Promoted posts are specific posts you make that you put some cash behind.

This is different to advertising campaigns, which we’ll cover next.

You can promote specific posts via the desktop interface using the promote button.

This is important: when you promote a post it is not shown as promoted. It’s an invisible boost.

This is how lots of accounts can make a certain post go “viral” - you simply post something thing and then put cash behind it to ensure if gets a lot of reach. This is how a lot of accounts will ensure they have viral content. Nobody will tell you this - but I just did.

I’d recommend promoting posts that are already doing well. In the example above you’ll see that the post got ~7000 views organically which isn’t too bad. There’s also a decent level of reposting and bookmarking. This would be a good candidate to place some cash behind to really make it fly.

If you boost a bad post you are just showing a bad post to a lot more people! Waste of money.

If you boost an already popular post though you will be showing it to lots of people who will then repost, like, comment and bookmark, further propelling the reach.

Here’s another tip. You can Promote a post that you commented on someone else’s post. Basically you can promote your comment. Sounds confusing? Here’s a screenshot:

This is the comment I put on a larger account in the previous step in order to get some visibility.

Here’s the cool thing - I can promote that comment for visibility. That secures me the top comment on that original post!

To do this click your response then Analytics. Inside you’ll see Promote. This is a bit of a “hack” so I wouldn’t be surprised if it disappears one day.

Do you really need to spend money? No. All the tactics in this section are specifically to speed up your progress.

Remember though that we are building a business. Your Audience growth is an investment. You can choose to spend time (lots of it) on growing organically. Or you can choose to spend money to speed up the process.

With boosts you can start with as low as $10 and that will ensure thousands of views, depending on the chosen country.

Therefore I’d recommend at least testing a few promoted posts to gauge the effectiveness. Then make a decision about whether you want to spend more time or a little money instead.