

New option: People similar to people who like your Page

More recently, Facebook introduced the option to target people similar to people who already like your page. If you choose this option, your boosted post will be visible to those who fall into this category based on things like their demographics, interests and activities.

Which option is best? 

Each situation is unique, but here are some guidelines based on our own experience:

If you’re boosting a post that’s very specific to your product or service, like an update about your product, it’s probably best to focus on people who are already familiar with your company – choosing “people who like your page and their friends” may be your best option in this case.

If you’re talking about your company on a broader scale and trying to get more new customers, then you may want to focus on “people similar to people who like your page.” This way, you know they have similar characteristics to your existing audience, but they may be unfamiliar with your products or services. You can also choose “people through targeting,” but it may be more challenging to find interests that match your business’ offering.

We also use the targeting option when we’re writing about very specific subjects outside of our own direct services (email marketing) such as SEO, social media and advertising.

Have you used either of these additional audience targeting options? We’d love to learn what’s working for your business.

Score more marketing tips like this by subscribing to the VR Buzz.

© 2014 – 2018, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.