I should add that the reason I rely on my own stats is because of the secrecy that social media employs when altering algorithms. It is not possible to rely on what they tell you will increase your reach because they will often not give enough detail to work out if their advice applies to you or your market. I just gave FB a ticking off for offering to boost a post for me advertising an additional reach of 100-200 and delivering 57. I made sure they knew that if those figures are multiplied up, I would have to spend ÂŁ10 to get a reach of 200, and yet they advertise that ÂŁ10 should provide up to 2000. Thatâs pretty blatant.
Sam x
Hi, Itâs all getting too complicated now. I started my instagram account about a year ago and read up on it all and that was the general advice - however mine was a business account straight awayâŚReal shame that they have to keep changing it all and making it so much harder to be seen. I didnât know that about twitter and I always add a link, so will try without. Thanks for the info x
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I find boosting FB posts significantly more effective than Instagram. I spend around a fiver boosting a FB post and reach around 2500 people? Usually works our around 4p a click/like/comment etc. Instagram is more like ÂŁ1 for a like. Not worth it imo.
For British Crafters I am in the process of setting up a blog to âshop the Instagram feedâ so all the posts with have links removed and I will swap the link in the bio to lead there. Trialling it tomorrow to see how time consuming it is!
sighs
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Itâs the fact that they donât tell us how they have changed things before they make the change that makes it complicated. We just get left to find out for ourselves, and sometimes that has cost money or has meant a lost opportunity. I donât know for certain about Twitter, but I have seen other Twitter users starting to use the âlink in bioâ line, so I think it is worth a try.
Sam x
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You will have to let us know if it is worthwhile then!
Sam x
Thatâs interesting because the last post I boosted states that it had no engagements and it still cost me ÂŁ1. ÂŁ5 for 2500 represents 5 people reached for every penny spent. On those figures my ÂŁ should have bought me a reach of 500 (that I would have been well satisfied with) but it didnât. Now is this because your posts are reaching the right people and mine arenât or because FB is fiddling with the reach for posts boosted for less than ÂŁ5? I canât say, but (sniffs nostalgically) a FB post I boosted for ÂŁ1 back on 3rd October this year reached 309 people. Or maybe theyâre asking for more money for promotion because itâs Xmas and everybody is promoting?
Sam x
I ran a campaign for someone today - so their advert with my BC following
61
Post Engagements
836 Reach
1,006 Impressions
ÂŁ0.05
Per Post Engagement
This resulted in 4 sales.
Not sure if thatâs helpful or not?
I do target a specific audience and switch it around during the day if it doesnât seem to be working.
It does seem like you were charged too much though!
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Hmm! Thanks for letting me see your stats @dottiedesigns. They look very healthy 
I didnât know you could switch audience during the day. It may also be due to my profile settings. I have set it back to jewelry/watches this evening, after a brief stint as âlocal business,â âjewellery wholesalerâ and âartistâ but FB keep trying to change it.
Sam x
I use Google analytics. I get hardly any traffic from Twitter, unless itâs hidden as direct traffic. Instagram does show as Instagram. But again, not sure if GA classes it as Direct. But views are still really really low on both E and here. As its cyber month, Iâve not done much promoting, too much to compete with⌠But itâs still the best platform for me. Sounds like, leaving links out may be worth a try.
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Reading your comment here, I thought I would take a good look at my stats over the past month and be really critical. It seems that most of my views are coming direct from Folksy, from the Folksy Blog, the Forum, Google and then all of the other social media are at the bottom of the pile. A few from FB, 1 from Insta and 1 from Twitter. So my social media promotions arenât working at all. Given that I have paid some (not a lot) but some money for the FB promotions, it clearly isnât benefitting my sales. I need to have a really hard think about what I spend my money on and when I do it.
Sam x
To help with your analysis⌠On google analytics twitter can show up as t.co not as twitter. If some one clicks on the link on your profile in instagram they get asked if they want to âcomplete the action using safari/ chromeâ (if they are on their phone at least which is probably the vast majority of users) which means it counts as direct traffic not as social media on GA. Not sure how this shows up in the folksy stats but Iâd guess at misc.
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Thanks Sasha! Thatâs extremely helpful. I do get a lot of views from Misc, so it may be they are from Twitter or sometimes I think that they are from Pinterest.
Thanks again
Sam x
Looking at it over a week I can confirm the maths works out. I did have 5 extra views on the Folksy stats not showing on GA which were most likely me obtaining links.
This would mean that Twitter was my most successful social media account, which is a surprise to say the least but I think I will be concentrating my efforts there in future.
Sam x
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Hi Sam. If you have lots of âmiscâ views on your Folksy stats page those could be from the Facebook app. Views from Facebook on desktop and a browser on mobile will be there as Facebook but if people have come from the app, it will be down as âmiscâ. I think itâs the same for the Pinterest and Twitter apps too but I would need to check.
In terms of adding a link on your Instagram posts, are you talking about boosted posts on Instagram or just normal posts? If itâs just normal posts we would recommend not adding a link in the caption as itâs not clickable. You can add clickable (swipe up) links in your Stories when you get over 20k followers, but otherwise youâll need to put a link in your profile/bio instead. If it is a sponsored post, then that sounds bizarre as the idea of those is to get them seen and get people clicking.
There have been a lot of changes on Instagram recently, and you really need to spend time on there interacting with people in order to get your posts seen. Iâm not sure how the algorithm works but would always recommend Me & Orlaâs blog posts and podcasts - she has a free 7-day Instagram course too http://meandorla.co.uk/instagram-resources/
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Thanks Camilla! That is interesting information. I certainly wonât be putting links in Instagram posts again. I spend quite a lot of time on there at the moment as I do enjoy looking at all the beautiful pix, but I do need to make sure it doesnât become a time-waster for that very reason. Iâll have a look at the Me & Orla blog post tomorrow, when I feel more awake!
Thanks again,
Sam x
