What’s The Difference Between The Two?
Since there are billions of users on Facebook around the world with each user uploading all types of content and sharing posts every single day, how can you make sure that your content can out-compete all other related and even irrelevant Facebook posts to reach your audience’s news feed? Facebook has provided avenues to help reach this goal by way of boosted Facebook posts and Facebook ads. Using Facebook for marketing is one of the most effective ways you can increase your reach using social media.
They’re the same in the sense that you have to allocate funds to enjoy both services. However, boosted Facebook posts and Facebook ads certainly have their key differences. This article will help you understand the difference between a boosted Facebook post & a Facebook ad and better streamline your decisions as to which should you choose to employ.
What Are Facebook Ads?
Facebook ads are exactly what the name suggests, content that has been promoted through paid advertising. However, Facebook ads are different from general Facebook posts in a manner that they don’t appear on their respective Facebook page’s profile. So a user can’t really scroll through a certain Facebook page to find the ad that they came across. A way to identity ads in a Facebook News Feed is that they carry a grey text “Sponsored” below the page account. Is this the only difference between a Facebook ad and a boosted post? Of course not! It gets more complicated than just a mere visual cue.
Employing Facebook ads requires the user to set up a Facebook Ads Manager account. A Facebook Ads Manager account allows the user to fine-tune their ads through a number of specifications i.e. your target audience’s location, gender, interests, and age. The user can also monitor their ads through a variety of tools such as the ad-engagement and analytics feature, thereby providing a reliable metric and reference for increasing the effectiveness of future ads.
Aren’t Boosted Facebook Posts Technically The Same?
A boosted Facebook post is also a paid promotion, but if as stated earlier, a Facebook ad does not appear in the profile of its Facebook, but a boosted Facebook post does. After all, it was originally a Facebook post, which means it’s organic content. The way ‘boosting’ is added to the equation is that boosting promotes the initial post to a wider audience, which also includes users outside of the page’s list of followers. Basically, you’re taking organic content and boosting its notoriety whilst Facebook ads are constructed with more specific intentions such as increasing the number of likes, website visits, increase conversion rates, calls to action, and so on. That being said, the goal of a Facebook post is also different from Facebook ads.
Since boosted Facebook posts still retain the original mechanics of the general Facebook post, it means the user can still engage with a wider audience through comments, likes, and shares. The inherent nature of posts means the user can boost a variety of content such as status updates, videos, photos, and other content from the page.
Which Should You Choose?
The effectiveness of either depends on the goal that you want to attain. Boosted Facebook posts are more focused on increasing audience engagement and increasing the awareness and views of the page’s organic content. Since the boost option is integrated within Facebook’s interface, it’s as simple as click and go while creating Facebook ads require the user to have a Facebook Ads Manager account. But Facebook ads can perform what Facebook posts cannot or may lack in such as more specific tasks such as sales pitches, product, and service promotion, and calls-to-action such as “Like This Page” and/or “Visit Our Website”. That being said, it’s a recommended strategy to utilize both mediums to create an overall effective Facebook PR and marketing strategy.
