Boost

About a month ago I wrote here about the Cabled Scarf designed by Annelies Baes with Greener Wool Mergelland. Together with Annelies I planned a small social media campaign where I would post something about the scarf on Facebook and Instagram and she would share the post with her following.

Thanks to shares by accounts with a large following (Filière Laine, Annelies Baes, Brei- en Haakdag and Inside Crochet) and a few friends that resulted in a reach (as calculated by Facebook, you never know what it really means) of 5.138. That’s gigantic! At the very best a post from Greener Wool has a reach of over 250, but most of the time it doesn’t get over 150. For once Facebook’s nudging that this post was performing better than normal and that I should boost it convinced me in doing so. Mind you, they’ve said that about almost every post so far.

I set a budget of 8 (eight) euro and I asked Facebook to do the following:

Target men and women, ages 13 – 65+ who live in 6 locations, and have 9 interests.

Location – Living In: Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, United States and European Economic Area (EEA)

Excluded Connections: Exclude people who like Greener Wool

Age: 13 – 65+

Language: Dutch, English (UK), French (Canada), English (US), Dutch (België) or French (France)

People Who Match:
Interests: Sustainability, Sustainable living, Ravelry, Environmentalism, Sustainable Brands, Natural product, Ecology or Organic product
And Must Also Match:
Interests: Inside Crochet, Simply Crochet, Crocheting Club, Crochet Guild of America, I Love Crochet, Crochet! Magazine, Crochet, Knit and Crochet Now! or Crochet World Magazine

That resulted in an additional reach of 6.468. My phone just didn’t stop buzzing for 7 days because of the incredible number of likes on Instagram.

I have to admit that this most probably wasn’t a very expert targeting, but honestly, I think it was all fake.

I took the effort to look deeper into the people liking the post. Checking their profile on Facebook or on Instagram showed time and again the same stuff: duckfaced millennial fashion victims with no interest whatsoever in sustainability, crafts or crochet! At first I had – on Facebook’s advice! – selected the entire world as geographical area. They would take care of selection the appropriate regions for me, they said. On the first day all the likes received by my post about a woollen scarf came from Middle Eastern desert places where it’s 40° on cold days. So I changed the parameters and selected only countries where I’ve actually already had real likes and real customers. To no avail: the origin of the likes changed, but the profiles where of the same type.

Will I ever again boost a post on Facebook? Obviously not! Did I get something for my 8 euros? Yes, I’ve learned that the real boost comes from real people.