Is it best to boost a Facebook post, create an ad using the post or create a separate ad that's not in newsfeed?

I used to strongly advise clients against “boosting” posts on Facebook. It’s not that I’m generally against paying Facebook for reach (although of course a little more free reach would be nice), it’s just that boosting used to be the sloppy, non targeted way that the newbies and amateurs used. It cost them more money, got them fans they’d probably prefer to avoid and whilst quick and simple, wasn’t very clever. So back in the day, I used to recommend going into the Ad Manager or Power Editor, and creating an ad using the organic post as the source but promoting it rather than boosting it. You got far more targeting control and consequently…

Facebook's Power Editor ads platform is certainly not for the faint hearted, but once you're confident with it, it's unlikely you'll return to the native "self serve" ad platform.

I've used Facebook's Power Editor for ads for several years now, and went through the pain barrier because, back in the day, it was the only way to surface really good sized newsfeed ads (using the now virtually defunct "dark post" function). As with many things Power Editor, this and other features has been rolled out onto the self serve platform, but there are still good reasons to be using Power Editor. Here's a compilation of reasons to use Power Editor. As with all things Facebook, functionality changes on a near daily basis so please do correct me if I've missed something:

16 reasons to use Power Editor when creating Facebook ads

New features are rolled…