Q: How can brands work to ensure that their social-media posts reach target audiences? My understanding is that brands need to pay to ensure that their posts show up prominently in users' feeds on Facebook and other social media.
Making the most of your business posts on Facebook
Using Facebook to retain existing customers makes sense because they are the ones mostly likely to follow a brand on social media.
By Gino Giovannelli
March 22, 2020 at 7:38PM
A: Using Facebook to retain existing customers makes sense because they are the ones mostly likely to follow a brand on social media. The good news is that brand posts show up for free in the newsfeeds of followers. The bad news is that those posts show up only to a fraction of those followers. Facebook does allow you to pay to extend reach beyond that, which when done wisely can produce a strong return on investment (a $50 investment can often produce significant reach).
The following are three ways to increase the reach of brand posts.
1) Boosted posts: Brands wanting to increase the percentage of their followers who see their posts can do so by "boosting" posts. While that requires payment, Facebook offers the ability to cap the investment amount along with expectations on how many impressions and clicks will be earned. And to maximize the ROI of boosting posts, I'd recommend using Facebook Insights to identify the posts already generating the highest engagement scores and boost those posts so that more of your followers see your best posts.
2) Custom audiences: In addition, Facebook offers the ability to extend reach to those in your target audience who have engaged with your brand but have not taken the step to actually follow your brand on Facebook. This is done by setting up Custom Audiences. Custom Audiences can include people who have visited your website, bought your products or recently downloaded your app. Brands then create custom posts to push to these audiences.
3) Lookalike audiences: Facebook allows brands to create Lookalike Audiences, which are groups of people who "look like" your Custom Audiences based on similar preferences and behaviors. This is a great option to dramatically increase the reach of your posts beyond existing followers and Custom Audiences and serves as a great way to acquire new customers from audiences that look like your existing customers.
Gino Giovannelli is a marketing professor at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business.
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Gino Giovannelli
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