11 Ways to Boost Facebook Engagement for Small Businesses

11 Ways to Boost Facebook Engagement for Small Businesses

By Andrea Vahl

Is your small business on Facebook?

Are you looking for better ways to engage your fans?

Small businesses are winning on Facebook more than ever before.

In this article you’ll find 11 ways small businesses can improve engagement and drive sales with Facebook posts.

Discover eleven ways to boost Facebook engagement for small businesses.

#1: Move Your Audience to Action

Litographs is an online store that creates art from books. They sell posters, t-shirts and tote bags, so right off the bat they have some great visual content that appeals to readers.

The company uses their Facebook posts to drive sales, but they also do a good job of entertaining their audience with questions and humor.

Ask questions that require action and also use an image for inspiration.

Litographs came up with a fun idea to create temporary tattoos of sentences from Alice in Wonderland. They invited 5,000 people to join the world’s longest tattoo chain. This kind of idea is a great way to mobilize your audience and make them part of something special.

Make your audience part of something special.

Also give your community special discounts on Facebook—everyone loves a good deal.

Give your audience special discounts.

#2: Host a Facebook Party

Mamavation is a website that teaches natural wellness and nutrition and champions GMO-free food and products. They have high engagement and use video, blog posts and images to educate their audience about making organic food choices.

The company recently held a fun Facebook party to give away gift certificates and discounts to people who engaged with each post.

Use your cover photo to let people know about special events.

Mamavation had several posts with different giveaways and also gave a discount to everyone. Many posts during the party included tips to educate their audience.

Think of ways to engage your audience in real time.

Images still get high engagement on Facebook, and the ideal image size is 470 x 470 pixels. Share something thought-provoking, inspiring or humorous for extra engagement.

Using images in your posts helps boost engagement.

#3: Show Personality

Through a Dog’s Ear is a small 7-year-old company that makes music to help calm anxious dogs. Their Facebook page is filled with personal photos of the founder and her dogs.

Get personal with your photos.

In the post above, notice that the company also tagged Wells Fargo, and Wells Fargo in turn liked the image. You can also use tagging and hashtags to get your posts more visibility.

Share things that are happening in your day and also relate to your business.

#4: Incorporate Humor

Cool Mom Picks is a website that curates gifts, gear, tech and resources for moms. They have great video tutorials and they bring together interesting finds in blog posts. They also use humor and show some personality in their posts.

This post uses humor and provides tips that people can use and share.

Text-only posts are not dead and can still get great engagement. Don’t be afraid to push the envelope a little with your humor if that’s part of your brand.

Text-only posts can still get engagement.

#5: Have Fun

Authors sometimes wonder what to write about on Facebook—which is funny, since they’re writers. If you’re between projects, think about using Facebook as it was originally intended: a social site where you let people know what you’re doing.

Author Erica Spindler does a great job of getting personal and having some fun. Share things that you find funny or you feel are important for people to know. 

Use humor and tie it into your experience or your brand if possible.

#6: Be Responsive

Make it a habit to respond to comments quickly, as Erica Spindler did in the post below. When you do that regularly, you’ll get more engagement with your posts.

Ask questions and respond to comments regularly.

#7: Create a Facebook Event

While libraries aren’t necessarily small businesses, many struggle with engagement and connection.

Lawrence Public Library uses humor and also takes advantage of Facebook events. They use things like Throwback Thursday or Caturday memes to take advantage of fun trends.

Humor plus cats wins.

If you have events on Facebook, reshare them, post in the events to get more visibility and encourage people to join them.

Reshare your events periodically.

Ask your fans to share pictures in posts or on your page to get more engagement. When people share their passions with you, they’re more connected to your brand.

Encourage fans to post pictures.

Show what’s going on at your location.

#8: Post to Your Page and Profile

David Newman of Do It Marketing uses his Facebook page and personal profile to market his business, which helps speakers get more opportunities.

He’s connected with many speakers personally, so it makes sense for him to get extra traction by posting about his business on his personal profile. If you occasionally share your business page posts on your profile, you can extend your reach.

David has a Speaker Booking Machine cheat sheet and uses his cover image to showcase that opt-in with a call to action button.

Use your cover image to drive leads.

Below, he posted to his personal profile with a slightly different twist, telling people to leave a comment if they wanted to get the cheat sheet. That led to a lot of comments (social proof) and more visibility for this post.

Use your personal profile to let people know about a special offer.

This post led to 550 cheat sheet downloads, 120 signups for a teleseminar and 33 sold seats to a $777 program—all without any spend on Facebook ads.

#9: Invest in Videos

Videos are huge on Facebook, and Learn Cake Decorating online uses them effectively on their page. They have a featured video and regular quick videos that get lots of views and engagement.

Facebook videos get high visibility in the news feed.

The company also uses the 22Social app to give away a free video class to build the email list and then offer a membership to people who sign up.

Drive Facebook fans to your email list by offering them something good.

#10: Provide Great Local Content

Realtors sometimes find Facebook a challenging place to market. Posting images of houses is great, but Realty Austin offers great local content, too.

They’ve created their own guide to viewing bluebonnets in Austin. This content provides a service to potential customers beyond real estate.

Post about your area if you’re a local business.

Creating content takes time, but it can be a huge driver for awareness and new customers.

Realty Austin goes a step further on their website and tells people to post directly to their Facebook page if they have something to add. This gives website visitors a reason to check out their Facebook page, too.

Drive website visitors to your Facebook page to show them where the action is.

#11: Go Behind the Scenes

Getting personal on Facebook is a great tactic, but so is giving your community a sneak peek at something no one else can see. The Celtic band Barra MacNeilsliterally takes people behind the scenes during their shows.

Take people behind the scenes.

Show people photos that aren’t available anywhere else.

Conclusion

Most of these examples illustrate what’s working for small businesses in their Facebook updates. For your business, focus your energy on getting into the news feed. If you’re having trouble, consider boosting key posts that are engaging and interesting to your fans to reconnect with them. Facebook can drive a great deal of traffic to your website, but concentrate first on getting your posts in front of fans.

Here are some key takeaways from these examples:

• Use visual content, including good images and interesting videos.
• Add a personal touch, which can help differentiate you from other small businesses.
• Incorporate humor and have fun—that always gets engagement.

How about you? Are you a small business using Facebook? Are you working on improving your Facebook engagement? What’s working well for you? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.