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Don’t boost posts on Instagram, and I’ll tell you why.
I’m sure you have seen this on your Instagram account: for some of your posts, at the bottom of them, it says, “This post is doing better than 90% of your other posts”.
Seeing this, you can also probably already tell that it’s not true.
If you go into the analytics, you can see it doesn’t have the highest reach, it doesn’t have the highest like count, it doesn’t have a lot more saves than your other posts.
Then why is Instagram saying this post is doing better, if it’s probably not?
Usually, this post is probably doing the same or maybe a little bit better than others.
But we get this message, that your post is doing better than 90% of your other posts, and then there’s a little button that says, “Boost post now”.
What they want you to do is to click that button and pay them to boost the post.
Should you boost posts on Instagram?
What boosting does is it will show your post to more people, depending on how much money you pay.
Maybe it will show it to 1,000 more people or 2,000 more people.
But the thing is – yes, they will show it to those 1,000-2,000 more people, and then you will obviously get some more likes on that post compared to your other posts.
So you might think, ‘Brilliant, that’s going to get me a lot of followers’.
Well, yes and no.
Keep reading below or feel free to watch the video:
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Does boosting a post on Instagram get you followers?
It kind of depends.
If the post is really helpful, or if it resonates with many people, it might get you a few new followers.
But those people might also unfollow you down the line because they didn’t actually have a connection with you.
They just liked that post, maybe they followed, and they might unfollow later.
This is why boosting a post is not a reliable way of growing your Instagram account.
Does boosting a post on Instagram get you likes?
What boosting actually does is it gives you some more likes.
And I get it.
Getting that kind of validation on your post feels good.
And you might feel like if people are liking it, it must be a really good post.
But in fact, it’s just been shown to more people, so you got more likes. This doesn’t mean it’s better than any of your other posts.
I think that these days we have kind of gotten to a point (I’m not going to shame you, by the way, because this was me too) where we feel like if a post is getting a lot of likes, that means people like me.
And we have, in a way, attached our self-worth to our Instagram account, our posts, how many likes we get, how many followers.
And that is not true.
Your self-worth is not defined by your Instagram post.
I want you to really keep that in mind when you are posting on Instagram.
It doesn’t mean people like or dislike you depending on the amount of likes you get; it’s nothing like that.
That is why I feel like this boosting post thing can be kind of tricky, because it plays with your emotions.
It makes you feel like if you pay a little bit of money, you get more likes, therefore more of that love.
But again, your self-worth is not in that. It doesn’t mean people love you more or less.
That’s the emotional side of things.
But from a business perspective, does this actually help you build a business on Instagram?
Is boosting a post on Instagram worth it?
As I’ve said before, the followers that you get through a boosted post are not really necessarily reliable.
It’s not something that you can count on to grow your account because you will just be throwing money at Instagram, hoping that they will show it to the people that actually resonate with you.
But it’s much more productive to create content that people find you through in an authentic way.
They resonate with it themselves, and they follow you because they have a genuine interest, they relate to you, and they actually want to hear more from you.
That’s how you grow organically; that’s how you get an audience that actually cares.
I know a lot of people that have tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, and they’re barely making any money on this platform.
A lot of people assume a high following number equals a lot of money.
It’s not.
It really depends on your business model, how much you are business-oriented, and how you actually monetise your account.
On my account, I have around 7,000 followers at the moment, and I make my full-time living from my business.
But my business is not just my Instagram.
I have a blog and a YouTube channel.
You don’t need a lot of followers to make money online. As I mentioned, a lot of followers doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of money. It all depends on you and how you’re creating this business for yourself.
This is why boosting posts will not be that helpful.
Is it better to run a Facebook ad or boost a post?
You might be thinking, ‘Well, I see a lot of Facebook ads from people that are making a lot of money’.
Maybe you even found me through a Facebook ad, because I do use Facebook ads, which go both on Facebook and on Instagram.
But I use them to grow my business, to get an income.
It’s completely different to boosting posts, and here’s why.
Boosting posts on Instagram means you choose a post, you boost it. It gets shown to people, people like it, and that’s about it.
Making Facebook ads is a lot more intricate. I actually took a whole course on it because I wanted to learn the ins and outs. There’s so much that goes into Facebook ads.
You start by creating a Facebook ad manager account.
Then you create Facebook ads that are targeted to a certain type of person, your ideal audience.
And those ads also have a call to action, a button that tells them what to do when they see your ad.
You want them to go and sign up for a freebie, sign up for a course, whatever it might be that you’re trying to accomplish in your business.
This is why Facebook ads are a completely different game than boosting posts.
If you’re trying to get your content out there through ads, then yes, you can use Facebook ads. It’s a brilliant marketing strategy that I use myself.
But I would say use Facebook ads when you actually have something to sell, when you actually have something that you can use to measure your return on investment.
I personally have a whole spreadsheet that I use to keep count every month of:
- how much money I’m putting into Facebook ads
- what their reach was
- how many people I got on my email list through ads
- how much money I made through those Facebook ads.
This way, I can compare how much money I put in, how much money I got out, and see if it was profitable.
And yes, it is.
It’s a highly profitable funnel when, first, you have something to sell and, second, you know how to use it right.
Want some help on starting to sell digital products? Watch the free masterclass.
Is boosting a post a waste of money?
Boosting posts on Instagram is definitely not helpful from this point of view.
It’s just going to get you more likes.
In my opinion, it can be just a complete waste of money because, again, likes do not equal money, and it can be a bit pointless.
If you’ve ever boosted posts on Instagram, please don’t feel bad. I actually did that too because at one point, Instagram said, ‘Oh, you can boost this post for free,’ so I tried it out because I was curious.
But it didn’t bring me that much; it just got me some likes, and that was about it.
I hope this article helped you to make informed decisions when it comes to your business and when it comes to growing online.
