How to Use Facebook Business Manager
If you use Facebook as a marketing tool to grow your business, there’s a good chance that you’re wasting time by getting distracted in the process. Whether you pop into Facebook to schedule a status update on your business page, check your notifications, or peek at ad’s performance, what should have taken 15 minutes suddenly sucked you in for 45.
You had good intentions, but then you saw a political rant that made your blood boil, a super cute photo of your friend’s new rescue dog, a hilarious dance video, or an inspirational quote… and where did the time go? Sound familiar?
You either need laser-focused discipline, or better yet — the Facebook Business Manager. It’s a time saver and saving grace for many social media managers and small business owners, and it’s much more convenient to use. When you log in to the Facebook Business Manager, you can bypasses the cat memes and controversy to land directly on a dashboard and get down to serious business.
The tool allows you to manage all of your business assets in one place — whether you oversee one business page and ads account or multiple pages and accounts. From the dashboard, you can go directly to the Ads Manager, Power Editor, and pages.
When you’re in the Facebook Business Manager, you can also assign and manage roles. It provides an easy way to see exactly who has access to what assets for your business. Did you forget to take the employee you fired off of your ad account? Does the flakey intern who worked with you three years ago still have access to your business page? Need to assign an admin role to a team member without friending her? This can all be done in the Business Manager, at a glance, with a few clicks.
Whew! It used to be highly cumbersome to navigate around behind the scenes on Facebook for businesses. There were also vulnerabilities and security issues — no way to prevent Facebook from mistaking multiple logins as hacking attempts and shutting you down.
To set up Facebook Business Manager, you need a personal Facebook account, a Facebook Ad account, and a Facebook business page.
Here are some quick steps to get started using Facebook Business Manager:
(Please note: This is a basic overview, and Facebook tends to change their interface without explanation.)
- Make sure you’re the right person to be the Facebook Business Manager admin. If you’re a small business owner, it might be best for you to be the admin for your own business in order to maintain control. Remember, you will have the option to assign roles later.
- Log into your personal Facebook account.
- While logged in, go to Facebook.com
- Once you’re in the Business Manager, click Get Started and follow the prompts.
- You’ll need to enter a name for your business and then select a primary page. If you manage more than one page, you’ll see several options from which to choose. If you don’t have a business page yet, you’ll see an option to create one.
- Enter all of the additional required information.
- Click Create Business.
- Once you’re in your newly created Business Manager dashboard, you can add other people as needed by clicking Business Settings > People > Add New People… and then a box will pop up. Follow the steps, and select the appropriate settings.
- To add and manage other pages and ads accounts that you personally own, you have to “claim” them first by clicking Claim Assets. If you’re managing a page or ad account for someone else, you should not claim these assets, but instead “request access” to them.
Once you’re all set up, you will see that the dashboard integrates all of the functionality you need in one place. You may have to explore a bit to find your way around at first; but once you’re familiar with the new environment, you’ll see that it’s much more user friendly. You will no longer need to navigate to each individual page wall, insights tab, ad account, power editor, etc.
You will be able to see all of your notifications, view messages, post updates in real time or schedule posts, boost posts, promote your page, and more… all with minimal distractions.
The Facebook Business Manager also gives you the option to assign “partners,” which are businesses such as agencies that may need access to your Facebook business page or ad account.
If you want to learn more or partner with an agency that can help you manage Facebook for your business, be sure to reach out to us.