Getting Started with Hootsuite Boost

Hootsuite’s free platform course provides the knowledge and skills to use the full suite of Hootsuite social media management tools. Learn how to utilize these tools to boost the impact of your social media efforts, driving results and proving your ROI.

Video Transcript | Intro

Hootsuite Boost gives users a simple way to put advertising budget behind your top-performing Facebook posts - to help them reach their full potential.

To get started, you’ll need to pick your Facebook page, and then your ad account. 

There are two ways to Boost organic posts: Auto Boosting, which automatically identifies and boosts published posts based on criteria you set; and Single Post Boosting, where you manually select specific posts to put budget behind.

Auto Boosting

Let’s start by looking at Auto Boosting posts. Select Your Page, Ad Account, then name your new campaign. Now, pick an objective. If you’re unsure what to pick, review the available options to ensure they match up with your campaign goals. Next, set up Automation Triggers, so Hootsuite knows which posts to boost. 

Depending on the objective you’ve picked, you can set up content type and engagement triggers for auto-boosting. For example, you could autoboost any post that contains an image or video, has got 50 Shares, includes the terms 'beach' and 'tropical', and excludes posts containing the words ‘unhappy’ and ‘cold’.

Now, pick an audience type: With Recommended, you specify a location, and Boost uses a lookalike audience. By contrast, Build Your Own audience offers a range of targeting options including age, interests, and connections.

If you already have audiences built on FB, access them with the Saved and Custom Audiences buttons. For more information about these options, simply hover over the Tooltip icon.

Boost will automatically publish your Ad to Instagram as well as Facebook. Your spend will be prioritized toward whichever of the two platforms is performing better. However, if you don’t want your Ad to appear on Instagram, simply toggle this option to Off.

Now set budget and duration for the Campaign. Pick Daily Budget to set the maximum you want to spend in a day OR Total Budget, to specify an amount for the entire duration of your campaign.

Please note that your daily spend may not be maxed out, depending on a variety of factors, including whether your audience was available during the time you specified.

When you finally Boost your post, Hootsuite will evaluate all posts moving forward that meet your criteria. It will also review posts from the previous 7 days, to expand the pool of potential posts to boost - and get you up and running faster. 

Please note that the amount of you can spend per month to Boost posts depends on your Hootsuite account type. Refer to the Hootsuite Help Desk for questions about budget and authorizing accounts.

Now that we’ve covered automated boosting, let’s now look at manually boosting individual posts.

Single Post Boosting

You can search for posts to boost in 2 ways: Within the Boost table Or by scrolling through published posts In Stream. Once you find a post you want to boost, click BOOST POST.

The options on the left are very similar to that of automated boosting. Note the preview pane on the right, where you can review what your ad will look like, on mobile, desktop, and Instagram.

You can review the performance of your campaigns in the overview, which is the command centre for all ongoing boosting activities. Filter by ad account, view aggregate campaign stats, pause or delete campaigns, or edit campaigns that have not yet been published by Facebook. Review Boost settings for a successful campaign, and build on its success by creating a new auto-boost with the same settings.

Check out our features page to learn more about what you can accomplish with Hootsuite.