Sorry that I've been slow on replying since my initial post. Consumed with family commitments.
I've been catching up on what people have said and sounds like not much success.
As per the question as to what boosting is - it's paying facebook money to feature your event/post.
We haven't tried it for our local contra dance.
It was my local community association that has done it twice for our events this spring. One was a spring cleanup where we usually get 40 people and we got 70... our biggest attendance ever. We don't think anything was different from what we've done other years (or weather) but maybe our memory is off. The thing with our community association is that the ad specifically targeted people within 1km to capture our neighbourhood only.... paid $10 for that one.
This would be harder with a contra dance as you'd want to target your audience in a different way. (Supposedly there are various choices for targeting audiences but I haven't done it).
Here is a comparison of five of our posts
Post /// # of Post Clicks /// # of REactions, comments & Shares
1 / 42 / 11
2 / 7 / 0
3 / 132 / 78 THIS WAS THE BOOSTED ONE
4 / 6 / 0
5 / 14 /5
As you can see, the boosted one seemingly got a lot more attention.
I have heard that the numbers can be off because of fake facebook accounts but given my limited knowledge, it's been really effective for my community association.
Maybe we'll give it a try at Ottawa Contra and can report back.
Anyway, good to know others haven't yet found it effective.
And yes... .... so many other ways to reach out to new folks. Just checking out options!
Emily in Ottawa