Although boosted posts vs social ads are sometimes viewed as similar, in reality, their purposes are quite different within digital marketing. Boosting is the easiest form of paid promotions that amplifies an already created organic post, making it available to a wider audience without much effort and with little options for targeting.

Key takeaways:

  • Boosted posts are easy ways of advertising existing organic posts, while social ads are created in the ad manager with an option of advanced targeting.
  • The idea behind boosting posts is to grow reach and engagement, while social ads are for achieving goals such as gaining leads, sales, and app installations.
  • Boosted posts are easy and do not require any strategy and advanced knowledge, while social ads are complex and require much preparation.
  • The targeting options for boosted posts are basic (age, gender, interests, location) and in social ads, there are advanced targeting options available.
  • The number of placement options is small in the case of boosted posts, but social ads may be placed in various locations including feeds, stories, reels, messaging and audience network.
  • Boosted posts reporting includes only surface level metrics, while social ads have a wide variety of reporting options including conversion tracking and A/B testing reports.
  • Boosted posts will help you test and promote your best-performing organic posts, while social ads will allow you to scale already validated strategies.
  • In general, social ads can give you more ROI because of their superior targeting and optimization features.
  • Boosted posts are limited to the original post format only, while social ads allow different formats such as carousels, lead forms, and dynamic ads.
  • The usual way is to utilize boosted posts to validate the approach and social ads to scale the results.
  • Social ads become an absolute necessity when you want to achieve more advanced goals like retargeting, funnel creation, and conversions tracking.

Boosted posts are easy to use and fast while also increasing the reach of a company. However, social ads that were created using such resources as Meta Ads Manager are designed to work with structured performance marketing, allowing for advanced targeting and optimization along with measuring conversions.

Thus, it becomes possible to develop advertising campaigns for business needs, whether it is leads, sales or installations of applications. Both boosted posts vs ads have their purposes in a digital marketing strategy and are meant to complement each other rather than be substitutes.

What is a Boosted Post?

A boosted post is basically just that: You take an existing social post and throw a few advertising dollars at it, aiming to boost visibility and engagement. It’s super simple; you pick out some easy targeting and enter a budget.

When people see your content in their social feed, they’ll notice a “sponsored” or “promoted” tag along with, in many cases, a clickable link (for website clicks or messaging) that isn’t present on your original organic post.

Boosted posts work with text, photos, and videos and are found on various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even TikTok, where they go by the name “Promote.” When you’re ready to boost a post, you have two choices:

  • Add money to an existing, performing post.
  • Create a brand-new post and boost it directly, without posting it organically first. The second approach gives you the convenience of boosted posts, but you can craft messages and visuals specifically designed to drive conversions.

What is a Social Media Ad?

A social media ad is any bit of content you pay to distribute to a target audience across your social channels. You may already have guessed it by now: a boosted post is technically a type of social ad, but it’s the bare-minimum kind.

Other kinds of social ads have to be built from the ground up using specialized ad management tools provided by the platforms (like Meta Ads Manager or LinkedIn Campaign Manager).

It’s kind of the reverse process of a boosted post; rather than beginning with content and then applying a budget and goal, you start with the budget and goal, and then you assemble your visuals, text, etc.

Those elements can come in various forms. In Meta, for example, they can include carousel ads, video ads, Stories ads, lead forms, collections, dynamic product ads, and more.

LinkedIn offers chat ads, messaging ads, document ads, and several other types.

Each one is customized to be deployed in a specific spot and achieve a particular objective, offering considerably more flexibility than a boosted post. 

Also Read: The Only Instagram Ads Guide You Need in 2026

What are the Differences Between Boosted Posts vs Ads?

The crucial distinction lies in the degree of control you have. Boosted posts serve as a simple, rapid way to inject cash into existing content, whereas social ads are completely tailored campaigns you construct piece by piece. Here’s a breakdown of how they differ in the key areas:

FeaturesBoosted PostSocial Ad
Where it comes fromOrganic post already presentCompletely created from scratch in Ads Manager
ObjectivesReach, engagement, profile visits, link clicks, lead generation (LinkedIn only)All of the above, plus store traffic, app installs, website conversions
Targeting optionsBasic demographics and interestsCustom audiences, exclusion lists,  retargeting
Where the ads appearFeed onlyFeed, Reels, Stories, Messenger, Audience Network, LinkedIn Message Ads
Control over creative aspectsRestricted to original post formatFull control over format and creative variations
Ad formatsImage, video or carouselCarousel, Stories, video, lead forms, dynamic product ads
ReportingBasic analytics (reach, engagement, clicks)Complete conversion tracking, attribution, demographics, and results of A/B tests
Complexity of useLowHigher (knowledge of Ads Manager needed)
Best forAmplifying top performing posts, fast engagement wins, and testingLead gen, retargeting, conversions, scaling campaigns

How is Targeting Different?

Boosted posts allow you to target your ads by location, age, gender, and interests. That’s sufficient to reach a broad relevant audience, but doesn’t let you much granularity. Full social ads empower you with significantly more sophisticated targeting capabilities.

Through Meta Ads Manager, you can build audiences tailored specifically to your existing visitors from your website, your email list, or your app users. You can construct “lookalike” audiences by mirroring your most loyal customers.

You can also create exclusion lists to avoid showing ads to anyone who has already performed the desired conversion action. For LinkedIn Campaign Manager, comparable targeting features are available, including account-based targeting based on the company name, job title, seniority level, and industry.

How are Ad Placements Different?

When you boost a post, it’s typically displayed solely within the feed. Meta boosted posts are restricted to three placement locations: the Facebook mobile feed, the Facebook desktop feed, and the Instagram feed.

Full ad campaigns provide access to a much wider spectrum of placement options. Among the ones accessible only via Ads Manager or Campaign Manager are:

  • Instagram Stories and Reels
  • Facebook right column
  • Facebook Marketplace
  • Meta Audience Network
  • Messenger inbox and sponsored messages
  • LinkedIn Audience Network
  • LinkedIn Message Ads and Conversation Ads

Access to a larger array of placements presents more opportunities to capture the attention of your audience in the spaces where they already engage.

How are Reporting and Optimization Different?

Boosted posts offer only a superficial view of metrics such as reach, impressions, engagement, and link clicks. These metrics are useful for tracking general social media performance but offer minimal insight into your overall business objectives.


Social advertisements that have been created through Ads Manager give you a complete tracking solution on your conversion, pixel-level attribution, and demographic of people who have interacted with your ad.

In addition to that, you can carry out an A/B test where you can test different versions of your ads, different audiences, and different placements; after that, automation optimization can take place for the best version.

Observe the detailed demographic insights for this LinkedIn ad campaign. In essence, boosted posts tell you what happened. Social ads help you understand why it happened and refine future actions.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Boosted Posts in 2026

Every one of these social advertising tactics comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Here’s a breakdown of the good and the bad concerning the use of boosted posts versus full ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn:

Benefits of Boosted Posts

Should you notice an organic post showing especially strong performance, you can swiftly transform it into a boosted post with only a few taps or clicks.

As the most straightforward and user-friendly entry point into social media advertising, boosted posts eliminate the need for additional design, copywriting, or strategy skills beyond what was already employed for the initial organic content creation.

There is an additional, easily overlooked advantage: boosted posts leverage social proof. The engagement-likes, comments, and shares-from the original organic post is preserved, which enhances the credibility of the promoted content among new audiences.

Drawbacks of Boosted Posts

Boosted posts provide a restricted set of advertising objectives. Within Meta, the following objectives are available for boosted posts:

  • Post engagement
  • Profile visits
  • Thruplays
  • Messaging conversations
  • Link clicks

LinkedIn’s boosted posts offer slightly expanded options:

  • Brand awareness
  • Post engagement
  • Website visits
  • Video views
  • Lead generation
  • Events

While boosted posts on LinkedIn can now be utilized for lead generation, certain objectives, such as website conversions and lead generation from job applications, remain exclusive to campaigns initiated via Campaign Manager.

Similarly, for Meta, objectives focused on conversions, such as generating leads or sales, are not accessible for boosted posts. Another drawback is the limitation on ad placement options.

For boosted posts on Meta, you are restricted to placements within Instagram, the Facebook mobile feed, and the Facebook desktop feed. Reporting on boosted posts is also more rudimentary.

You’ll see metrics like reach and engagement, but lack the advanced conversion tracking, attribution data, and detailed demographic insights available through full ad campaigns. And for iOS users: a 30% service fee applies to boosted ads created through the Instagram and Facebook apps on iOS devices.

To circumvent these, you can: boost a post from your desktop browser, add pre-funded cash to your ad account, or boost the post via an alternative boosting platform such as Hootsuite.

While these workarounds do allow you to avoid the additional 15 percent fee when using your credit/debit card in app, they don’t provide the same degree of ease in boosting a post natively within each respective social app (this change is applicable to iOS users).

Also Read: 10 Google Ads Trends in 2026 To Incorporate in Your Marketing Strategy for Future Success

Benefits and Drawbacks of Social Ads

Benefits of Social Ads

The primary advantage of social ads is their level of customisation. You gain access to a wider variety of business objectives for your campaigns. Furthermore, for certain platforms (LinkedIn), options such as ‘job applicants’ can only be selected from the campaign manager.

These objectives for tracking conversions will become essential for optimising your return on investment in the long-term. For campaigns across Meta (Instagram and Facebook), you also have a wider selection of advertising placements to choose from when setting up social ads compared to promoted posts.

This includes, but is not restricted to: facebook feed side ads, instagram stories, and ads in the ‘Meta Audience Network’. While most of the targeting capabilities for a boosted post and a social ad are the same, social ads allow for greater flexibility over optimisation.

They provide advanced targeting settings, and options to use look-alike audiences or retarget based on customer lists or visitors to a website. The platform’s dynamic creative optimisation feature also automatically tests different ad copy, images, and CTA together to maximise its impact.

Because social ads are created within the social network’s specific campaign manager tools, you have the luxury of dictating all creative aspects, from the ad’s design and copy to its CTA buttons and overall message.

Drawbacks of Social Ads

But for small social teams (or individual entrepreneurs responsible for their social channels), that final benefit may in fact turn out to be a drawback.

Crafting social ads from the ground up is far more time-consuming than repurposing an existing post. Dedicated assets must be created, copy written, targeting set up, and so on. If your team lacks a designer or paid media expert, this process will be especially difficult.

To make the most of your budget when running a campaign across social platforms, you’ll often want to experiment by showing slightly different variations of your advertisements to test out which ones gain you the most conversions.

This adds the additional complexity of managing an A/B test between campaigns on each platform, and with poor optimisation, budget is burned on ineffective ads. If you don’t have access to design expertise, learning how to create social media advertising with the use of appropriate visuals requires an additional time and effort.

Social media platforms’ ad managers such as The Ads Manager by Facebook, are powerful tools that can also be a bit intimidating when first using them. It will likely take time to fully understand the platform and how campaigns work before you achieve positive results.

When Should a Boosted Post be Used?

Boosted posts are your best bet if you want to get the easy button solution for your social ad campaign. Boosted posts are a good place to start if you don’t have a lot of time on your hands, a large team, or you are just starting out in social advertising.

Many new advertisers on Meta get started with a simplified solution such as a boosted post before graduating to full ad campaigns. This is an easy way to experiment without much risk.

As time goes on and you start to figure out what works for your business, you may want to try out full social ad campaigns, especially once you know performance levels of boosted posts vs ads on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Try out one or two of the below situations for boosted posts:

Increasing thought leadership: You see that thought leadership is getting a ton of organic attention. Extend it by boosting your content! Your CEO wrote a LinkedIn post that was doing well? Give it a boost to reach more professionals.
Event promotion: You’re hosting a webinar next week or a major conference next month. Give it a push! Boost to get your content in front of more eyeballs quickly.
Testing out content before a full campaign: Not sure which ad creative would perform well? Use a boosted post to get an early sense of what your audience responds to.
Seasonal content: You created a post about holiday sales or a trending topic. Give it a boost instead of taking the time to build a whole new campaign!

You can absolutely do social media advertising with only boosted posts but just be sure that what you want from the ads aligns with what you can achieve from them.

For instance, if you want more leads or need advanced targeting options, boosted posts won’t deliver. On the other hand, for thought leadership, customer spotlight posts, or a new product launch or event, boosting could work on LinkedIn.

When Should a Social Ad be Used?

A social ad will be your best and only bet if you need to go outside of the parameters available in a boosted post, like conversion, audience targeting or additional ad placement options.

If you want to do A/B testing and are interested in a campaign consisting of many different ad sets, using a social ad even if your ad campaign goals could fall into the parameters of boosted post options may make sense for you.

For instance if you want to try out different formats like landing page engagement or other campaigns with landing page traffic goals you’ll want to try social ads.

Take these situations that often call for social ad usage into account. For enterprise use cases, full social ads are almost always the answer; and this includes the below.

Lead generation: Lead ad forms available on Meta or on LinkedIn are excellent options to collect this info without taking the prospect to any outside website.
Retargeting visitors on site: Have you noticed a specific demographic of users coming to your website who then abandon their shopping carts? Send personalized ads to people that recently visit your page, based on the pixels collected without going out of network.
Attribution with multi touch: Tracking the consumer’s entire buying journey and understanding how your campaigns contributed to a conversion are more possible with full ad campaigns.
Scaling what works: Once you identify a winning combo, it’s easy to scale out your boosted post from a few dollars a day to hundreds or even thousands using full ad campaigns.

Brand owners with an extensive advertising budget can derive more from full social advertising campaigns. Although most small businesses use boosted ads, over 90% of the estimated $100 billion that Meta generates from US advertising revenues comes from social ad campaigns created in Ads Manager.

What is the Cost of Boosted Posts and Social Ads?

No easy answer here; social networking sites are gobbling up almost 32% of the US online advertising budget, so competition continues to keep prices going up. Here is a general rule of thumb for planning purposes: Facebook ads cost different amounts depending on your industry and campaign objectives.

You can boost your Facebook posts for as little as $1 per day. LinkedIn needs at least $10 per day to boost your posts. Full ad campaigns require more money but at least the same minimum budget as mentioned above. Here are several things that affect how much you will spend:

Size of Audience and Competition

The cost of an ad campaign depends mostly on the number of competitors interested in the same audience and how well-defined the target audience is. The more precisely you define your audience, for example, wealthy professionals, niche interest groups, or users with high purchasing intention, the fiercer the competition will become as more and more advertisers seek to reach this lucrative audience.

This helps in increasing auction prices, leading to increased CPM and CPC prices. Though large audiences are cheaper because of the availability of a lot of inventory, such audiences comprise lesser targeted users, who can reduce the efficiency of conversion rate and ROI.

  • Precise target audience tends to be more costly since many advertisers bid for the same narrow pool of users
  • Broad audiences are less expensive since more inventory is available, but consist of fewer relevant users, thus lowering the conversion rate
  • Pricing is set via real-time auctions that adjust to demand, which means that prices change instantly if the competition grows or falls
  • Segments with high value (affluent users, decision-makers, purchase ready audiences) will always attract more bids than others

Placement

Placements are the spots where your ads show up on different platforms. This greatly affects your cost of advertising. The placement types such as Instagram Feed, Facebook Feed, Reels, or LinkedIn Feed, for example, are more expensive as they attract more engagement, are more costly due to high visibility and are in low supply. 

There are also lower-tier placements such as Audience Network and others, which can be significantly cheaper but will not provide you with much engagement and conversions. There is an option of automatic placements in many ad platforms which allocate ad budgets on several placements for better optimization.

  • Placements such as feeds, reels and stories are more costly as they produce high engagement and competition among advertisers is high
  • The lower-tier placements are cheaper, but have a poor conversion rate due to weak engagement from users
  • Automatic placements allow to spread ad spend across several placements based on performance
  • Limited inventory of placements leads to competition that drives up CPC and CPM prices

Campaign Objective

Campaign goals affect how the advertisement system will be optimized during the distribution of the advertisements and therefore affect costs. Campaigns that are meant to increase awareness are always the cheapest since they aim at increasing the visibility of the ad only.

Performance campaigns, which include conversions, lead generation, and application installs among others, are the most expensive because the algorithms are tasked with finding the users with a higher intent of taking some meaningful actions, which is quite challenging.

  • Conversion-based campaigns usually cost more because they involve the process of getting high-intent users to do certain actions
  • Awareness campaigns are the cheapest because they do not optimize on actions but on impression, making their delivery relatively easy and low-cost
  • Traffic and engagement campaigns cost moderately but may not necessarily result in any sales or revenue outcomes
  • Learning periods in the course of campaign delivery cause a temporary rise in the costs until the algorithm finds ways of optimizing it

Seasonality

Seasonality is another factor that heavily influences ad prices since the demand for advertisers varies from season to season depending on seasonal cycles within industries. In peak seasons like festivals, holiday seasons, or sale seasons, the demand for ad inventory will increase as advertisers boost their budgets at the same time.

Off-peak season is usually characterized by low competition and low prices for ads. Depending on the cycle within a specific industry, ad prices will vary. For instance, the e-commerce industry experiences peaks during festival seasons, while education campaigns peak during admissions seasons and travel ads during holiday planning.

  • Peak season causes an increase in advertiser budgets, resulting in increased competition and high CPM and CPC prices
  • The off-peak months usually mean cheaper prices because there will be less demand; therefore, it is better for expensive campaigns.
  • Cycles that occur in different industries (retail, education, travel) result in certain predictable peaks in advertising prices.
  • Short-term peaks based on daily and weekly usage can affect ad prices as well

Creativeness

Creativeness is among the key criteria affecting the cost of advertising since good and relevant creatives receive better delivery from the platform. Good creatives with high-quality visuals, clear messaging, and effective hooks always have higher CTRs and engagement rates.

The message that this advertisement is valuable will be passed to the algorithm, resulting in lower CPC and CPM, since the relevancy scores will go up. Otherwise, low-quality creatives will bring low engagement, which means the platform will have to spend more on delivering the same performance, resulting in an increase in costs.

  • Good creatives help get higher engagement metrics, such as CTR, which tells about the relevancy of the ad to the audience and reduces costs of advertising
  • Low-quality creatives with poor messages or confusing ones have low engagement rates
  • Quality visuals, messaging clarity, and effective hooks increase the ranking of the ad in auctions, thus lowering the cost per result
  • Testing various creatives via A/B testing helps find the best-performing ads

How to Create an Ad Budget?

To get started with boosted posts, start with $5-$20 per day on those pieces of organic content that work best for you. Collect data for a few weeks in order to create a baseline and then expand those efforts that work.

For running an entire ad campaign, you have to allocate sufficient social media marketing budget so that you could escape from the learning stage. Meta suggests reaching approximately 50 conversion events per week per ad set.

If the cost per conversion equals to $10, you need about $500 per week per ad set.

Analytics tools will assist in finding out what kind of organic content works best among your followers so that you could use ad budget there.

How to Make a Boosted Post and a Social Ad?

Boosting a post can be done within minutes. Creating a social ad takes more time because of the extra options you have for personalization. Below is a short overview of each process.

Steps to boost a post on Facebook/Instagram

  • Log in to your Facebook Page or Instagram business account and choose the post you want to boost.
  • Tap the Boost post button under the post.
  • Choose a purpose (profile traffic, website visits, or messages).
  • Create your target audience based on location, age, gender, and interests, or allow Meta to create a targeted audience for you.
  • Select your daily budget and period.
  • Review your boost and click Boost post to proceed.

Steps to boost a post on LinkedIn

  • Access your LinkedIn Company Page and select the post you wish to boost.
  • Click the Boost button above the post.
  • Pick a goal (brand awareness, engagement, video views, website visits, event, or leads).
  • Pick your target audience based on the targeting options available at LinkedIn for professionals (location, role, seniority level, industry sector).
  • Define your budget, time frame and duration and click the button “Boost”.

Steps to make an ad on Ads Manager

Creation of an advertising campaign at Meta Ads Manager requires to follow the three-level hierarchy:

Campaign level: Select the goal of your campaign (brand awareness, website traffic, engagement, leads generation, mobile application promotion or sales).

Ad set level: Define your audience, placements, budget and schedule. At this level you will configure your custom audience, lookalike audience and retargeting.

Ad level: Upload your creative (image, video, carousel), write copy, add call-to-action and specify destination URL.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager follows the same hierarchical order. The main difference from boosting is that you start creating your campaign from scratch.

Can You Run Ads and Boosted Posts Simultaneously?

Absolutely, and almost any successful brand does this. The reason behind it is that the purpose of ads and boosted posts is different.

One way to do this would be through using boosted posts to see what works and what does not with regards to the messages, visuals, and themes you use. Then you create ad campaigns out of these results, which have better targeting and goals, and are dedicated to a certain theme.

For instance, you could boost three different LinkedIn posts related to a new feature of your product with a low budget each. The post that receives more engagement and clicks becomes the starting point for the full-fledged lead generation campaign.

This will lower your ad spend by testing your message in a cost-effective manner prior to investing in a bigger budget. In addition, this will make sure that your advertising strategy is complementary to your organic approach rather than in competition with it.

Boost Posts 

First start with boosting those organic posts which have the highest engagement level in terms of likes, shares, comments, saves, or any other interaction. These posts are in fact “pre-validated” by your community, meaning that there is a much higher probability of success for these posts under paid distribution.

With the help of boosting, you get an opportunity to boost these posts beyond organic reach and test the results of their performance with different or wider audiences. This is not a testing phase per se but rather a fast validation of some creative or messaging direction to consider investing in.

  • Select only those posts which have already demonstrated strong organic traction in terms of likes, engagement, shares, or saves, as these metrics are signals of post relevance
  • Use boosting as a tool for quick amplification of posts’ reach and testing beyond organic reach with minimal costs
  • Consider boosting stage as validation rather than advertising campaign and thus filter weak content at the early stage
  • Look for initial signs of paid post’s success based on engagement rate and click behavior

Identify Performing Posts

Once a few key posts have been boosted, the next logical step is evaluating the performance of these posts in terms of identifying winners not only in terms of high-quality engagement but also in terms of business results and effectiveness.

This implies going beyond the metrics of likes and impressions and concentrating on other performance factors including CTR, cost per result, watch time, saves, and conversions. 

Such winners will be the posts that are capable of generating both interest and actions from the audience efficiently. This stage of your research is essential since it enables you to turn raw data into valuable insights for further decisions regarding ads.

  • Do not rely solely on the metrics of likes or impressions when evaluating performance of boosted posts, use CTR, CPC, and conversion rate
  • Find the pattern among the top-performing posts, the specific hook, visual or message style that guarantees better performance
  • Compare several boosted posts to find out what creatives are most efficient in terms of cost and reception
  • Base your decision on data-driven analysis to choose content that has already shown its scalability

Create a Full Campaign

After winning content has been established, the next step is to create a fully structured advertising campaign around this content in order to properly scale your results. Unlike the boost approach, full campaigns in tools like Meta Ads Manager allow for full targeting control, budget setting, placements and performance goals management.

You have the possibility to scale your reach in an intelligent way, from testing to optimizing for performance. Moreover, it will be possible to implement more advanced tools such as lookalike audiences and retargeting and achieve even more efficient conversion.

  • Create structured campaigns out of winning boosted posts using advanced targeting options for reaching bigger audiences
  • Establish performance goals such as leads generation, sales or app downloads in order to optimize ad spend according to measurable outcomes
  • Implement retargeting and lookalike audiences to make your conversions even more effective
  • Scaling of proven creatives lowers the risk of failure and guarantees better performance at higher budgets

How to Use Hootsuite to Boost Posts and Ads?

Boosting Posts

Boosting a post with Hootsuite is as convenient as boosting it directly from social networks, with the additional perk of allowing you to boost the post for several social networks right from one screen.

Boosted posts can be scheduled for the future and triggers can be set up for automatic promotion of posts depending on performance or keywords. They show up alongside your other posts in your social media calendar, providing an overview of everything you are doing through Hootsuite in one screen.

What you need to do is link your social ads account with Hootsuite and then select the posts which you want to boost (or the criteria on which the posts should be selected automatically for boosting). Allocate the budget for the same, target your audience and your boosted post is ready to go.

Try setting up a fixed budget per week for your boosted posts and use the automation engagement triggers to promote your top performing content. This is an easy and relatively passive way to increase your reach and learn more about the results which you may derive from your social media ad spend.

We also previously talked about the 30% fee associated with boosting posts inside the iOS Meta app. The fee does not apply when using Hootsuite to boost posts. One less fee due to being an iOS service is yet another advantage of managing your boosts from a single dashboard.

Social Ads

When creating social ads in the platforms’ own ad management tools, Hootsuite provides you with more opportunities for customizing and targeting your ads compared to boosting a post.

However, unlike in the case of the platforms’ own native advertising tools, with Hootsuite Social Advertising, you will be able to plan, create, manage, schedule, and monitor all of your ads and organic posts on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn without having to open different tabs.

This means that you will have the opportunity to alter your cross-platform social ads strategy right from one dashboard and allocate your budget from one platform to another in a matter of seconds.

Even more critical, however, is the ability to tailor your social advertising to complement your organic marketing efforts, rather than be in competition with your organic views. And when it comes time to analyze your results, you’ll have detailed analytics available to help you improve your strategies over time.

Hootsuite Advanced Analytics provides reporting on ROI, so you can measure exactly how much return you’ve gotten from each dollar you’ve invested into each social network.

Wrapping Up

Boosted posts and ads should be considered as the stages of the same ecosystem rather than competitors. Boosted posts prove their effectiveness at the stage of promotion in case there is a need to test and validate the content, increase its visibility and gain first feedback without any additional setup.

Thus, boosted posts make it possible to understand what organic posts are popular among customers. At the same time, it becomes critical to use ads if the main idea is to achieve scaling, precise targeting and business results. Ads help to create an environment where performance optimization and cost management are possible.

Using a boost-only approach means limiting the opportunities for growth. At the same time, using ads only without testing is also quite risky. It is necessary to use both approaches together to create an effective system where budgets will be used for proven content.

FAQs

Is it good to use only boosted posts for my business to grow?

Boosted posts can be used for increasing the reach of the post and for gaining more engagement; however, it will not be sufficient for your business to grow. The major limitation of such type of posts is their lack of targeted options, conversion optimization and tracking that are provided by ad campaigns. Even though they are good for quick visibility or for testing the performance of the post, it is usually impossible to scale up revenues or leads through boosting only.

When should I boost my post and why not to run ads?

It will be reasonable to boost your post if your aim is fast visibility or easy engagement. Also, boosted posts are good for those cases when you have some good-performing organic post which needs to be reached to the wider audience. Boosting is also convenient for the beginner advertisers who are not acquainted with the ad managers. In case your aim includes conversions or lead generation, ads will be more beneficial than posts.

Are ads more costly compared to boosted posts?

Advertising is not more costly compared to boosted posts; however, advertising has more room for flexibility during budget optimization. Boosted posts tend to use up money on metrics related to overall engagement, while in ads, you can optimize your money spent in accordance with desired results, whether that would be conversions or clicks. With better-targeting tools, ads can actually help achieve the same goals at a lower cost. But, poorly-managed ad campaigns could turn out to be quite costly.

Is there a possibility to convert a boosted post to an ad?

A boosted post can often be reused and converted into an ad in the framework of a well-developed ad campaign. Many advertisers find successful boosted posts and reproduce them as ads in Ads Manager in order to get more control over their campaigns and better results. This way, you can take advantage of more advanced targeting, focus on conversion and optimize your delivery. Boosted posts help test the content while ads help scale the campaign.

Which option is better for a beginner: boosted posts or ads?

The boosted posts will be more suitable for a beginner since they are easy to do, fast to implement and require no special expertise in advertising platforms. Boosting posts is a good way to start experimenting with the paid promotion without worrying about sophisticated targeting and campaign settings. But eventually, it will be necessary to switch from boosted posts to ads due to the need for better optimization tools and analytics.

Author

Navneet Kaushal is the Editor-in-Chief of PageTraffic Buzz. A leading search strategist, Navneet helps clients maintain an edge in search engines and the online media. Navneet is also the CEO of SEO Services company PageTraffic which is one of the leading search marketing company in Asia.