Hi Andrea!
I really like the article. It's simple and on-point. I tell these 11 things to my team every day. Social media marketing for upstart businesses can be really hard. It's frustrating at first, especially when you know you have great content but can't get any engagements because your total followers are too low. Anyway, good job on this :)

So true - I know some people get discouraged when they see that their post only was seen by a handful of people so you do need to get your overall fan-base up. Thanks for your thoughts!

We've definitely noticed very quickly with our startup that showing personality, behind the scenes and even customer photo's to work well both on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Definitely need to set up a few contest or parties. Will have one up by the end of the week for sure. Great ideas here.

Yes, people want to be more "business-like" but the human side gets more engagement :) Good luck with your contest!

Thanks Andrea. We came up with an amazing contest that is relevant to our audience and one that we believe will create a lot of buzz. Going to use Heyo to implement it this week. Thanks again for the great ideas ~ Mike

These are some great examples of how to increase engagement on Facebook here. I always encourage my clients to be creative with these and using humor is a great way to connect. Happy Monday Andrea! :-)

Thanks Steve! Yes I'm a big fan of humor :)

Thanks for devoting an article to small businesses! So often examples are given for what the big guys and their social media teams are accomplishing.

I agree Mari - sometimes smaller companies are a little under-represented in posts. While big companies can have an advantage in some ways on what posts "look" engaging but sometimes diving in to the actual analytics you find that the smaller Pages are getting better engagement percentage wise! So always something to keep in mind. Thanks!

Nice post!

I liked to know if anyone on here as Hosted a Facebook Party. Is it similar to a Twitter chat? How long is the Facebook Party? Thirty minutes? One hour? Two days? Do you choose a topic or just chat as if you were at a "real" party? Any feedback you could provide would be helpful. Thanks!

I've hosted Facebook parties in a variety of ways. Sometimes it's more of a Live-streaming party using the app 22Social or it's just a "chat". I think keeping it shorter is better because the audience doesn't check in and feel like no one is there. I like keeping them to an hour max. Or if you have a longer party have multiple things planned. Hope that helps!

Thanks Andrea! I'll research and "test" out a Facebook party.

This is fantastic! Fun, creative ideas that really resonate with 'human beings'. I love it! thank you for writing it, Andrea. I'm going to share with my Art as Action team. I think we can use some of these ideas on our FB page!

Awesome! Thanks Yvonne!

Thanks Andrea, great article. I'd be interested to see a post with examples of how Facebook parties work in practice, if you have any examples to share.

I would definitely go check out how the Mamavation one went that I showed here. It was not too long ago so you just need to scroll down the page a bit; www.facebook.com/mamavation

Thanks Andrea, will do!

That's a nice guide Andrea, we can also use Video Call-to-Action to increase the engagement to a new level :)

Thanks Salman - great to hear what you are doing too :)

Hi Andrea!,
The article states all the essential points for individuals or businesses to follow. I really liked all the examples given by you. :-)

Glad you enjoyed it Gurneet!

Hello Andrea,

I like it .The most important part is about being numerous.At times when conducting online marketing on social sites like Facebook,we tend to forget that it is a social media where people will log in for not so much formal reasons.The humor in marketing is a powerful tool in this.

I love humor :)

I really like that the article had so many different types of businesses. As an illustrator and artist sometimes it's hard to relate to large corporations or apply their techniques. I got some ideas from this and may have to post some of my early works on Throwback Thursday.

Awesome - so glad to hear Claudia!

Hello! I have a question, based on the contest, that whoever shares or comments will be registered to "win" - On the FB page I manage, I can't tell who shares the posts... I just tells me in the insights how many times it was shared. Am I missing something?

Great ideas all. How does this square with Facebooks' new more stringent posting policies?

Great tips! Having trouble getting people to engage in "boring" services such as financial services. Anybody have ideas?

Hey

Thanks for the great read Andrea. You have open my eyes to many new things about facebook that i had no idea about. I will have to a little testing with each, to see what works best for me.
something that i do to open up the conversation, is fill in the blank questions. People loves to comment, they sometimes just need a little push to get them a going. And, fill in the blank has worked wonders for me.
Again thanks for the read

Jason

Want to boost engagement for your small biz on Facebook? Spend $1000 a day on Facebook ads, of course!

Lol, no seriously, I genuinely appreciate all of these tips, Andrea. With Facebook continuing to grow at an unprecedented rate, many businesses are looking straight to ads as their solution to 'be seen,' 'get noticed' and 'increase our audience.' But this is totally the wrong philosophy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Facebook advertiser for many brands myself, but what you're preaching here is "more social, less media." It's a concept I picked up from "A World Gone Social." Essentially, it means getting back to the social media basics. Instead of spending more to 'get noticed,' businesses & brands should focus on excellent social media engagement that will 'be remembered' – there's a vast difference here.

I hope more businesses take heed to your advice, Andrea, great tips!

Hi andrea,
I really like your post and your suggestions. It can be really frustrating and crestfallen when our posts don't reach the intended number of persons. The organic reach is limited to a percentage of the persons liking your page. Anything that can improve this must be good for new page owners especially. Thanks for sharing this information. It is well appreciated.

Vinton

Great way to build brand. Awesome tips. Thank you Andrea

Very informative article bro, i'm Getting highest number of traffic from facebook. thanks

just an incredible article,didn't know much more about it till i read it

Thanks for the great tips Andrea. I really think that video is the way to boost a business' engagement on Facebook. However the key is capturing your audience so they watch for more than the first few seconds. I think a behind the scenes video would be more likely to assist in this process since it's something out of the ordinary.

Great creative ideas Andrea! I like the fact that they can be done by businesses of any size, not just large brands.

great post on how to maximize facebook engagement to generate website traffic or increase sales.

Excellent article. Really helped a lot. Are hashtags on FB advised or do they just not matter?