Beware of promoting on Instagram using Facebook boost
Before anyone says it: I did not pay for a Facebook ad. I recently got a message from Facebook saying "one of your posts is performing well, here's a $10 coupon to boost it."
I thought...cool, free advertising. One of the features also lets you automatically put the promotion on Instagram and include a call to action as well. Even better! So I added a call to action button to direct people to my blog.
It hasn't reached very far on Facebook, but on Instagram, the ad took off quickly. And now, here I am with a promotion finishing up and a ton of likes. Except there are zero comments, and not one person used the call to action button. In other words, almost a thousand likes, and no engagement whatsoever. After a quick skim of some of the people who "liked" it on Instagram, I can't seem to find a real person anywhere.
After looking around online, it seems there is a substantial amount of skepticism about the Instagram likes. For me, it wasn't really a big deal because it was a coupon. But there are a lot of people paying real money for this, and if I hadn't questioned it, I might have been one of those people in the future.
I don't blame this specifically on Facebook or Instagram, but this has been reported going back at least a year to Facebook support and they don't seem to have anything more than a canned response. I would suggest for now that no one bother spending real money on this until Facebook and/or Instagram addresses it.
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I used to pay for facebook ads in the past, and it used to bring me a lot of referrals (for some other program). You should use concrete interests (keywords) so your result will satisfy your expectations.
It's not really the Facebook ad that's the problem. I used them in the past when I ran for office years ago and they worked great. Even this particular ad seemed to do okay on Facebook. The problem is the promotion to Instagram that they've added. I had the audience narrowed down quite well and still got a ton of likes from people with private accounts, no engagement, and seemingly no reason why they would care about the promotion.
But you have the opportunity to turn off the Instagram promotion and to run it only on Facebook.
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this is good information...Thank you!!!!