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Home » The Famous Blog » Does Facebook Promoted Posts Advertising Work for Bloggers?

Does Facebook Promoted Posts Advertising Work for Bloggers?

September 18, 2012 - Last Modified: April 1, 2014 by Kristi Hines

Facebook Promoted Posts

Facebook Promoted Posts is a relatively new advertising option. It allows you to increase the exposure of updates on your Facebook page to a larger audience, and probably a chance to make money using Facebook. Instead of only a portion of your page’s fans seeing your update, you will get the chance for your fans and friends of fans to see your update. The question is does it work for bloggers looking to promote their blog posts? The answer – sometimes.

What You Need to Know About Promoted Posts

So what do you need to know to get started with Promoted Posts on Facebook?

  • Promoted Posts only works with Facebook pages (not profiles).
  • Your page must have 400 likes.
  • Promoted Posts advertising only last 3 days.
  • You have the choice between a $5, $10, and $15 budget that corresponds with the number of people who could potentially see your post.

How to Set Up a Promoted Posts Campaign

If your page meets the requirements of having 400 likes, then setting up a Promoted Posts is pretty simple. Once you have posted an update to your Facebook wall, look right below it for a link to Promote.

facebook promoted posts

When you click on this, you will see your Promoted Posts budget options and the number of people you will reach depending on your selection.

facebook promoted posts budget options

If it’s your first time creating a Promoted Posts campaign, you will be asked to set up payment options (one of which can be your Paypal account). Otherwise, you can just click the Save button to start your campaign.

Does a Promoted Posts Campaign Work?

The following is a look inside my Facebook Insights showing five of my most recent Promoted Posts campaigns along with status updates which I did not promote.

facebook insights with promoted posts

As you can see, my first two Promoted Posts campaigns did really well based on the number of people the status update reached. The next four Promoted Posts did not do any better or worse than regular status updates without promotion. As far as the budget, you can see in my Manage Ads stats, the budget wasn’t used for the last four updates like it was for the first two.

facebook promoted posts advertising stats

So what can I tell you about why my first two Promoted Posts and the last four were not? Here are some differences between the updates.

  • 6/19/12 5:07AM – This status update was a link to a post titled 40+ Tips on How to Become a Social Media Rock Star on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. This post ultimately got a total of 398 likes on Facebook.
  • 7/24/12 9:40AM – This status update included an uploaded photo with a link to a post titled How to Get Google to Index Your New Website & Blog Quickly. This post ultimately got a total of 58 likes on Facebook.
  • 8/21/12 12:36PM – This status update was a link to a post titled Creating the Perfect LinkedIn Profile to Generate Leads. This post ultimately got a total of 23 likes on Facebook.
  • 8/30/12 12:28PM – This status update included an uploaded photo with a link to a post titled 79 Link Building Resources for 2012. This post ultimately got a total of 50 likes on Facebook.
  • 9/4/12 12:06PM- This status update included an uploaded photo with a link to a personal Facebook event – my Online Baby Shower. This event currently has 50 attendees.

Conclusion About Promoted Posts Results

So here are my final thoughts and discoveries about Promoted Posts and their effectiveness.

  • It doesn’t seem to matter what type of status update you post between updates with links vs. updates with an uploaded photo & link.
  • The nice thing is that if a Promoted Post doesn’t actually get promoted, you don’t have to pay for it.

So what about the Promoted Posts that never ran? I discovered the real reason behind that was my overall budget for ads had reached its limit. Apparently when I first signed up, I was paranoid and set the account spend cap at $100. So if you notice your ads aren’t running but you’re not sure why, go to manage your Facebook ads and look under the Billing section. Near the top, you’ll see a number for Account Spend – up that number if you want your ads to run again.

As an alternative to Promoted Posts, you can try Sponsored Stories. Sponsored Stories is set up through the main Facebook Advertising dashboard. Once I give those a try, I will report my results!

Have you tried Facebook Promoted Posts to promote a blog post on your Facebook page? Please share your results!

Image © Picture-Factory – Fotolia.com

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Filed Under: Advertising, Facebook

About Kristi Hines

Follow @thekristihines

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and copywriter who develops blog content, ebooks, emails, lead magnets, and website copy for marketing agencies, B2B, and SaaS.

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{ 19 Responses }

  1. Saurabh says:
    Thanks Kristi for sharing your revew :-P After all I don't have to waste penny on them. Promoting Fan pages are still good but status updates doesn't seems to be good for promotion at all.
  2. Nick Stamoulis says:
    If you're going to pay to promote a post, you better make sure that it's something great and that a call to action is included. If it's a blog post about something that everybody else is talking about too, it doesn't stand out and probably still won't be clicked on.
  3. Dean Saliba says:
    I am still on the fence about this. At one point I was posting my articles on fan pages and groups with a reach of over 500,000 and still hardly received a single click, and they were pages and groups related to my niche as well. :)
  4. Sorina Dascalu says:
    I tried promoted posts and saw something interesting. Interesting in a bad way, here is the story: I used promoted posts on a page with 1600 fans. On regular posts (not promoted) I was usually getting 400-500 organic views. I promoted a post, and I got 4200 paid views, but the number of organic views dropped to 80. Did you also noticed a drop in organic views for your promoted posts?
  5. Aditya says:
    Hey Kristi, Facebook promoted page.....i have never came across this word yet since i am on Facebook.I guess i am an alien in the blogging world Ha Ha Ha... :) jokes apart,i found this strategy quite interesting and if done genuinely it can create magic and lots of people can see what you have brought for them.
  6. Justin Germino says:
    I was considering purchasing a promoted post for my Lenovo Laptop Giveaway as only 1,200 people entered the contest and I have over 6,000 followers on the fanpage so I know there are thousands that haven't seen this contest yet. Thanks for sharing your experience with it.
    • Kristi Hines says:
      You're welcome Justin! You're really rocking the contests, btw. :)
      • Justin Germino says:
        Yep, found a passion in giving cool tech stuff away to readers/fans. I enjoy doing it and the readers love it.
  7. akhilendra says:
    I think promoted post could be a good way of attracting traffic but i am still skeptical about it when it comes to using it for commercial purpose for a blogger like affiliate marketing. It could be a better way for corporate houses to grab eyeballs; for example if Apple or Samsung is launching their new phone, they can use it to grab more eyeballs but if a blogger is aiming to make few sales then conversion rates may not be very pleasing.
    • Kristi Hines says:
      You could use it to promote a post with an affiliate product review. I'm promoting my ElegantThemes review today using it - results to be determined. :)
      • akhilendra says:
        It will be great to see the results. But what do you think of targeting? I mean if you promote your post on search network using adwords, you can target those who are looking to buy premium themes or you can further narrow it down to those who are currently interested in elegant themes by using the keywords whereas when you promote it on facebook, it may not be that targeted. You may end up getting traffic but visitors are going to be random because you don't know if they are looking for a premium theme right now and conversion rate may be low. Please share your results.
        • Kristi Hines says:
          You can do keyword / demographic targeting with Sponsored Posts. I haven't tried that yet, but it would offer more flexibility and takes away the 400 fan rule. :)
          • akhilendra says:
            I think that will be a better option but nonetheless, your experiment are going to throw more light on it so keeping my fingers crossed. but i m sorry if i m disappointing you but i still think most of the bloggers use google search to search for the products and their reviews in comparison of looking for product and their reviews on facebook.
  8. Mohamed Osam says:
    Thanks for sharing Kristi and great conclusion. The article came to me at the right time to be honest as I was thinking of using the Promoted Posts feature of FB myself and wasn't sure it really works. Can't wait for your next post on Sponsored Stories. I actually took the "Engagement Users" numbers into an excel sheet to see how effective Promoted Posts would be in terms of audience engagement. The numbers are not promising at all... Based on what you shared above, your promoted posts engaged at best 6.92% ("Need to brush-up on link building") and as low as 1.87% ("Just started a new website or blog") with a total average of 5.28%. On the other hand the non-promoted posts have an average 6.2% engagement with one post ("When it comes to blogging, there is...") as 9.85% engagement and lowest ("Have you checked out the new...") with a 3.79% engagement. VERY surprising! The posts that were not promoted did better than the one that you promoted?!! :) Of course, it is not simple as that. We should of course factor-in the relevance of posts to the readers interest, the time of the post and the time of the promotion, etc. But it was just an interesting look on how a campaign like this would (or wouldn't) have an impact on readers engagement.. To me, I guess I would pass on the Promoted Posts.. I am sure something better will soon come along. :)
    • Kristi Hines says:
      I would guess the non-promoted posts do better on engagement because they are only seen by the people who engage most with your page vs. random people who may count as an impression but not actually interact with it. So if you have an inflated number of impressions without an equal increase in engagement, then the percent of engagement will be lower. Either, glad my sharing results helped you in deciding about using Promoted Posts. :)
  9. Sylvia says:
    great article. Always wondered about this and now thanks to you I know about it :) Sadly I am still far under the needed 400 likes (only have 31 haha) to be able to promote my posts. But i saved this article in my bookmarks to know what to do when the time comes. Thank you.
    • Kristi Hines says:
      I hope you get to the 400 likes soon Sylvia! :)
  10. Anup Kayastha says:
    Hey Kristi! I see you're having good campaign on FB. I was thinking of creating a new campaign, but now I think I must start it today or so. I'll keep let you know how my campaign goes.. Thanks for the insightful post! :)
    • Kristi Hines says:
      You're welcome! Good luck with your advertising campaign! :)

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