Is Boosting Posts on Facebook Really Worth It?

We have all been tempted at least once or twice with the “Boost Post” button on Facebook. Any time you publish an update on your Facebook page, and any time one of your post’s gains traction, that navy blue button appears and gives you the option to reach a larger audience for a small fee. However, is merely a creative way to burn through your ad budget, or is boosting posts on Facebook worth it?

Yes… If done correctly.

With over 2.38 billion users now on Facebook and 1.56 billion of them logging in daily, breaking through the noise can be harder than ever before. Every 20 minutes:

  • 763,888 status updates are sent out
  • 1 million links are shared
  • 86 million photos are uploaded

Meanwhile, organic reach and engagement have experienced a steady decline in recent years. A post’s average organic reach is only around 6.4% of its total page likes, meaning that a lot of your content never even gets seen by their intended audience. Boosting posts alleviates this pain point and provides you with an opportunity to increase your reach. By knowing what posts to boost and how often, understanding the audience you’re trying to engage, and diversifying your content, you can crack the code of Facebook’s “Boost Post” option and seeing a significant ROI. 

 

Boost Posting Trade Secrets

 

Before delving into what to boost, examine the content on your page and make sure that it’s both relevant to your business and that the kind of engagement you are receiving is from the right types of leads for your business. Boosting posts won’t be nearly as effective with your current base if your audience isn’t interested in what you’re selling. Assuming that it is, or that you’re going to take corrective action to ensure that you’re reaching the right audience, you’re ready to start boosting.

In general, the best posts to boost are ads that are:

  • Visually effective
  • Have a link to your website or storefront
  • Marry education and entertainment, or “edutainment” (ex. how-to videos)
  • Suggest interaction without begging for it (ex. a restaurant posting a photo of their latest dish and asking what their audience is having for dinner)
  • Diverse in content: a mix of video updates, images, text, and links

These tend to be the posts that are already going to garner a lot of attention but have the potential for an even greater reach. No exact algorithm can determine the success with boost posting—especially since everyone’s business and following is different—but by testing out a variety of strategies using these kinds of posts, you’ll have somewhere to start.

Also, if Facebook itself suggests that you boost a post that has a link to your website, we recommend doing it.

While it may be tempting to boost a post right away, many experts suggest waiting a couple of days to allow the post to generate buzz organically. If it’s something that is receiving multiple likes, comments, and shares, odds are that it will continue to generate buzz if boosted to reach a broader audience.

You should also only boost a post—at the very most—once a week, and only for about a week, otherwise the content gets dated, and your audience may begin to ignore your content. Regarding costs, you can boost your posts for as little as $1 per day, and Facebook has a pretty involved ad budget section in their ads help center.

 

What to Boost

 

When boosting a post, Facebook offers you three options. Each one has its advantages based on the kind of content you’re creating.

 

People who like your page

If you are making a service announcement or boosting a sales-oriented update, selecting this category is right for you. These people are likely already familiar with your product and your page and will appreciate knowing about new services or product updates that they could risk missing out on otherwise. If you’re selling a house cleaner, for example, your page followers might be interested in learning that your product comes in new scents or forms. Choosing this category limits your ad dollars strictly to interested parties, maximizing the impact of your overall ad spend.

 

People who like your page and their friends

If you have a brick and mortar store or if your business has some geographic component, extending a post to people who like your page and their friends might be advantageous. Not only will you reach out to customers that are already familiar with you, but you could also attract new customers that you wouldn’t be able to reach without your posts being organically shared. Given that boosting posts in this category increases your risk of reaching the wrong crowd, it’s best to test out your campaign with a smaller budget first.

 

People you choose through targeting

This category is where things get interesting. You have the greatest chance of expanding your audience with this option (a most simplified version of regular Facebook ad targeting), and if you know what to post, you can see a high return. If a post is generating a lot of interaction via likes/comments/shares, it might be boost-worthy with this category. One blogger for Cleverpedia noticed that her post was getting some traction, so she boosted with specific identifiers for her target audience en masse, and reached over 3,400 people and got 70 click-throughs for only $9. Her scenario is more successful than what most are used to, but it’s also the results of some trial and error and knowing the audience. Speaking of…

 

Know Your Audience

When your ad budget is influenced by each potential engagement, knowing your audience becomes incredibly important. Research your target market thoroughly before even thinking about boosting posts. What are their pain points? What do they like/don’t like? Where do they hang out, and what inspires them? The better you know your customers, the more effective your campaign will be.

 

Why White Papers Are So Damn Good at Converting

Why White Papers Are So Damn Good at Converting

 

Ever since they originated in 19th century England, white papers have served as a relevant, influential form of content marketing. Other marketing strategies have come and gone, but white papers show no signs of going anywhere. Not only have they survived through the technological revolution, but they have also weathered the changes in how we consume content.

In this article, you will learn why white papers are so good at converting, how companies can improve upon their white papers, and what companies should be doing to deploy white papers in their content marketing.

 

Why White Papers Convert

 

White papers offer in-depth information about a problem in an industry that interested parties are looking to understand. They also offer a practical solution to this problem in the form of a product or service. They are meant to educate buyers through the Evaluation Stage by providing in-depth information on a specific subject, advocate for a solution, and make a company be seen as a subject matter expert (SME). As a result, white papers are ranked #2 in terms of the most influential content buyers read before making a purchase, just behind product brochures and data sheets.

When done well, white papers are able to make your brand more persuasive and bring about meaningful change as your platform and influence increases. They can boost your brand’s exposure within your industry, media, and other critical circles, and can increase your brand’s strategic visibility. By having a well-crafted white paper, your clients, customers, partners, and investing will feel more confident in your brand.

White papers have no time for fluff. They are carefully crafted documents full of quantitative data written in an academic format. They are the thick textbooks of marketing: They are not always the most fun to read, but if your company is looking to make a significant business decision, you are grateful that they exist because of the breadth of information they provide.

However, this doesn’t mean that the white paper hasn’t evolved in its own ways. Modern-day white papers are often filled with infographics, images and videos, and interactive content.

White paper designs and templates have also gotten more modern. Here are a few examples from Venngage that you may find useful. 

 

How Companies Can Create or Make Their White Papers Better

 

First, companies need to understand what a White Paper is and what it isn’t:

 

A white paper isn’t like a research paper, it’s like your graduate thesis or capstone project! It requires a lot of in-depth information complete with credible data to back up every one of your claims. By writing a white paper, your company is looking to become the SME of your industry. If a sentence that you have written or if the fact that you have inserted can be disproven, your credibility will take a hit, and your buyers will mistrust you.

Carefully plan your White Paper, and take your time writing it. This is a document that will be valid for your company for at least a year or two and then revised to remain relevant. Make sure that it goes the approval from your company’s most scrutinous of editors, and don’t consider it a completed project until you are 100% satisfied with it.

Given the importance of this document, the amount of time it may take to put together all of the relevant information, and the writing skills necessary to create a well-crafted White Paper, many companies find that their best solution is to outsource writing one.

 

This is what should be included in every white paper:

  • Market trends and changes in your industry that make your product necessary (without actually selling your product)
  • Statistics, expert testimony, and quotes from industry professionals
  • Fully explore what your target audience’s key challenges, more so than a web page or brochure would do
  • Create a list of things to consider that is well-rounded and thoroughly discusses the problem at hand, potential solutions, and market drivers
  • At the very end, pitch why your product can help your audience. *Note: this isn’t the bulk of your white paper, merely the last page or two.

 

What Companies Should Be Doing to Market Their White Papers

 

Once a white paper is created, it should be marketed, so that leads in the later stages of the marketing funnel can evaluate them during their buyer’s journey. Here are a few ways to do just that:

Direct Email Campaigns and Newsletters: Email has an average  ROI of 122%, which is more than four times higher than other marketing formats like direct social and social media. Feature your white paper in your newsletter or as a downloadable PDF in your next e-mail marketing campaign.

Free Gift: Promote your white paper as a ‘free gift’ or ‘downloadable content’ on your website. If you want to get something out of it in return, offer your white paper as a gift that someone gets when subscribing to your site or e-mail list

Press Releases: Promote it as part of a press release complete with a link to your white paper, landing page, or site where the white paper is easily accessible. Press releases are submitted to search engines, social platforms, and industry journals and allow for a broad reach and more potential leads. On average, press releases generate traffic that is 38.9% less expensive than comparable traffic from a PPC campaign.

Reach Out: Contact influential bloggers, editors, and industry experts who work with or cater to your target market and pitch your white paper to them.

Social Media: 83% of B2B marketers use social media as a content marketing vehicle. Promote your white paper on your various platforms, again offering it as an ‘extra’ or ‘gift.’

Utilize Your Sales Team: Give it to your sales team to help them further nurture leads.

 

No matter what you are selling, a white paper is an excellent addition to your content arsenal. Not only does it make you appear to be an SME, but just about 2/3rds of B2B marketers actually use them, which gives you a significant advantage over your competitors that don’t. Keep that in mind for the next time you are spearheading a marketing campaign.

 

6 Ways to Measure the Success of Your Marketing Campaign

Companies both small and big have access to the world’s most influential marketing tool: the internet. The web helps level the playing field, giving advantages to companies who know how to use it. A small business with a tiny marketing budget, but a successful marketing campaign can outshine its much wealthier competitor.

The average business spends 12-13% of their revenue on marketing. A single marketing campaign can influence millions of people around the world. If done effectively, you can enjoy significant ROI from that campaign.

But how can you measure if your marketing campaign is successful? What qualitative and quantitative data do you need to determine whether the value of money and time you spent on this campaign was worth it?

Here are 6 ways to determine exactly that:

 

Goal Setting for Your Marketing Campaign

 
 

Before launching your successful marketing campaign, create a list of goals for yourself or with your team. How many impressions are you seeking to make, and how many leads would you like to generate? Are you looking for an increase in revenue, and if so, by how much?

Make sure you are setting tangible, attainable goals for yourself. Keep your expectations high, but be realistic. First-time actors aren’t expecting to win an Oscar. They’re just hoping to land a second, more promising gig. Your success measurement should be in terms of you, not Apple, Starbucks, or Walmart.

With a list of tangible goals in mind, it’s time to check out your quantitative data.

 

Keywords and Domain Ranking

You can use Google Analytics or any comparable search engine marketing tool to analyze your site’s traffic to determine where you were before and after the campaign. There are four types of web traffic: organic, social, referral, and direct.

  • Organic – Organic traffic comes from unpaid listing on search engines and directories, like when you type keywords into a search bar, and a link comes up.
  • Social – Social traffic refers to traffic coming from your social media platforms or networks.
  • Referral – Referral traffic is measured by link building, or when someone visits your site after being on a different site.
  • Direct – Direct traffic is most commonly the result of someone physically typing in the URL to your site, or by clicking an untagged link from an email or on a Word or PDF document.

Analyzing the web traffic you had before and after a marketing campaign will show you how influential your campaign was on all four of these different avenues. You can also input your domain and see the total change in traffic. This will further help you measure your success.

 

Analyzing Web Traffic

Google Analytics also allows you to figure out how many new and return visitors you have. Google Analytics also allows you to track your visitors by demographic.

You can track new vs. returning visitors under the audience > behavior tab on Google Analytics. This information won’t be 100% accurate, because the same new user can access your site on their mobile device, laptop, and tablet (and if they clear their cookies, they are considered a new user again). Still, it’s a helpful source to determine if your marketing campaign is influencing new people. Return visitors are people who have already accessed your site and are browsing it again.

New users can you help determine if your social and referral traffic works. Odds are most of your new users are coming from one of those two sources. If you don’t see a significant increase in new user traffic, you will want to rethink your marketing strategy for future campaigns.

You can also find demographics under the audience tab. All these can be important, depending on which demographics your campaign hopes to influence.

 

Links

Links built and inbound links are measured on Moz’s link explorer. The number and quality of links you have will increase your domain authority score. This makes it easier for people to find you organically.

Off-site content strategy can play a significant role in your marketing campaign. According to Forbes, any link you embed in your content will pass authority to your site. Using Moz’s link explorer, you can determine how many links you’ve built and how effective they are.

Inbound links are also relevant. The more times your site is linked as a point of reference, the higher your domain authority will rise. Moz’s link explorer allows you to identify a site’s influence and the inbound links to a page. It also helps you with several other analytics that could be useful in your marketing campaign.

 

Social Media

Social media offers several other ways to analyze the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. You can track the number of new followers you acquired on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. You can also view the levels of engagement on each of your posts.

Social media traffic also allows you to determine how many new email and website subscribers you have after running a campaign. All this information will help you decide whether you ran a successful marketing campaign.

 

Value of Time and Money

The final way to analyze a marketing campaign is to determine how much time and money you spent on it, and whether it was worth it. Keep a spreadsheet that lists all your advertising costs, including labor, to get an estimate of how much you budgeted for this campaign. Also, make sure you kept track of how much time you spent on this endeavor. What other projects or opportunities could you have been exploring instead of working on a marketing campaign?

Upon its conclusion, while you analyze your links, web traffic, social media, keywords, and domain authority, use this spreadsheet and compare it with the results. Compare it against your initial goal and decide whether you ran a successful marketing campaign.

 

The Importance of Marketing Campaigns

Businesses that don’t market themselves get lost in the Google algorithm abyss. Their websites predate the 2016 election, their links are dead, and their only social media link is to their MySpace account. Your campaigns won’t always be as lucrative or rewarding as you want them to be. However, with each attempt, you’ll better understand how to improve and prepare for future campaigns. If your marketing campaign beats out larger, more profitable competitors, you know you’re on the right track.

How do you measure your marketing campaigns, and what has worked for you in the past? Leave a comment below.

How to Use Topic Clusters to Nurture Leads

Topic clusters provide a simple, highly-effective way to nurture leads with more content. Not only is the information that they provide tailored to their buyer’s persona, but they also give every blog, article, and any other content in your cluster an SEO boost in the process. This shows your lead that you’re not only an expert in your product’s market, but you’re the expert that’s going to make them a satisfied customer.

 

How Topic Clusters Work

 

Cluster marketing strategy sounds more complicated than it is. Basically, instead of writing one blog post or article about an idea, you’re writing on the main topic and then several other posts closely related to that topic that shares the same hyperlinked keyword. You don’t usually use the same keyword in some other cases, but with topic clusters, you’re putting all of your eggs into one carefully researched basket (the basket that you’re most confident will allow customers to find you or your product) and providing leads with easy access to FAQs that they may have.

For example, let’s say your company sells car air fresheners. Your main topic should cover necessary information about car air fresheners and how and why customers should buy car air fresheners from your company.

Next, you write about several subtopics involving car air fresheners. These subtopics must be pertinent to the product(s) you’re selling and what your target customers are likely to type in Google. If you stray away from that, you won’t be helping your lead make a purchase decision.  

Examples of subtopics for car air fresheners might include popular car air freshers, new air freshener scents, air freshener sprays, and natural car air fresheners, to name a few. As your writing posts for your subtopics, make sure that they’re using the same keyword as your main topic (car air freshener, perhaps?) and linking each of your subtopic posts to your pillar article. Now anytime someone looks up one of these subtopics; they will have a direct link to your main article that connects them to your company.

 

Creating a Topic Cluster

 

Before creating any content, you have to ask yourself three questions:

  • Why am I creating this?
  • How am I creating this?
  • What am I creating?

Because topic clusters involve creating multiple pieces of content, these questions become much more complicated. You’re researching five to ten interrelated topics as opposed to just one, and each of them has to be pertinent to nurturing your lead. Here is how you do it:

 

Research your target market.

Before even reaching out to your customers, do a keyword search on your subject to make sure that it’s relevant. You can do this using Kwfinder, Google Adwords, or a similar program. If it’s not generating enough traffic, then creating a topic cluster would a waste of your time. Find keywords for your subject or product that will be competitive, but not broad enough to where it will get lost in the Google abyss.

 

Determine your lead’s core problems.

You are trying to convince your lead that your product is a solution to their problem. However, no problem comes with a singular answer. Different leads may need your product for various reasons and need to determine why your product is better than that of your competitors. Surveying your buyer personas will provide you with multiple topics that are pertinent to write about.

 

Create a blueprint for your clusters.

By identifying the needs of your customers, you have a list of ideas that will form the foundation of your topic cluster. From this list, you need to group like-minded concepts that could become the subtopics for your main idea. Next, run keyword searches for next of these concepts to determine their SEO relevancy. For an extra boost, use SEMrush to compare your topics with those of your competitors and find keyword gaps that will make you stand out.

 

Narrow down your list.

At this point you should have:

  • A list of ideas from customer surveys and other investigative research. From there,
  • A group of core concepts from this list that could become subtopics, and
  • You have run keyword searches on these ideas to determine their relevancy.

Now it’s time to compare the quantitative data from your keyword searches with the qualitative feedback you have from the needs of your customers. Create a weighted ranking system to find the best cross-sections that answer the questions “what customers are searching for” and “what searches are most relevant to your company,” and the best five to ten ideas from that should form the subcategories of your topic cluster. 

 

Analyze and refine.

Once you’ve created your topic cluster, keep track of the posts that customers are being drawn to and see these subtopics are leading them to the central pillar and turning them into buyers. If a couple of topics are proving to be ineffective, revert to your list of cluster ideas and repeat the process. No work is ever perfect, but you can make improvements over time.

 

More Research, Bigger Payoff

 

Cluster marketing strategy requires much more work than a singular blog post. However, when done well, topic clusters can exponentially increase your web traffic. Instead of having one post on one topic, you can have five posts linked to a single topic that can be found in five different ways. Think of it in terms of casting a net. Instead of using a net that is 1×1, you now have a net that is 5×5.

The leads that you’re trying to nurture now have:

 

  • Access five times the amount of content that your product or company has provided
  • A significantly better chance of coming across a thread to the web you’ve woven with your topic cluster
  • More confidence that your product or company can provide the solution to their problem

 

Experts believe that topic clusters are the next evolution of SEO. With an algorithm that’s as competitive as Google’s, claim your competitive advantage now by weaving a topic cluster web that’ll capture the leads in your niche.