Article updated: November 28, 2023
Boost a Facebook post
Boosted posts are paid ads that you create from existing Facebook posts. Boosting posts gets your high-performing content in front of more people, for more reactions, shares, and comments. Promoting your posts on Facebook can increase your followers and build more awareness for your brand.
When you boost a post, you set an objective based on your marketing goals, choose who you want to see it, how much you want to spend, and how long you want your promotion to run. You can also set up an automated boost and let Facebook choose the best content to promote for you.
To learn how to use boost for better ROI, see The Facebook Boost Post Button: How to Use it and Get Results. Visit the Hootsuite blog for news, tips, tools, and tactics to help you succeed on social media.
Before you begin
Boosted posts are a form of paid advertising, so you need to add an ad account to Hootsuite that’s associated with your Facebook Page before you can promote any posts.
If you’re on a Team, Business, or Enterprise plan, you also need advertising permissions on the social account to run promotions. For instructions on how to add an ad account and set advertising permissions, see our article on Manage ad accounts and advertising permissions.
If you don’t have an ad account for your Facebook Page yet, see Facebook’s help article on adding an ad account to your Business Manager.
Boost a Facebook post
You can choose a post to boost, or you can let Facebook choose a post for you to boost automatically.
Important: The new EU Digital Services Act requires social media companies like Meta, to provide greater transparency on ads served through their platforms. If you want to publish ad sets that target audiences worldwide or in EU countries or associated territories on Meta's platforms, you must ensure each such ad set includes beneficiary and payer information. Ad sets that do not comply will be rejected by Meta and not published on its platforms. Learn more about the EU Digital Services Act.
Follow these steps to boost a single Facebook boost.
- Go to Advertise
, and then select Facebook Boost. - Select Find a post to Boost to see a list of your Facebook posts. Keep in mind that it can take up to two hours for new posts to show up in Hootsuite.
- Choose the post you want to promote, and select Boost.
- In the Boost settings window, select the ad account you want Meta to charge for the boosted post, and select Save.
- Choose an objective (engagement, traffic, awareness, or video views). Meta uses this information to show your post to people who are likely to take the action you want.
- Choose your audience from one of the following options:
- Build your own audience - If you want to build your own audience, select Edit and specify which attributes to target, like location, gender, age, and interests.
- Use recommended audience - Set a target location and build your audience using Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences feature.
- Use saved audience - Select a saved audience you already created on Facebook.
- Use custom audience - Select a custom audience you already created on Facebook. Note: You create custom and saved audiences in Meta Business Manager. Hootsuite retrieves the audiences associated with the ad account you’re using to boost your posts.
- Choose whether you want Meta to promote your Facebook post on Instagram, on just on Facebook. (If your post has more than one image, Instagram placement is not available.)
- Set your budget and the length of your promotion.
- Select Boost on Facebook.
Create an auto-boosting campaign to let Facebook identify and boost your published posts based on criteria you set.
- Go to Advertise , and then select Facebook Boost.
- Select Set up an automated boost.
- Select the Facebook Page and ad account to use to boost your posts and select Save.
- Enter a name for your boost campaign.
- Select Edit in the Objective and automation triggers area to customize your automatic boost settings.
- Objective - Choose an objective (engagement, website clicks, video views, or reach). Meta uses this information to show your post to people who are likely to take the action you want.
- Engagement Triggers - Set automation triggers that tell Meta how to select the posts you want to boost. You can automatically boost posts using Facebook’s Hot Post feature (to boost posts with higher engagement rates), set your own boost criteria (such as minimum number of likes, comments, and more), or automatically boost all posts from the past 7 days.
- Content Type - Set the types of content to match when selecting posts to boost (for engagement and reach objectives).
- Keywords - Enter keywords that must appear (or not) in posts for boosting. You can enter multiple keywords.
- Select Change triggers to save your changes.
- Choose your audience from one of the following options:
- Build your own audience - If you want to build your own audience, select Edit and specify which attributes to target, like location, gender, age, and interests.
- Use recommended audience - Set a target location and build your audience using Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences feature.
- Use saved audience - Select a saved audience you already created on Facebook.
- Use custom audience - Select a custom audience you already created on Facebook. Note: You create custom and saved audiences in Meta Business Manager. Hootsuite retrieves the audiences associated with the ad account you’re using to boost your posts.
- Choose whether you want Meta to promote your Facebook post on Instagram, on just on Facebook.
- Set your budget and the length of your promotion.
- Select Boost on Facebook.
- In a Facebook stream, select Boost post on the post and then enter your Boost settings.
- In Composer, select your Facebook Page, create your post, and select Promote this post to enter your Boost settings.
- In Planner, select a scheduled post, select Edit to open it in Composer, and then enter your Boost settings.
Edit your boost settings
You can manage and edit your scheduled or past boosted posts at any time.
- Go to Advertise , and then select Facebook Boost.
- Filter your campaigns by Ad account and campaign status.
- In any of your boosted posts, you can do the following:
- Select Edit Name
to change the post name. - Set the status to Active or Inactive.
- Select Options
to edit or delete the campaign settings.
- Select Edit Name
Note: Once a boosted post has been published, you can't change the content of the post. If you need to make a change to the content, delete the boost campaign, then edit the post and boost it again.
Manage boosted posts in Planner
If you added Boost settings to a scheduled post, you can change them before the post is published. Only boost campaigns created in Hootsuite appear in Planner.
- Go to Planner
to view your calendar. You can quickly identify your promoted posts here - just look for the $ sign on the post.
- Select the scheduled post, and then select Edit.
- In the Edit post window, go to the Promotion section, and select Edit.
- Make your changes, and then select Save settings and continue.
- Select Save edits.
You can also delete the boosted post from Planner. If you want to duplicate the post (select More and then select Duplicate), you'll need to re-enter your Boost settings.
Once a scheduled promotion is published and live, you can monitor the promotion results in Advertise (go to Advertise, and then select Facebook Boost).
Review Facebook boost performance in Advertise
You can review performance metrics for your boosted Facebook posts at any time.
- Go to Advertise, and then select Facebook Boost.
- Select an ad account from the list to see all Facebook Boost campaigns associated with it.
- Optionally, filter the campaign list by campaign status (active, inactive, or all campaigns).
- For each boosted post, you can review specific metrics like reach, amount spent, and engagement.
- Select See Post on Facebook
to view the post on Facebook.
FAQ
Why does my post say boost is unavailable?
Certain posts, like shared posts, cannot be boosted. To learn more about why your boost is unavailable, see the Facebook help article Why is my boost unavailable?
Why does my boost have an error status?
Error status means the post failed to pass Facebook’s review and did not publish. Sign in to your ad account on Facebook for details.
Tip: Make sure you have all email and Facebook notifications turned on in the ad account so that Facebook notifies you if a campaign fails.
What is a hot post?
Facebook flags high-performing posts as hot posts 
. Hot posts are good candidates for boosting because they have higher organic engagement.
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