by Brittany McSorley
Every time you think you’ve gotten the hang of Facebook, the platform launches another overhaul and knocks you down a peg. Fortunately, the most recent Facebook update has delivered some very good (long overdue) news for social media marketers. On September 17th, the platform launched Facebook Business Suite, a tool that makes it much, much easier for marketers to manage Facebook and Instagram at the same time.
Linking your Facebook and Instagram accounts has been possible for a while (if you haven’t done this for your business accounts, do it now!). The option to share photos to both platforms at once is a big social media marketing time-saver. But Business Suite has combined the management side of both platforms into one tool, so now you can post, comment, view insights, send and receive messages, and handle notifications for Instagram and Facebook all in one place.
This launch is especially helpful for those who manage social media from a computer. Instagram has never been very desktop-friendly, the most glaring example being the inability to share photos on the platform from a computer. But with Business Suite, you can finally post photos to Instagram without using your phone, with the option to schedule the posts ahead of time as well.
Facebook has hinted that more updates will be made to Business Suite down the road, but for now, here are some of the things you can use it for:
- Viewing messages, comments, and likes for Facebook and Instagram
- Monitoring comments on their own, rather than lumped in with other notifications, for both platforms
- Planning and managing the content you share, including creating one post that can be scheduled or shared to both platforms
- Creating saved replies for common messages you receive from followers
- Viewing and comparing engagement metrics across Facebook and Instagram
- Boosting posts or creating ads for both platforms
Does the arrival of this new tool mean you’ll never have to open Instagram on your phone again? Probably not. But it’s definitely going to cut back on the time you currently spend switching between apps.
Eager to get started? We were, too. To explore Business Suite, you’ll need to log into your Facebook business account. On a desktop, you can head to business.facebook.com. If you’re more of a mobile social media manager, the Pages Manager App should automatically ask you about opting into Business Suite. The process may require you to confirm the link between your Facebook and Instagram accounts, but once that’s done, you’ll have unprecedented access to both platforms side by side. Here’s a tip: Here at KDC, we’ve found it helpful to keep two windows open when working on a computer, so you can easily toggle between Business Suite and the standard Facebook layout. We also had some trouble creating an Event for the first time after this big update, so to save you some time, the option is listed under the “More” dropdown menu beneath your business’s name!
We’re very happy to see Facebook making it easier to streamline social media marketing. Business Suite may only be saving us minutes at a time, but they’re going to add up.
