We’ve talked in previous blog posts about the various types of advertising available to you on Facebook: boosted posts, page promotion and newsfeed ads. So today, as promised, we’re going to give you some more information about boosted posts. These three types of ads can almost be seen as stepping stones, each allowing you to venture further into the world of paid advertising. Boosted posts are the easiest to manage – step 1. And that’s where we’ll start today.

There are a few things you’ll need to proceed with advertising on Facebook. First, and we’ve said it before but it bears repeating, you must have a business page separate from your personal profile. This is your author page, and should focus on your work and your publishing experiences, rather than the family pics. Keep those on your personal profile.

Second, you’ll need to set up a payment method for your business ads. Conveniently enough, Facebook gives you a place to do that right as you’re creating your business profile. Now you’re ready to boost!

A quick how-to

Boosting a post gives you the opportunity to increase its reach. To do so, you just need to click the “Boost Post” button at the bottom of the post:

When you click it, a screen will pop up that allows you to choose your audience and refine the targeting you’ll use. For example, if you wrote a book about the Pittsburgh Pirates, as one of our authors memorably did, you could choose to target your book to men and women ages 18-65, living in the Pittsburgh region, and who have indicated an interest in baseball.

You can be as general or as refined with your targeting as you like. The more general you are, the broader your potential reach, but the more targeted you are to your book’s topic, the more likely you may be to reach readers who might be interested in the story you have to tell.

Then, you can set your total budget, and how long you want the boosted post to run. The combination of these factors gives Facebook enough info to estimate the number of people you’ll reach with your boosted post. Then click “Boost” one more time on the popup screen, and you’re up and running!

Tips for successful boosting

A few tips to help improve your chances of success:

• Don’t boost everything you post. It’s not cost-effective, and it loses its impact if the same people see a paid post from you all the time.
• Boost posts that will further your career and reputation as an author. Link to your book’s latest review on Amazon, or drive traffic to your website blog.
• Boost only your own content. If you’re going to be spending the money, it only makes sense not to spend it driving awareness of others’ work.

Nothing in life is a guarantee, and that certainly holds true of advertising on Facebook. So while we can’t promise that boosting posts will increase book sales or bring movie studios knocking to turn your book into a movie, we wanted to give you these first tips to help you dip your toe into the world of paid advertising.

Have fun!