I promoted, or “boosted” a post on IG (Instagram) for the first time, in connection with a post I made showing a mashup of the three covers of my new book Taterskin & The Eco Defenders (the Kindle eBook cover, the Paperback cover, and the Hardcover . . . cover).
I was surprised by two things: First, how inexpensive it was. The default/suggested “campaign” was only $30 for six days. I got to select the primary geographic audience (I chose the USA), and a few subjects or topics of interest, as you will see below.
The second thing I was surprised about was that the “Boost Post” button changed to “Pending Approval” after I set it up as above (PayPal is the payment method). I thought it would be instantly approved. And that’s a related surprise (2B, let’s call it): maybe it was actually instantly approved, but it doesn’t tell you that. It’s still saying “Pending Approval” as you can see here:
…but the campaign has begun, as you will see by the following screen shots of my phone. When I tap the “View Insights” link below my post, I see:
…and (part 2):
When I selected the “Edit Promotion” link at the bottom of the “Promotion Insights” page (unseen in the screenshot above, but it’s below the “gender” area (which shows 64% female and 34.5% male, which leaves 1.5% who are apparently undecided)) I saw this:
So what’s up with “Pending Approval” displaying, when the campaign has obviously already begun? I tapped the “Pending Approval” link or button and saw this:
So whether it will turn out to be $30 well-spent or wasted, I don’t know yet. Maybe, instead of focusing on those interested in ecological issues, I should have set it up to target Young Adult readers, or YA books? Or animal lovers? I’m not at all sure; I’m no marketing genius/guru.
UPDATE
The button now shows it as being “Currently Boosted”:
Saturday, 1/8/22
The campaign will end today (Saturday, 1/8/22), and I will post the final results of how effective the campaign was. I will then create another 6-day, $30 boosting of my post campaign, reaching out to either “Young Adult novels/readers” or “Animals/Labrador Retrievers” as the audience to be targeted (after which, I will do a final campaign for the other specific interest/audience). I’m hoping that these “mini-campaigns” will ignite a minor “gone viral” sort of thing among those communities (environmental, young adult novels, animal lovers/Labrador Retriever fans).
OK, here are what I say after the 6-day promo when I tap the “Insights” button on the IG post that I boosted:
I don’t know what to say as far as whether the promo met my expectations. Are these numbers good? bad? in-between?
For the next boost of the same post targeting a different demographic, I will take note of what they predict the numbers are (to the extent they do), and then compare those at the end of the next 6-day period.
Friday, 1/14/22
The second promotion just finished. I got fewer views on this one (around 5,000 instead of 6,000), but more “hearts”: 34 the first time, 45 the second:
My third and final promotion targets animal lovers, with one type of animal explicitly specified (dog), and to be more specific Labrador Retriever and Golden Retriever. The protagonist Taterskin is the former, and his “forever dogfriend” Rovette is the latter.
Here are a couple screen shots. Note that I am “doubling down” on this final promotion: I’ve gone from the default $30 for six days, to $60 for the same time period:
Notice the slew of interests I chose. Here’s the money screen:
…and here is the Review screen:
I will update later, once I see what this promo accomplishes.
Thursday, January 20th, 2022
Here are the screen shots at the end of the promotion:
So almost half of those reached are whippersnappers. People of my age only make up one in fifteen.
This is interesting. Why these States? California makes sense, as it is one of the primary locations in the book, but the other top four States in population are Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania. So Ohio and Louisiana appear to be more receptive to this promotion than New York and Pennsylvania. I wonder why.
I will update at the end of the month with the number of book sales to try to figure out if the money I spent was worthwhile.