Don't Boost Instagram Posts. Do This Instead.

Back in February , facebook , or Apple , actually is now charging iPhone users 30% more money when they boost their post . This is because Apple changed the way that they charge Facebook . Apple takes a 30% cut of in-app purchases and before boosting a post was not considered .

Boosting an Instagram post was not considered an in-app purchase , but now it is considered an in-app purchase . And before boosting a post was not considered . Boosting an Instagram post was not considered an in-app purchase , but now it is considered an in-app purchase . Apple basically was like Facebook all these folks boosting posts , we're gonna get our cut too .

And so now , when somebody boosts a post from an iPhone , apple gets 30% of that . And what does Facebook do ? Facebook passes that charge right on to you , friend , meaning if you have an iPhone , you will now pay 30% more . Are you going to get any more boost for that ? Not at all . Is boosting your posts even good ? No , and here's why ?

Because it's just not that accurate , as in you're targeting people . Frequently , what I've seen is that somebody will boost a post and target like similar Instagram followers , which is fine , I guess , if your Instagram account has only your ideal clients . Blink , blink , blink . It's what I'm doing right now .

Looking at you , that is everybody on Instagram Following you on Instagram , purchasing from your business . It's everyone who follows you on Instagram . Your email list , no , of course not . And so , boosting a post though it is , it's so tempting and when you hit boost , then you see followers coming in and you're like great , more people are following me .

That's great , but actually I've seen not good results , and Instagram followers strokes our ego , but that does not necessarily line our pockets with money , because we are finding more people who we can serve .

Yes , there is an argument to be made that , as somebody is being nurtured because they're an Instagram follower , they are warming up to you , but the better way to nurture somebody would be to get them on your email list with your lead magnet .

Now , I promised I would show you what to do inside of facebook ad manager instead of just boosting a post on instagram . And so , if you're not watching on youtube , head over to youtube . The link is in the show notes below and then you can see visually what to do . So here is my Instagram account .

All right , and I just recently did this , so it's actually fresh in my mind . What you want to do is start , go into Facebook ad manager type in businessfacebookcom at the top of the screen right and once you get there , you will see a screen like the one you're looking at here . Now .

Here's the equivalent of quote unquote boosting a post , and you can do this very easily . So you go to the green . It's called a campaign . It's the engagement objective . I will first let you see this objective and then I'll show you how to make one .

But as I click the button next to that campaign , I've named it Engagement IG post US cold traffic and I click on the ad set tab and you can see I have my ad set here and it has one post inside of it , and that post , if I click on it , actually is the post from Instagram that you can see right here .

I basically went and I got the post ID of that Instagram post and then , inside of my ad setup , instead of creating a new ad , I selected the post using the post ID so you can see that visually . Now I will do my best to describe how to set up this sort of campaign .

So first you click on the green create button and then you want to on this window that pops up where you can choose the campaign objective . You want to choose the engagement objective ? Click continue the blue button . Now you'll be presented with . I always laugh because Facebook gives you two campaign setup choices . One is the tailored messages campaign .

Never use that . Second is the manual engagement campaign . Manual setup Always use that . And then you'll be presented with your campaign tree . Over here at the top left , highlighted in blue , is the campaign level settings . You can leave those as is and rename it , of course .

Then the middle part of the tree , the navigation tree , is the ad set settings and the bottom part is the ad settings . So for the middle part of the ad set settings , you can name your ad set as you wish . For the conversion , don't choose messaging apps , but click on this dropdown field menu and go down and click on your ad .

The conversion location should be on your ad and the engagement type looks like it's set to video views by default , but you want to choose post engagement .

What that means is more likes and comments and shares for you , because the Facebook algorithm will optimize for will look for people who are more likely to engage with your post and the for the performance goal , yes , choose the one that displays here . Maximize engagement with a post . Then you continue to slide on down .

Set your daily budget for these kind of engagement posts . Your daily budget can be one dollar per post . In fact , I recommend that . That way , you don't blow through lots of money . One dollar per post , and I put as one post in one ad set , so we can set that to $1 .

It can go live whenever you want , because it's just an engagement post , but you can choose the start date there . And for your audience controls , though , I have seen good results with Advantage Plus , especially when targeting warm audiences . I'm just going to go to an original audience and you know what you do here .

This is what Instagram does by itself when it has that option that says to show your ad to an audience similar to your Instagram followers . You could do that right here by setting up a lookalike audience of your Instagram followers if you want . But here's where you can get better than the default Instagram settings .

Think about which of your custom audiences ie your website visitors , your email list , your Instagram or Facebook followers , you people who have purchased from you which of those audiences is most valuable to your business ? Start by creating a look-alike of those audiences .

If you have more than 600 people that purchased from you , build a look-alike of the purchaser audience . If you have an email list that's larger than 600 people let's say it's 800,000 , 14,000 , 26,000 people on the email list those folks have decided to give you their name and email in exchange for something . So build a lookalike of that audience .

You know , if you have a blog that's with active readers on it and it gets like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of page views per month , you know , let's say , you already are . Well , you're a blogger , you know who you are Then go ahead and set up a lookalike of that audience

. Don't just choose a lookalike of Instagram followers . There are some audiences that are more valuable .

Now , of course , if you're on Instagram Live and you're just selling your offers left and right and you have like a mini chat funnel that begins with Instagram and it just is producing for you like gangbusters , well then set up your lookalike audience of your Instagram followers Actually shoot .

If you have a funnel that's producing so well for you and you don't know how to scale that funnel because you're , like , say , capped at spending $5,000 , $6,000 , $7 a month in ads going to that funnel and you just can't get it to scale higher profitably , then you should contact me Because at that point it makes sense to hire a Facebook ad manager who can

scale your funnel higher for you . I digress , though . That link is in the description below . Choose your location for me it would be United States Choose your ideal age range here .

Choose your gender here , and then for placements , you can click right here where it says advantage plus placements and click on the little edit Edit pin and instead of advantage plus placements by the way , advantage plus placements just means Facebook puts your ad everywhere and then decides quickly , without wasting too much money , what placements people are most likely

going to convert at at the lowest cost per lead . You can choose manual placements and because you're taking a reel from your organic account and in a moment I'll tell you how to select a good reel Okay , like cause you've got so much content , what do you actually put some money behind ?

But because you're gonna do a reel , you can just deselect Facebook as a platform , only show it to Instagram and I personally like to show it or to put the placements only on Instagram Stories and Instagram Reels , since it is a Reel and it's in that format , that vertical nine by 16 format . You can show it anywhere you want .

Though Just remember that some placements are square . So if you have a reel , make sure that your captions or any important information shows up inside of , like a quote unquote virtual square on screen .

So , for example , here is just so you understand what I'm talking about If you look at a vertical video like this one of me this is an ad I made for myself about Facebook ads management kind of make a virtual square in the middle or a virtual four by five window in the middle . Four by five just means it's 1,350 pixels tall and 1,080 pixels wide .

It kind of just clips off the top and the bottom because that is the tallest format that will show up inside of the Instagram or Facebook feed .

Actually , I didn't know if you knew that , but just having a square video will show up on all placements ad placements , right , but actually the feed will tolerate a video that's taller than a square and that format is the four by five format , ie 1350 pixels tall and 1080 pixels wide , and so just kind of visualize that and make sure all your important

information shows up inside of that area and you'll be good to go .

So back to Facebook ad manager , at the ad level , name your ad and then slide down here to where it says existing use , existing post , and then you'll want to enter the actually you'll want to under where it says media select post and then you'll want to enter the actually you'll want to under it where it says media select post , and then you have all of

these posts , right . So what you need to do is go back to either you can visually or click on Instagram and you can visually identify the post that you want , or , if this is a post from a long time ago , then find the post , like I did here . I pinned mine so it's easy to find and see the letters that come at the end .

Find the post , like I did here .

I pinned mine so it's easy to find and see the letters that come at the end of the URL , like instagramcom forward , slash something and then for slash a string of letters , double click on those and copy it , and then when you go back to so that's like the post ID and when you go back to Facebook ad manager in this field , where it says filter by , and

then there's a magnifying glass and says post image , video IDs or other keywords , you can paste the post ID in there and , as long as you're not using a copyrighted audio in your reel , you should be able to click on that post and continue .

And you have now don't mind this screen this is one that is here because I have a partner in that post but you can now select that post and then publish it and use this post in a way that is very similar to boosting . The biggest benefit is not that you'll get followers , although you will get some followers .

The biggest benefit is that by using a reel I recommend somewhere right around a minute but by using this video you can build a retargeting audience and that just means that , let's say , you set up your a video views audience later on and you add this video in there and you call it a through play audience , meaning somebody who has watched the video for 15

seconds will be dynamically added into that audience . Later on , when it's time for you to launch , you can show ads to all the people that saw this video organically and as an ad , you can show and retarget them with launch ads launch registration ads later on , or your lead magnet ads later on .

Or , if you have like a funnel and a self-liquidating offer let's say an offer that's $ $27 and it has an order bump and an upsell you can retarget those people with these ads . That is the most useful function of quote-unquote boosting a post , though we shall not say the word boosting anymore .

The extra followers you get is just a secondary benefit , if you will . So I'm looking now at the post that I actually did , just so you can see that I did not use campaign budget optimization . I named it as such and , scrolling down here , I gave it a $1 a day budget and then I went ahead and did some targeting based on people who I want to target .

So I did not use a lookalike audience here , and then I excluded all of my warm audiences . So I guarantee that nobody who actually already knows about my business is seeing this post and I chose the location and the age range and then I only showed it to Instagram stories and Instagram reels .

I only showed it to Instagram stories and Instagram reels and the rest . You already know , which is how I selected the Instagram post . If this helped you Save some money because you still thought you could boost your posts from inside of your iOS . You're on your Apple device . Your your that Apple operating system for iPhone .

Please go down to the show notes below where it says please leave a review and leave a review and say something like Quajo saved me 30% because I was going to boost a post . Seriously , if you leave reviews for this podcast on Apple Podcasts , it does help the podcast reach more people , just like you .

Until the next episode , take care , be blessed and I'll see you in the next one . Bye .