I got a note from Mark Zuckerberg. Okay, thanks for pointing out that I was just 1/2,000,000 to do so. And I only did so because I’m feeding the Facebook machine with my hard earned cash. Doesn’t sound that special when I put it that way. (By the way, spell-check didn’t recognize Zuckerberg, so that’s something.)

On this momentous occasion, I thought I’d give my thoughts on the usefulness of Facebook advertising.

I have to this point only used “Boost Post” function to advertise my author’s page. It’s been well documented on many sites that a page’s post will, on its on, only generate a meager reach to one’s Facebook audience. This is especially true when only posting a link.

My daily blog post is automatically linked to my Facebook author’s page and on average it will only reach upwards of 5% of the people who have previously liked my page. Links rarely get much more than that unless a few people have “liked” it which enables broader dissemination.

Direct posts onto my page which do not originate elsewhere do far better, typically reaching more than 10% of my overall audience. But to reach a far greater audience than that, Facebook wants you to “Boost Post.”  By plopping down a few dollars, a particular post can reach thousands of people who have either liked your page or friends of those who have.

I will typically do this when I have a book promotion that I want my wider audience to know about.

How effective has it been? It’s difficult to say, exactly. Facebook gives you all the details – clicks, click-through rate, and other metrics which are supposed to help you evaluate if your ad achieved its goal. But ultimately, it is difficult to say how many clicks end up as sales. Sometimes I’m able to see an uptick in sales at the same time as the ad, but other times I don’t.  But then sometimes I see an uptick in sales and I have nothing concrete to attribute it to. It just happens.

So ultimately, I look at Facebook boost post as a way of getting information into the hands of my reading audience. I don’t ever expect big sales from this boosts. I consider it just one aspect of doing business – one which I hope raises the long-term awareness of my books in the minds of readers.

I will continue to use Facebook boost, at least for the time being, until I can find better ways to reach interested people with my product updates.

That’s my take.

Thanks for the note, Mark.