Results from my first Facebook and Instagram Boosted Posts

With a background in digital marketing I have always been fascinated with the evolution of the methods available to reach target markets.

I recently downloaded the updated Facebook Creator that allows me to more easily track content across Facebook and Instagram and decided to test out boosted posts. I have now run two (2) campaigns on Facebook and one (1) on Instagram.

Campaign 1 — Chronixx

One of my recent trips to Jamaica was serendipitous and I ended up in the launch event for Reggae musician Chronixx’s launch of his Chronology Caribbean Tour put on by Headline Entertainment (Full Disclosure: They have worked with RealVibez on numerous projects and Carlette Deleon us my publicist).

Chronixx spoke about the lack of support for Jamaican culture locally amongst corporations and I chose to upload the entire speech to YouTube then create a campaign pointing to one of the videos after sharing it on my personal Facebook page — Facebook.com/davidpmullings

I built an audience between the age of 18 and 44 in Jamaica that likes Reggae and Dancehall music (I chose a number of specific keywords to build my audience). The budget was US$75 of a 48 hour period split into US$50 for 24 hours, a pause to see virality and then another US$25 for 24 hours.

I have never had any post on my small page with 1,100 followers generate this kind of reach, 29,847, nor this level of engagement — 1,379 likes, etc.

This result had me hooked and so I posted a shorter version on Instagram and built a similar audience to see what would happen.

Campaign 2 — Chronixx Instagram

My Instagram profile only has 1,368 followers as of this writing. The budget was US$15 for 24 hours targeting a custom audience in Jamaica again. Instagram reports 4,148 views of the video and 531 likes, more than anything I have ever posted before.

I was quite surprised at the gender breakdown but not surprised at the overwhelming Kingston reach since it is the capital with one third of the population.

Campaign 3 — DJ Khaled

I subscribe to the idea that “content is king” and money alone does not lead to traction. You must be promoting something your target audience finds valuable in some way. So far I had used my own content but could this be done with the content of others?

Many people, including myself, post motivational quotes on Instagram and they get tons of likes. The world is now all about mobile video so with my plans to launch a video series based on the second version of Things Entrepreneurs Say, I figured I would experiment with reaching my target market.

My friend Ingrid Riley had reposted a DJ Khaled video that really struck a chord with me because it talked about focusing on positivity and positive people in your life, being about you and the well-being of your family first. The last few years taught me a tremendous amount about how selfish people can be, even without realizing it. It made me realize how far off the scale I was sacrificing my family for investors who would never do the same nor did they care about my family after a failure.

I copied the video and uploaded it to Facebook with personal context then setup a campaign for US$50 over 48 hours targeting my audience of Millennial Entrepreneurs in the US, Canada, UK and Jamaica to see what would happen.

Bombocl@@t!!

A low quality video, shared with personal context and a mere US$50 budget targeting an audience I meticulously crafted delivered far better results than I expected.

As of this writing the video now has 32,207 views, 494 reactions (likes, etc.), 26 comments and 303 shares. Facebook says that it reached 91,385 people (8,237 organic and 83,148 paid).

Above are the most recent 7-day metrics for my Facebook Page that includes the boosted posts. The metrics that I care about are Page Likes, Post Engagements, Total Video Views and Page Followers because those indicate that I am growing my tribe (yes I’m a HUGE Seth Godin fan).

• Page Likes — Up 10%
• Post Engagements — Up 195%!
• Total Video Views — Up 231,329%!!!
• Page Followers — Up 21%

I still cannot get over the 231,329% increase for anything. However, the fact that so few have translated to page likes or follows indicates that my core focus needs to be on conversions and I suspect that original content featuring me or a more explicit call to action to like the page for similar content is needed. Now to test via an A/B split test and report back.

I also now understand how cheap it is to appear to be a social media influencer with lots of likes and views on content you post. Users can’t tell the difference between paid views and organic views. However, paid vs. organic is irrelevant in marketing because you want to get your product in front of a target market and you do that by paying for it, whether advertising, a promotional team, sending the product to people, test events and so forth.

I will soon launch two new web shows on Facebook and the lessons learned from these experiments will be extremely useful. I hope that you find them useful as well.

Maybe I need to bring back Kaizen Interactive and provide digital marketing consulting services again…