What is boosting on Instagram – 7 reasons why boosting is important
My aim of writing this blog post is to make you all aware about what is boosting on Instagram and why boosting is important for small business. If you have no idea about paid promotion, don’t worry we have a post which tells you everything about paid promotion, read it here Now, let’s start with the basics
What is boosting on Instagram?
Boosting is a paid service which is available on Instagram and helps you reach audience beyond your followers. If you have a business page or creators page, you can see promote option below your post. That option is basically boosting on Instagram. Check the screenshot below
One can click on this promote button and reach to new people for engagement, sales, branding etc. Soon there will be new post on how to do boosting but till then read about why boosting is important
7 Reasons why boosting is important for small businesses
Having an option is one part but it is natural to think that paid services just benefit platforms. In reality, yes they are and have been created for monetization but they can be a huge benefit to businesses especially small businesses if used precisely and strategically. Hence. it is important to understand why boosting is important for your business
1. Limited organic reach
Suppose you post something on Instagram and it is liked by your audience. Earlier our post used to reach all our followers but with algorithm update our organic reach has decreased drastically. Our posts are visible to fewer people who are engaging with our posts mainly. So to even reach people who are our followers and new people we need to boost our posts or promote. Knowing about organic reach is important hence included in this post” what is boosting on Instagram”
2. Your activity is no longer visible to anyone
Remember old days when we could see what our friends are liking and commenting, with what all pages they are engaging. We definitely used to check those profiles out of curiosity. This was a great way to attract friends of friends audience. But since this feature is no longer available it has also cut down the reach of our business pages. So, boosting or promoting a post can be helpful. While talking about boosting I am not suggesting to switch to paid completely but choosing boosting wisely as and when required ð
3. Hashtags are not as effective as they were earlier
Earlier usage of hashtags was a really effective to increase the reach. One could add n number of hashtags and attract good engagement but now the hashtags efficacy has decreased. The strategy of updating hashtags to get more likes is not even working. In such a time promoting a post is one of the option. Read this post on How to promote a small business on Instagram and see what you are missing in your business promotion.
4. What if posts are missed by someone?
As discussed above, one issue is your posts are not reaching to your followers and other can be what if they are missed. So promoting a post can help you reach to these people again. Even with promotion one can reach to them multiple times by setting the frequency. For example, you can show your post 2-3 times to your audience.
5. Your followers are not always potential buyers or vice a versa
It is important to realise two things on social media
- People who like/engage with your products are not always your buyers
- People who buy or are your customers will not always engage with your account
It is essential to understand the difference and check in which category your followers fall. If they fall in first category then you are missing out on sales and if they fall in second category then you are missing out on engagement. So, to reach the missing part boosting can be really helpful. This is a vital part of this post “what is boosting on Instagram” . Read this post if you want to know how to start with social media marketing
6. Reach to new people with detailed targeting
When we do organic posting we just reach to our followers but when we do promotion of our posts we can reach to anyone we want. This is because of the detailed targeting option that Instagram has given to us.
One can target people basis
- Location
- Demographics
- Gender
- Age
- Interests & behavior
Stay tuned to know about how to boost post on Instagram
7. Get Insights and know your audience and what works for them
This is not new that most of the businesses posts randomly on business pages. Just because they are not equipped with knowledge like what is working and what is not working they cannot experiment and learn. Once promotion is done, we can see complete insights post wise and page wise. Insights include reach, engagement (like, comments, Saved, Directs), profile visits, hashtag effects etc. With these insights one can derive the following
- Strategy for engagement – Basis the insights from promotion, we could get an idea what kind of content & communication works for our audience. This idea could help us in creating proper calendar for Instagram. Read this post to know about social media post ideas
- Strategy for sales – I have repeatedly mentioned in my previous posts the importance of mixed communication. We cannot just promote brand or just do sales. We need to have mix of posts. Basis the insights from promotion we can gather information related to audience and accordingly can work on posts that are just for sales
Hope you like this blog post on what is boosting on Instagram. Stay tuned to know about what all posts you can consider for boosting
