Boosting Facebook posts is an effective way to increase engagement with your fans and reach more potential customers. It’s an easy way to get involved in the social media advertising world with simple options for budget, target audience, and goals.
Not to be confused with Facebook Ads Manager, boosting posts refers to putting money behind content that’s already published on your page. When you created an ad within the Facebook Ads Manager, those ads never appear on your Facebook page. A boosted post lives on your page before, during, and after you boost it.
Not to be confused with Facebook Ads Manager, boosting posts refers to putting money behind content that’s already published on your page. When you created an ad within the Facebook Ads Manager, those ads never appear on your Facebook page. A boosted post lives on your page before, during, and after you boost it.
Why Facebook boosts for healthcare?
With Facebook’s ever-changing algorithms and recent pledge to show users more content that they care about, even people that already “like” your page may not see your posts organically. Boosting your posts gives them just that—a boost. With boosting, your post will appear in more news feeds, including those feeds of prospects and people who haven’t already followed your page, depending on your chosen audience.
A high-quality, boosted post can bring:- Increased engagement (such as likes, shares, and comments)
- Effective promotion of new content
- Increased brand awareness
- Increased website traffic
When to boost healthcare posts on Facebook
Determining when to boost your Facebook posts (and which posts you should boost) depends on your social media strategy.If you post content on Facebook multiple times a day, boosting every post probably isn’t necessary and may be a waste of money. Boosting multiple posts simultaneously—to the same audience—means you’re competing with yourself because users can only see one ad at a time.
A good rule of thumb is boosting Facebook posts with similar target audiences one at a time. This increases your chances of all boosted posts being seen by the most people. If you have a post that is performing particularly well (either organically or paid), you can add more money to the post to continue its success.On the other hand, Facebook won’t spend your money if the audience and engagement aren’t there. Sometimes, a post won’t perform as well as you hope, and the boost won’t use all the money that you said you wanted to spend. In this case, you can either extend the boosting duration or reallocate this spend in your social media budget.
On Facebook, you can schedule boosts before your posts have been published or boost retroactively. Scheduling boosting when you schedule your posts makes planning easy while boosting after your post has been published gives the post time to accumulate some organic traffic before you start paying.
Getting your healthcare ad approved on Facebook
Facebook has policies in place to ensure the boosted posts advertised on their platform are legitimate and high-quality. Facebook has a team who reviews every ad that is submitted, and this process typically takes less than 15 minutes. While most reputable businesses won’t encounter too much trouble in getting Facebook boosting ads approved, there are a few sticky points that can cause an organization to have an ad that is not approved.For more regulated industries, such as hospitals and healthcare, successfully boosting Facebook posts targeted to your audiences can be a challenge. Healthcare organizations often have targeted content that needs to reach specific types of people, and creating Facebook posts about healthcare topics that can be boosted can be tricky. Read on to learn more about what to avoid in Facebook ads and boosted posts in the healthcare industry.
Avoid identifying language
Identifying language is defined as language that specifies a specific group of people using some demographic. This can be:- gender,
- age,
- race, or
- any number of personal attributes.
For example, a Facebook post with the content, “Are you an expectant mother? Sign up for our free prenatal yoga class today!” seems like great content to promote; however, it does not follow Facebook ad guidelines, and it wouldn’t be approved because it excludes any user in your audience who is not a pregnant woman.
Don’t ask for personal information
This includes, but is not limited to, health information, demographic information, political affiliation, or usernames and passwords (we hope this last one goes without saying!).When planning a Facebook boosting strategy for healthcare organizations, make sure you aren’t directly—or indirectly—requesting health or demographic information.We even don’t recommend asking your followers something as seemingly innocuous as how many children they have.
Optimize your landing page
If you’re paying to boost a Facebook post, you should make sure that the website page you are linking to is a good one. Your webpage should:- be directly related to the content of the post,
- align with your goals for the post and for the boost, and
- have an explicit action for users to take.
Choose appropriate images
Avoid images with large quantities of text on them as well. Images that include text all over might get your post flagged as a suspicious advertisement.
Colorful, high-quality graphics are always a good idea for social media because they draw attention in busy newsfeeds; however, when choosing images for healthcare social media posts, avoid images that are graphic (including pictures showing blood, severe injuries, nudity, etc.). Even in a healthcare context, images like these will not be allowed to remain on Facebook, whether or not you try to boost them.
These Facebook boosting tips cover the challenges we notice most often when boosting Facebook posts for our clients, particularly those in the healthcare industry. See Facebook’s full advertising policy overview here.
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