Promoting your blog whether you are just starting out or continually expanding can be tricky. Backlink swaps seem great but overall it’s a lot of work for not much reward. And if you have a WordPress-powered blog, you may have even tried to dabble in WordPress Blaze. But as you know from reading my blog about my results with WordPress Blaze is that you don’t really see great results. Instead I highly recommend using Facebook’s Ads Manager to promote your blog. Not only will you get more involved in what your ad intentions are and who you are trying to target, the fact of the matter is that Facebook know how to get content in front of the right people.

If you have never used Ads Manager or are looking for that perfect secret sauce to boosting and properly promoting your blog, read on for a step-by-step guide!

How to start promoting your blog on Ads Manager

Getting to Ads Manager

Step 1: Using the 9 dots in the upper righthand corner of your Facebook, navigate to Ads Manager. It will be listed under the “Professional” section.

Step 2: Once there, make sure you are on the correct Facebook page’s Ads page. If you need to change this, do so by clicking your Facebook icon on the upper left and clicking the appropriate page.

Step 3: Once you are on the correct page, be sure to change the Ad Account for billing over. Do this by clicking the drop down function that is directly to the right of the word “Campaigns” at the very top of the page. This will be so the correct billing is listing under that Facebook page as well as making sure that the campaigns are listed under the correct property.

The perfect ad recipe

Step 4: Time to craft your ad! Click the green button that says “Create”. The window below will pop up.

Step 5: If you are trying to promote a specific blog article, use a “Traffic” boost. On this pop-up window, you have the option to name your campaign and I would suggest doing so for easy reporting.

Step 6: Click “Continue” and another pop up might open asking if you to “Choose a campaign set up”. Click the option for “Manual traffic campaign” as we will be crafting this ourselves.

Budget to promote your blog on Facebook

Step 7: Click “Continue” and your ad set will be opened in front of you. The first page will be where you input your budget. Scroll to the bottom where it says ” Advantage campaign budget” and toggle the option on. Then input your campaign budget. I personally tend to do a Lifetime Budget of $15-$30.

NOTE: Make sure you are letting all of your edits save before moving on! At the bottom of the screen, there will be a ‘loading’ function that will either say “Verifying your edits…” before it changes to a green check mark that says “All edits saved”.

Conversion controls

Step 8: Once the edits are saved, click “Next”. This next page will ask about the type of conversion you want to make and where. If you are promoting your blog, make sure you select “Website”. Then under “Performance goal”, select “Maximize the number of link clicks”.

Step 9: Staying on this second page, under “Budget & schedule” is where you will put your end date. I personally run my campaigns from anywhere to 3 days to 3 weeks. For all the campaigns I have run, my average budget is about $20 and I end up averaging 2,425 impressions and 95 link clicks.

Selecting the best audience

Step 10: Next, scroll to where you see “Advantage+ audience”. Click the blue text that says “Switch to original audience options”. We want to be a little more specific with our audience. With the default functionality, your “Estimated audience size” would be anywhere from 244 million people to 287 million people. Odds are your content does not target every single one of those people. As such, we want to make sure our content is going to the people most likely to click on your ad.

Step 11: Now that you have clicked “Switch to original audience options”, we need to put in our audience members by using “Create a new audience”. Based on the content of your article, you can change the location, age, gender, targeted interests, and language of your audience. For example if I was trying to promote my blog on this awesome spaceship bar in San Diego, I would:

• change the location to people in Southern California within a two hour radius of that bar
• change the age to people within the age of 21-50 (because they have to be of drinking age but also people over the age of 50 may not want to go to a spaceship bar)
• and lastly I would keep all genders, all demographics/interests, and all languages

You know who your content is supposed to attract the best. So really make sure you get somewhat specific here. Based on the example audience I have given above, the “Estimated audience size” is now between 11 million and 13 million. This is a great audience size to have!

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Blog ad placement to promote your blog correctly

Step 12: We are still on this second page of the ad set-up. But this is the last step! At the very bottom, there is a section called “Placements”. This will be where your ad runs across the various Meta placements. In this section, click the blue text “Show more options”. Under “Placement controls”, it will say “All placements selected (recommended)”. Hover over this text and on the right, a blue “Edit” button will pop up. Click it.

Step 13: It will show more functions, but you will want to click the blue text at the bottom that says “Switch to manual placements (not recommended)”. If you want the same results that I get, sometimes you have to do what isn’t recommended by Facebook!

Step 14: Once clicked, you will see this view above. You will want to uncheck Instagram as an option. You’re more than welcome to keep it as an option. But I personally don’t use it for my purposes because I don’t like how the ad gets integrated onto Instagram.

Step 15: Once all edits are saved, it is time to click “Next”. Finally on the last page of the ad!

Finishing up your ad to promote your blog

Step 16: Under “Identity”, make sure the correct Facebook page is listed.

Step 17: Under “Ad Setup” you can either create a brand new ad, use an existing post from your Facebook feed, or use a Creative Hub mockup. I always “Use existing post” as my ads are always crafted after I post about one of my blogs going live on my feed.

Step 18: Under “Ad creative” you can “Select post”. Click the one you want and click “Continue”.

Step 19: If your post already has the link attached to the post in some way, you are good to go! If you would like to add a link or another call to action, at the bottom of the “Ad creative” section, there is a button labeled “Add button”.

Step 20: Once all edits are saved, it’s time to click “Publish”!

Your ad will be reviewed by Facebook first. Once it is reviewed and confirmed, you will start seeing the link clicks roll in!

To promote your blog with Facebook’s Ads Manager is a much more in-depth process. But the results speak for themselves. Additionally, promoting your blog in this manner will also help you build your Facebook page’s audience. All around it’s a win. And now that you have the right tools, it’s time to start making your own perfect ad!