How do you find an audience for your blog? The obvious answers are keyword research, well-written articles, and social media shares. But the competition among bloggers is steep. There are more blogs out there than anyone could read in an entire lifetime. I’m always looking for ways to introduce potential readers and subscribers to my blog. So, I tested out the different social media ads platforms to find out if paid ads work and which ones work bets. Below are the results of my social media ads blog promotion experiment.
Advertising goals
I had a few goals and expectations for this blog promotion including:
- Increasing my daily blog views
- Gaining social media followers
- Receiving comments on my blogs
- Blog shares
- Gaining Additional WordPress followers
- More email subscribers
My goal with the ads was to increase my daily blog views and hope for a trickle-down effect for the rest of the goals. So, each ad was geared towards clicks.
My site itself is structured to entice readers to stick around to read more posts, check out my resources sections, such as my giveaways and writing tools sections, and sign up for my monthly newsletter. Each post contains easy social media share buttons, and I include a pinnable image for readers to conveniently share on Pinterest.
I wanted the ads to bring in readers and hope that it could maintain whatever bump in views the ads provided through sharing. This puts a lot of trust in the quality of my site and posts along with the hope that readers will share what they like. Here’s how it went.
Facebook – slideshow ad
From March 23-27 2020, I ran a slideshow ad on my business account. I set my budget at $25 for the ad to run for five days. Using Canva, I created banners that provided an overview of my site, including my logo, an overview of my content, and contact information.
In the description, I provided a link to my home page and a call to visit my page. When you set up the ad, you can narrow down your audience and filter it by relevant topics and interests that your audience shares with your page. I tried to narrow it down as best I could, but I had trouble getting it to Facebook’s preferred range of 500,000-1 million people.
I’m not selling a product, and my blog doesn’t have a specific niche. So, I tried to keep the topics related to writing and entertainment, which best sum up my blog. However, these are pretty broad topics. So, my target audience was still large.
Each day that the ad ran, I would check its progress and see an increase in Facebook page likes to my business account each day. However, few people were actually clicking on the link to go to my site. In the end, I spent $24.93, and the ad ended up reaching 1,723 people at 40 cents per click.
My results
- 624 post engagements
- 63 page likes
- 4 link clicks
What I learned from the slideshow ad is to use it to increase page likes. But unless you have something specific to offer, it’s not going to get you link clicks. In the end, it became an expensive way to earn Facebook page likes.
Facebook – single article ad
Curious as to whether or not a promotion linking to a single article would work better, I shelled out $20 for a four day ad to boost one of my blog posts. Titled 15 Methods to Cure Writer’s Block, this post would appeal to writers and one of the target audiences of my blog. It would also appeal to those who were having trouble concentrating on anything other than the scary state of the world in the thick of the timely coronavirus pandemic.
This ad was easier to set up as I already had a banner made from the post itself. Also, it was on a much more specific topic. So, I was able to narrow down my audience a little better. I published it on the evening of April 1, 2020, and it ran until April 5, 2020. Right away, I began to see link clicks.
My results
- 4,144 people reached
- 87 link clicks
- 23 cents per click.
- 4 shares
Much better results than last time but still – $20 for 87 views? I also didn’t see a lot of shares or a huge uptick in subscribers or social media followers. There were only four shares to the post. However, I know that I’m a small fish in a big pond. So, it was a small but significant victory.
Pinterest ad
Pinterest is reiterated time and again as the social media platform necessary to gain views. However, it takes a lot of time and practice to master. I had to learn how to create quality pins, add effective descriptions, pin to relevant boards. Still, my audience growth had plateaued over the past few months.
In the fall, I posted an article titled 10 Deep Cleaning Chores to add to your Fall Cleaning Checklist. It really took off as it’s a prime Pinterest topic. So, in the spring, I created a similar post titled: 10 Deep Cleaning Chores to add to your Spring Cleaning Checklist. I also posted my first of three pins I had created linking to the post.
Without any ad promotion, on day 1 (April 6, 2020), the pin received:
- 2 saves
- 10 clicks
- 874 views
- Total page views: 87
The next day, I set up an ad at $5 a day for four days. My audience range was set at 60 million.
My results
- 17,862 impressions
- 195 link clicks
- 571 engagements
I hit my budget on day 3. So, the ad ended early but with decent results. In the meantime, I was also sharing old posts, putting out calls to read posts, posting on share threads, and trying to draw traffic on other articles to my blog.
Pinterest was my number one traffic source for those three days. My impressions doubled throughout those few days as well. However, they almost immediately plummeted back to their usual numbers after the ad had ended. Clicks on my pin also dwindled to nothing after a few days.
Twitter ad
Though it’s pretty even between Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, at that point, Twitter was my highest traffic source. It’s also where I spend most of my time promoting my blog and engaging with other bloggers.
I’ve tried running a Twitter ad when my blog was brand new with terrible results. So, I wasn’t expecting much from this promotion, and I got what I expected. I set up my ad on April 15, 2020 to start on April 16, 2020. My budget was $25 with a limit on $5 per day. I selected key words and narrowed down my audience to an acceptable number according to their ad center. Then, I created a generic Tweet linking to my blog.
For the next few days, I received only a handful of views from Twitter. My other social media traffic was up, but my Twitter traffic had actually decreased. Two days later, the campaign ended on its own with a total expense of $5.00 Needless to say, I’m done with Twitter ads.
My daily page views really started to plummet to below average during this time too. I post an article that I’ve written on Mondays and a guest post or interview on Fridays. So, those are the days where my traffic spikes. However, my Twitter ad started on a Thursday, and my views were pitiful for an otherwise successful month.
My results
- 0 engagement
Instagram ad
My Instagram account is titled Laura’s Books and Blogs, but I don’t only promote my posts on there. I post one photo a day about whatever I like, reserving Mondays and Fridays to promote my new post that day. But with the inability to post links anywhere than in your bio, it’s hard to get users to leave that site for your own.
However, Instagram ads allow you to click on a link to take you to your blog or website. So, I set up an ad on April 20, 2020 with a budge of $25 to run $5/day. I narrowed down my audience, found a high-quality photo promoting one of my recent posts, an art tutorial titled: My First Acrylic Painting on Canvas.
I follow a lot of artists on Instagram. So, I hoped that the ad would entice them to click on my link. Immediately, I began to see likes on the post. They started to come in dozens. I began with 17 likes when I first promoted the image. In the meantime, I had put out a call to read blog posts on Twitter, and it was going well with a few dozen link clicks on an old article that I had posted a link to in the thread.
By April 22nd, my Instagram post was up to over 500 likes, but I had gained just a handful of new followers and no link clicks to my blog. Seeing no results by April 23rd and with almost half of my budget spent at $12.23, I cancelled the ad and cut my losses. Instagram asked me if I was satisfied with the ad, and I said I wasn’t, indicating that it hadn’t led to many new followers and no link clicks.
My results
- 0 link clicks
- 0 new followers (that I could attribute to the ad)
- 500+ likes
What I learned
My total views for the month were the best ever on my blog, but it came at a literal cost. I’ve come close to that number without any paid promotions.
My next published post after all of my promotions ended was a guest post which was heavily promoted by its author which brought significant traffic to my site, even more than some of my ad promotions. A few general social media posts also hit the right audience at the right time, bringing even more traffic to my site in the following days. It goes to show that paid ads are not the singular method to gain traffic to your blog.
Facebook and Pinterest were my only effective campaigns. However, they were both temporary, and even the nearly 200 link clicks on Pinterest weren’t enough to justify a $20 price tag. It would have been different if I could have gotten some momentum going after the ads ended, but traffic just drops off after the ads end.
If and when I decide to post ads on these platforms in the future, I’d like to link them to posts that contain affiliate links to try to earn back what I spend.
Twitter and Instagram were useless except to show me not to use those platforms with ads. I can do a lot better with free promotions on Twitter, and until you can post links on Instagram, few people will take the extra step to navigate to your bio and leave Instagram for your site.
So, my advice is: figure out what your blogging goals are, and create your ads accordingly. And most importantly, make them worth clicking on.
This was so very helpful. I wondered whether it was worth it to pay to promote. Thank you for doing this post. I do have a quick question. When you get a guest post, it is expensive? How do you make sure they are up to your SEO standards? Do they promote or do you? Do you put affiliate lions on their post? Do many questions.
Thanks for reading! To answer your questions, I don’t pay or charge for guest posts. I provide guest post guidelines in advance. Sometimes they are SEO friendly. Sometimes they aren’t. I do tweak where I can to try to improve SEO (add a paragraph before the guest post with relevant keywords, split the post into sections, break up long paragraphs/sentences, etc.) without altering the writing. I then promote on all of my social media sites, including blogger group threads, and ask the guest poster to do the same. The post is also included in my monthly newsletter. I don’t usually include affiliate links unless they recommend a particular book that I can link to my bookshop.org affiliate program, but I’m not part of the Amazon affiliate program or anything like that. Different bloggers do things differently. So, you have to try to figure out what works best for your blog. Thanks!
Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
That figure that those ad usually work well when you have a product or service to advertise.
Instagram hardly do well when it comes to blog visit.
Read on Neil website on how we should focus more on YouTube ad than Facebook ad.
I’ve often wondered about the effectiveness of paid ads on social media. Now I know for sure! It was kind of what I figured. Great article and experiment! ❤️
Same here. The only one that surprised me was Instagram. I thought I’d at least get more followers and overall engagement on my account out of the ad, but I mostly just got a bunch of likes on one post.
I do not have much experience with paid ads, but I loved reading this and seeing how you made it work. Experimentation is definitely key to find what works for you. 🙂
Thanks for reading! It was definitely eye opening and worth it to find out what works and what doesn’t.
Fascinating. I have done a few Pinterest ads, and it does seem that Pinterest sends more people to my blog than other sites…Twitter seems the worst in that regard…interesting story!
Yes, Pinterest is a lot of work but can really make a difference. Twitter isn’t too bad for me if I post on the right threads at the right time, but in terms of paid ads, it’s not worth it.
Thanks for your insights. We’ve considered paid Pinterest adds.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to know how it goes if you try it out.
Thanks for doing this research for me!
This is literally so awesome!! I love this post – and thanks for doing the ‘dirty work’ for me xD. I’ve been looking into Instagram and Pinterest a bit to begin to generate awareness. I feel like Twitter is definitely best for engagement. I hope you continue writing stuff like this and working at the experimentation. It is truly fascinating :))
You rock!!