If you are in charge of a small business Facebook page, you have likely received the notification telling you that a post is performing well and you should boost that post to reach more people.

Boosting posts was something that was introduced by Facebook to make their advertising platform easier to use. Instead of creating unique ads to distribute, you could use your normal posts that were performing well and show them to a larger audience.

Boosting posts can seem like a foreign language to some people, so let’s go over the pros and cons of boosting a Facebook post:

Pros:

1. Quick and Easy – Want to get one of your posts to a bigger audience fast? Boosting a post is a great way to do that! If your post is related to some current event or something that is very timely for something going on in the world, boosting a post will allow you to get that message out very quickly.
2. Cost – Boosting a post is very inexpensive. It is very easy to spend $5-$10 boosting post for a few days to see if you can get something to go viral. In comparison, Facebook sets up fairly large daily minimums for their larger campaigns that could cost you at least $5 per day you run the ads. Boosting a post will let you get a little more bang for your buck.

Cons:

1. Limited Targeting – While boosting a post will allow you to do some very high-level targeting, you will not quite have the depth or targeting you get with Facebook’s advertising platform. While this might not be a big deal all the time, it will become an issue if your post only really resonates with a certain market.
2. Long-Term Strategy – Like we talked about in the Pros section, boosting a post is great for short term punch, however, boosting posts is not a good long-term strategy. You can waste a lot of money very quickly by just boosting posts all over the place and it might not get you very far. If you are looking to invest in Facebook advertising long term, boosting posts isn’t for you.

Facebook does a good job of pushing “Boosting” to small businesses who haven’t done any advertising before. From Facebook’s side, they are looking to collect additional revenue from businesses that would not have done any advertising otherwise. Boosting posts makes advertising cheap enough and easy enough that it takes away a lot of the fear of starting to do some ads.

Boosting posts is the 101 of Facebook advertising. if you have always been curious if Facebook advertising is right for you, boosting is a great way to give it a try at a lower cost and risk for your business. If your boosts work, it is time to jump all the way in on Facebook’s ads.