If you’re a blogger looking for a turbocharged way to bring in new readers? Then you need to learn how to promote your blog with Facebook ads.

Facebook ads allow you to go out there and get the kind of people who are already interested in reading the kind of content you’re creating — this is called targeting an audience. And it’s why learning how to promote your blog with Facebook ads is one of the best ways to bring in new traffic.

And you know what traffic means…

It’s more page views for display ads, clicks on your affiliate links, product sales, and more. All of that means, you can increase your blog income with Facebook ads.

If you’re interested in learning more, today’s post explains why Facebook ads are a blogger’s secret weapon, a real-world example, and five killer tips to get started.

Why run Facebook ads for your blog?

You got the gist of it above. And the simple explanation is that learning how to promote your blog with Facebook ads will help you monetize your blog much faster than if you’re relying on traditional strategies alone.

See, Facebook ads aren’t just great for bringing new readers to your site. Facebook ads will help you grow your email list.

There is a lot of value in your email list — these are true fans that resonate with your message, will read every article you put out, will share your stuff with their friends, and keep coming back because they align with your message.

Having someone on your list means you’ve built a relationship with them, and those people convert at a much higher rate than casual readers.

And if you’re relying on SEO, Pinterest, or other traffic sources alone, Facebook ads will diversify your traffic and protect you from changes you just can’t control.

You’re going to learn how this all works later in this article, but first, you’re going to learn how we know this to be true…

This blogger went from 0 to 2,000,000+ unique visitors a year in less than 36 months

The personal finance site Millennial Money Man, run by Laptop Empires co-founder Bobby Hoyt, is a prime example of how powerful Facebook ads are for bloggers. When he started his site back in 2015, he took what he knew about running Facebook ads for small businesses and applied it to his site.

Bobby took a couple of his posts that were performing well on their own, and made Facebook ads for them. These articles felt more “tested,” so they had a better chance of bringing in traffic. And they did.

In the beginning, he was spending about $1/day on ads, and that brought about 50 people per day to his site. It varied a little, but the cost-per-click on those ads was $0.02. The normal CPC is up to $2 these days, but that’s still not bad.

Eventually, M$M was spending $30/day on ads and bringing in 1,500 new readers.

Not everyone was signing up for his email list, but a decent percent did. It also increased his display ad revenue, which helped offset the cost of the ads.

Now, running Facebook ads for your blog costs money, and the above results aren’t typical. The latter is because not everyone is willing to put in the work to their site (sorry, but it’s true). However, the tips you’re going to learn today will help you make Facebook ads work for your site.

Learn more at How to Build an Audience From Scratch and 6 Great Ways to Make Money With a Passive Income Blog.

How to promote your blog with Facebook ads: 5 tips for success

1. Niche down hard

If you are just getting started in blogging, or maybe you’ve been blogging but aren’t seeing as much traffic as you would like, the most important thing you can do for your blogging success is to niche down.

See, anyone can have a successful blog as long as there is an audience for what they are writing.

So ask yourself this question, “What is my niche?”

Maybe you’re creating a parenting blog, or a teaching blog, or a nurse blog. Those definitely have strong niches. You’d be able to niche down even further if you wanted, like parenting tips for work-from-home parents. Or teaching G/T students. Or life as a nurse in your specialty.

Benefits of Niching Down

Niching down gives you an advantage in that you’re speaking the language of more of the people in your audience. Relatability is good for retention!

Here’s how this relates to Facebook ads: Knowing your niche will help you create a custom audience when you’re targeting your ads. You will know exactly what kind of people are interested in your site so you’re not just blindly throwing your money around.

Facebook allows you to create an audience of potential new readers based on interests. You can also target based on location, demographics, behaviors, and language. You can even exclude certain people if you really wanted to.

Don’t have your blog yet? Take advantage of our Launch That Blog deal with Bluehost, and let us set up your blog for you!

2. Create a Facebook page for your blog

Now more than ever you’ve got people online, scrolling and scrolling through Facebook. Facebook boasts numbers over 2.5 billion monthly users, and is the biggest social platform in the world. Creating a free page for your blog on Facebook is easy and takes minutes.

Benefits of a Facebook page for your blog

Facebook is one of, if not the cheapest advertising platform with a huge audience. Not only this, but it has the most in-depth demographics collections on its users, making it an advertiser’s paradise.

Having a Facebook page for your blog also gives you a platform to schedule and share content, interact with your readers, and more importantly, is a necessary step for the creation and running of ads on Facebook.

3. Post content regularly

This is an important point that too many new bloggers overlook. Regular posts build trust and let your readers know that you will show up for them. If you’re promoting your blog with Facebook ads, you want to build a good relationship with your new readers.

Get into a rhythm of posting content at least once a week — a Tuesday/Thursday schedule works well for a lot of bloggers. Build out a content calendar with ideas ahead of time to help keep you on track. If you need ideas, think of things that people in your niche might google, and write to address and answer those questions.

Pro tip: This is also a good time to work on search engine optimization for your posts! For more comprehensive info on SEO for Bloggers, check out the course and our full review of it here: SEO for Bloggers Review.

Once you have your posts created and drafted, you can put them into a content scheduler like Buffer, or use the post scheduler in Facebook to have content posted to your Facebook page.

Make sure you engage with the comments on your posts!

Benefits of posting regularly

This is kind of obvious, but bear with us here, it needs to be said. Posting regularly gives you several advantages, not least of which is a larger pool of content to choose from for an ad — you’ll have a better idea of which posts will work as ads.

Having a variety of content also gives you a chance to figure out your audience a little better, based on post engagement. And, of course, it gives you a bigger fighting chance against the Facebook algorithm machine for your posts to be organically seen, engaged with, and shared, which is always a huge win.

To get ahead of the curve for the next tip, read more in Your 7-Step Facebook Ad Manager Training Guide

4. Make your best performing post into an irresistible ad

One of the best things about posting regularly is it gives you the means to analyze your content for potential ad candidates. And, inside the Laptop Empires Facebook Ads for Bloggers Course we teach you how to analyze your posts and find what we call the Unicorns.

If you think you have found a post that would do well (one that is getting a lot of engagement, comments, and shares organically), you’re ready to turn it into an attention-grabbing ad that will draw in new eyes and grow your readership. They’re called “Unicorns” because they are unique and rare. They are your money makers!

Want to know the exact strategy and formula Bobby uses to find Unicorns? Check out the Facebook Ads for Bloggers Course!

Once you’ve identified a post that will work well to promote as a Facebook ad, here’s what you need for a winning ad:

• An attention-grabbing headline
• An eye-catching image
• Copy that piques interest
• Clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA)

Attention-grabbing headline

In Facebook ads, headlines are the large text immediately below the image. They serve to give your audience a brief but enticing look at what you’re promoting.

In our example, Bobby gives you a heads up that he is going to teach you a valuable skill, one that helped him reach success as a blogger.

Eye-catching image

It pays to pay careful attention to what your featured image is, because this becomes the image of your ad automatically. If you choose a good image that clearly conveys your message and relates with your audience, and with limited or no text in the image, you can use it for your ad.

Look for images that are relatable, clear, high-quality, and would resonate with your audience. Our image example shows Bobby in his natural blogger habitat — behind his computer!

Copy that piques interest

When your headline and image are on point, it should catch your audience’s attention long enough to get them to stop scrolling. However, that will probably not be enough to keep their attention. That is where strong copywriting skills come into play.

For blogs in particular, you may want to borrow ideas from your post. Or, you might want to ask questions to get engagement. Perhaps play with thought-provoking or strong statements that invoke a reaction.

A note on CTAs

The CTA is where you hope to point your audience after all the efforts you put into the rest of your ad composition. For many ads, it is an absolute must.

However, for a traffic campaign (which is highly recommended for growing your blog’s reach) the buttons available for a CTA are rather limited, and the only one that would make sense for pulling a previously used post is “Learn More.”

To be honest, it’s not really necessary. And if you are pulling the post from your page, it will automatically format the ad without one.

However, this is critical: you need to make sure that you are running an actual ad campaign, not just boosting the post. This is crucial for you to actually see results in growing your blog readership, as boosted posts don’t drive traffic as much as they just get you engagement. As a bonus bit of information, “Unicorn” campaigns are always traffic campaigns. Never, ever, ever press that “boost post” button. Just don’t do it.

For more examples of winning ads, read 7 Examples of Great Facebook Ads and Why They Work

5. Optimize your email list sign-ups

Bringing people to your site is great, but capturing email addresses is even better. So how do you do that?

First, if you haven’t started your email list yet, check out How to Build an Email List From Scratch for the basics of how to build your list.

You will need to build in places on your site to get email addresses. These are called opt-in forms. They give your readers an easy place to enter their email address. Many bloggers find success when they offer a lead magnet.

You may have seen this lead magnet on our site:

The CTA says to readers, “Sign up if you want to become a profitable blogger.” Then, people are getting a valuable piece of content that doesn’t exist anywhere else on our site when they give us their email address. It’s a win-win.

Don’t have a lead magnet yet? Here’s one of Millennial Money Man’s opt-in forms. It promises fresh content delivered via email.

The point is: give new readers a reason to stick around and give you their email address. Remember, you’re building relationships.

You can learn about the benefits of your email list in Why You Should Start an Email List in 2020.

The final word on how to promote a blog with Facebook ads

This is all doable. If you have a blog, or are thinking of starting a blog, it is very possible to grow your blog with Facebook ads. It is very possible to turn your blog from a creative outlet to a side hustle that helps with the bills, or even a total replacement for your day job. We know this because Laptop Empires was built in part by a guy who did just that.

If this all feels a little overwhelming, we get it. That’s why we created the Facebook Ads for Bloggers Course to teach this in greater depth! Inside the course, we teach you how to do all of the things mentioned above, including finding and promoting Unicorns, creating and retargeting custom audiences, honing your copywriting skills, building your email lists with lead magnets, and even affiliate marketing with Facebook ads.

If you are thinking about promoting your blog with Facebook ads, you won’t find a better resource to help you really understand the inner workings than Facebook Ads for Bloggers.

You aren’t going to see money rolling into your bank account overnight, but as any “professional” blogger will tell you, traffic is king, and this is definitely a fantastic way to increase your traffic for cheap. And that is a winning strategy!