Do you have an organic Instagram or Facebook Page post that is generating a lot of engagement and features a strong call-to-action for your product or service? If the answer to our question is an emphatic “YES!” then we strongly recommend amplifying the existing post by turning it into an ad. Within Facebook and Instagram, you will have the option to “Boost” these organic posts to facilitate higher visibility, but with a boost, you’re a little limited in regards to the parameters that you can set. Instead, the best way to deliver this organic post to a wide variety of targeted people is by pulling it in as an ad.

First thing’s first: If you are looking to pull in an Instagram post as an ad or if you’d like to use a Facebook Page post as an ad on Instagram, you’ll need to make sure that your Facebook Page and your Instagram Business Account are linked (Here’s how to do that). Also, did you notice that we said Instagram Business Account? If you haven’t yet converted your Instagram Account to an Instagram Business account, you’ll need to do that too.

Now that you’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to get to the fun part!

The very first step is to identify the post, either on Instagram or Facebook, that you’d like to use as an ad. It’s very important to note that you won’t be able to edit the Post after it has been pulled in as an ad, so if you need to edit the Post for clarity, to add a link or call to action, or to specify anything about your brand or product, you’ll need to do so first.

After you’re confident that the post will be able to stand on its own as an ad, meaning that it has a clear message and call to action, then you’re ready to go.

Begin the normal campaign creation process (or ad creation process, if you’re adding this Post Ad into an existing campaign), starting with selecting an objective for your campaign.

After your objective is set and your campaign is named, you’ll move onto the Ad Set details. Complete all sections based on your campaign parameters up to the Placements section. In the Placements section, carefully assess where you’d like for this post to be published. If you’re pulling in an Instagram Post that has an Instagram Shopping tag enabled, you’re unfortunately limited in regards to placements, as you can only select the Instagram Feed placement. More on that here.

After you’ve made sure that your campaign is set up properly, you’re on your way to pulling in the ad.

In the Ad section of the campaign creation process, you’ll notice that you have the option to use an existing post. This is where you’ll need to find the post that you’d like to pull in as an ad.

Next, click “Use Existing Post” and you’ll notice that you’re now directed to Select Post or enter a Post ID.

If you’re not sure of the Post ID number for the post you’d like to use, you can select “Browse Existing Posts” to quickly take a look at your recent posts.

Next, a window will pop up with several options. You can use the top headings of “Facebook” or “Instagram” to scroll through your last few posts to find the post that you’d like to promote. But if your post was published a while ago or if your Page publishes posts frequently, you might find it hard to locate the right post in this compressed view.

If you have the Page post’s post ID or the URL to the Instagram post, it will make finding the post a lot easier.

But how do I find the Facebook Page Post ID or Instagram Post’s ID?

We’re glad you asked!

With Instagram, finding the Post ID is easy.

Take a look at the URL of one of our recent Instagram Posts:

The first step is to find the URL of the post, which in this case is https://www.instagram.com/p/B8znIHOlQqE/

Now that we know the URL, finding the Post ID is easy: The Post ID for Instagram posts will be the string of characters that directly follow the /p/ portion of the URL.

So for the post above, it would be: B8znIHOlQqE

For Facebook posts, the process of finding your Post ID has a few extra steps.

First, you’ll need to navigate to your Facebook Page. Next, find the post that you’d like to use as an ad. You can do this by either scrolling down the feed until you find the post you’d like to use as an ad or you can go to Publishing Tools > Published Posts to view all of your Page’s Posts.

In the Published Posts section, you can search for your post by keyword or simply scroll through your posts until you find the right one. After you’ve located the post, click on it. A new window will pop open and you’ll notice that the Post ID is clearly labeled at the top of the Post Detail window.

Copy and paste the Post ID back into the “Select Post” section of the Ad view in Business Manager and press Enter.

Double-check to make sure that you see the intended post appear. If it’s right, click on the row of the Post and tap “Continue”

Finally, complete the details of your campaign and launch.

What’s that you hear? That’s the sound of us cheering you on because you just learned how to turn an existing Facebook or Instagram post into an ad. Go you! 👏