Boosting or advertising Instagram post for engagement
You want to get more engagement to your Instagram posts you will definitely want to try running ads so your posts reach more people and get more engagement, views or other actions.
Easiest way for this to be done is through your Instagram app on phone, it requires only few clicks and can be done anytime, anywhere, from your phone.
But, if you want to advertise in more profound way, you want to keep your campaigns on one place or have other people working on your ads you will definitely want to use your Business Manager and Ad account to keep things running professionally.
Promote Instagram post with Ad Manager or Business Manager
Your Business Manager is an account where you can keep all assets at one place, your Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, Ad accounts, Pixels, Catalogues, Employees and Partners.
To create an ad that will have a goal to promote Instagram post first you need to have all assets connected within your Business manager account so anyone who works for you as advertiser could promote Instagram posts without having access to Instagram account directly.
If all is connected in right way first step is to open your Ad Manager and start creating Ad
With simply clicking on Create you will start new campaign.
Next step will be selecting an Objective or a Goal we want to set our campaign for.
As we are going to promote post from Instagram we are usually selecting Engagement as objective. This means that we want to promote our post to get as much reactions as possible; likes, comments, shares, etc
Then choose Post engagement as we are going to promote post and give a name to your campaign so you could know what was it about when you see it after few months.
Just click “Continue” to move to Ad Set lever where you will set Audience, Placements and Budget & Schedule
Setting audience is one of the most important factors but in this post I will skip explaining about type of audiences and what you can do with it.
So I’m moving to very important part here and that’s setting placements.
If we don’t want post to be running on all channels but maybe only on Instagram we need to manually edit placements.
After clicking on Edit placements a window with all kind of different placements will appear. If we want to boost post only on Instagram then we need to turn off all Facebook placements and other placements that are not related to Instagram.
If we leave Facebook to show this ad and select post from Instagram then post will be showing up on Facebook feed and people could comment it, share it or like it on Facebook but that post will not be showing on Facebook page and ad will be showed like it is posted on Facebook page – there will be no connection to Instagram.
So we are turning off everything instead of Instagram placements inside Platforms section.
After this is set you still need to set your budget and then click to “Continue” button to take you to Ad lever where we will pick a post from Instagram.
Now we came to the main part – Ad level – where first section is picking Identity.
By selecting Facebook page and Instagram account we are choosing what business name will be presenting on ad people will see. Also when we pick a Facebook page and Instagram we will be able to select already existing post to promote on this page.
If you are only promoting Instagram post on Instagram then Facebook page is not important so just click on Instagram and select account you want to use for ad and posts.
It is important to select Use existing post instead of creating new and then inside Creatives click on Select Post.
It will open a window with all posts from selected Facebook page and Instagram where you need to select Instagram as source.
When you find Instagram post just click on it and click to continue. Post will be placed in preview how will it look like and only additional setting you can choose is a button if want to use one.
If you select any button you will need to add a link where this button lead to but I recommend not to use it.
After setting it up you can also turn on pixel for tracking (if you are using one and using link to website) and simply click Confirm to start with process of ad approval by Facebook after that ad will automatically start.
Presented example is not that good because it contains text only so it can be blocked by Facebook or simply gain very low engagement because of to much text on image.
With boosting posts this way or any other way you should be aware that it is very important to keep in mind Facebook advertising policy and not using content that is not allowed, like showing body parts, before-after images, to much text on image
To find out more about it please read Facebook ads policy https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/
Thank you and be free to contact me for any question.