As a follow up to last week's work to promote your Facebook page and gain more likes this week we want to focus on 'boosting' a particular post on your Facebook page. By paying to boost a post you ensure that more of your fans and others who are not fans yet will see a particular post.

1. You should only pay to boost a post that has a very specific call to action.  It should be a post that you want your readers to take action on that has the potential to generate revenue. 

2. You can only boost a post that does not have too much text in the image to comply with Facebook standards. Choose your images wisely. Golf course beauty shots and impressive food photos work well here.

3. You cannot set up a boost in advance of a post being live.  Only once you have published a post on Facebook you (as an administrator) have the opportunity to boost it.

4. To boost a post click the blue boost post image on the bottom right of your post and c hoose your audience. (Facebook gives you the option to only boost to those who have liked your page already. This will increase the number of fans that will see your post but for a better reach we suggest choosing your audience through targeting.)  Set your budget and the length of days to boost the post.

5. Check your results under your Insights tab, sub tab Posts. You will be able to compare the reach of the post that you have boosted against ones that you have not. This page also gives you access to boost past posts quickly.

 

More updates to Facebook Messenger are on the way. A few weeks ago we mentioned the new Facebook Messenger Video feature which has rolled out in Canada, U.S. and several other countries already. (Click the video icon on the top right hand of your screen when chatting on messenger to launch a video call). 

On Thursday, Facebook announced a new feature that  gives you bits of information about someone who is messaging you for the first time, whether the person is one of your Facebook friends or not.  Messenger will take information from their Facebook profile, including who your mutual friends are (if you have any), and display that info above their first message to you. Now when someone sends you a message for the first time hopefully you will not need to ask "who is this?"

READ MORE ABOUT MESSENGER INSTANT CONTEXT ON MASHABLE

We have a 14 year old niece who uses Instagram the same way we (the old folks) use a text. She and her friends communicate in a short hand language that few over 30 would dare to understand. So for all of you (and us) who have no idea what we are taking about we have written a blog showing some of the stranger emojis we found and a link to Emojipedia for when you need translation.

READ OUR EMOJI 101 BLOG