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How to Use Meta Business Suite: A Small Business Guide
Meta Business Suite is a unified tool to help you streamline your business’s social media presence and engagement. Here’s what you need to know.
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Managing your small business’s social media presence can be a major challenge. Between juggling login credentials, ensuring proper account management and creating the right content to represent your business, it can feel overwhelming for small business owners to meet their marketing and advertising needs.
This article is sponsored by Meta.
Enter Meta Business Suite, a simplified solution to manage your business’s Meta technologies, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and paid advertising on social media — all from one convenient place. In this guide, we’ll cover how you can leverage Meta Business Suite to boost your business’s following, increase your engagement on social media, and reach a wider audience.
What is Meta Business Suite?
Meta Business Suite is a centralized solution that helps small businesses manage their marketing and advertising activities on Facebook and Instagram. Available on both desktop and mobile, this free suite is designed to support small business owners in maintaining their online presence and expanding their reach.
Meta Business Suite houses everything you need to manage your social media profiles and advertising in one convenient place. Source: Meta
With Meta Business Suite, you can easily publish posts and ads, manage your inbox, and gain insights into key trends across both Facebook and Instagram, without needing to log out of or switch accounts. The desktop version also links to additional tools and settings, including Meta Ads Manager and Meta Campaign Planner, for further support in managing your online brand.
How to set up Meta Business Suite
If you have an active Facebook account for your business, you can begin setting up Meta Business Suite for free by following the instructions below.
1. Create or log in to a Meta Business Suite account.
Begin by accessing Meta Business Suite via desktop or a mobile device. The desktop version is available at business.facebook.com. Mobile users can download the Meta Business Suite app, which is available on both iOS and Android. Then, log in with your existing Facebook account.
2. Connect your business social media accounts.
Meta automatically connects the Facebook Pages for your business to your account. To view and change which accounts are connected, navigate to the drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of the dashboard. There, you can add these pages to your portfolio by clicking “Create a business portfolio.”
Setting up your business portfolio is as easy as filling out a few fields to get started. Source: Meta
To connect your Instagram business account, click “Business portfolio settings,” then “Accounts,” followed by “Instagram accounts.” Then, you can claim your account and log in, or connect an already logged-in account.
3. Set up your business information, and sign up for Meta Verified.
Next, click “Business portfolio info” and add important details — such as your business name, legal details, contact information and website — into the corresponding fields in the business portfolio section.
Verified badges can add legitimacy to your brand and improve your efforts at building trust with your target audience. Source: Meta
You can also complete additional steps to get Meta Verified. When you sign up for a Meta Verified plan, it will display a badge on your profile to ensure your audience knows you are a legitimate brand. It also gives you access to enhanced support, profile features and visibility options that are not available to unverified business users.
4. Invite and manage users.
Manage user permissions directly within Meta Business Suite. Source: Meta
Ensure the right users have access to Meta Business Suite by adding team members to your account. Do this by clicking the “People” tab found under “Users,” and then clicking “Invite people” and typing their email addresses. From there, you can set appropriate user permissions, update user access and remove access as needed.
5. Add and manage ad accounts.
Meta Business Suite makes managing advertisements across all Meta technologies a simple process that takes only a few clicks and the completion of a simple form. Source: Meta
Manage your ad accounts in one place by clicking “Ads Accounts” in the left-hand menu, under “Accounts.” There, you can create a new ad account, link an existing one or request access to one; the latter two require ad account IDs.
If you are working with a third-party vendor or an in-house team to manage your ad campaigns on Meta technologies, you can assign permissions to specific individuals from within Meta Business Suite.
Meta Business Suite key features
Meta Business Suite offers a host of tools and features to help small businesses manage their Facebook and Instagram presence.
Business activity overview and inbox management
When you log in to Meta Business Suite, you’ll get an overview of your Facebook and Instagram account activity at a glance on the home screen. Here, you can view all the notifications for your connected accounts in a single streamlined dashboard, or view your to-do list to prioritize unread messages and comments.
In the Inbox in Meta Business Suite, you can read and respond to messages and comments on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. You can also create automated responses for quicker, more consistent customer communication.
Content planning and scheduling
Say goodbye to content calendar spreadsheets, thanks to the content planning tool in Meta Business Suite. Source: Meta
Meta Business Suite streamlines the content planning and creation process, allowing you to publish and schedule feed posts and stories on Facebook and Instagram. You can even save draft posts and upload creative assets to the media library for future use.
An especially helpful offering for content scheduling is the planner in Meta Business Suite. This tool helps you organize and view your scheduled and published posts, stories and marketing campaigns in a handy calendar format.
Ad creation and management
If your campaign includes paid marketing, Meta Business Suite allows you to create new ads or boost your existing posts on Facebook and Instagram. The Ads Manager tool helps you easily build out and adjust your campaign, as well as manage and track ad performance across platforms.
Analytics and insights tracking
Access all of your social media data in one place to get a comprehensive overview of your performance on all Meta technologies. Source: Meta
The Insights tab in Meta Business Suite offers valuable information about your organic and paid social media campaigns. You can access performance data, audience insights and key trends, and use these analytics to refine your content and advertising strategies.
AI-powered content ideas and optimization
Many small businesses already know how powerful the results can be when they use artificial intelligence (AI) for marketing. As of May 2024, the generative AI capabilities of Meta Business Suite have expanded to include full image and text generation, which can help your business develop and execute content ideas more efficiently. Once you’ve developed your ad creatives, you can also leverage A/B testing, which rolls out two different ad versions and assesses which garners the most engagement.
How to make the most of Meta Business Suite
Make the most of Meta Business Suite by following these expert marketing strategies for Meta technologies.
Set up your Meta Pixel.
Meta Business Suite can be a “gold mine” for your business if you give it the right data, said Michael Costin, co-founder of Local Digital.
Before spending your hard-earned money on ads, Costin said, you must set up the browser Pixel and Meta Conversions API. With these tools equipped, you can track your customers’ views on your site and conversions such as leads or sales.
“Meta uses [Pixel data] to hunt down more high-value visitors when you’re running ads,” Costin explained. “So it should be one of the first things you set up.”
Post consistently.
One of the most frequently shared best practices for Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms is to maintain a consistent posting schedule. Take advantage of the planner in Meta Business Suite, a free tool that helps create batches of content in your drafts and saves you time on posting in the future.
“I would recommend dedicating a chunk of time to creating and scheduling posts at the beginning of the month to ensure that your monthly content calendar is complete,” suggested Roy Dovaston, managing director at Heavyweight Digital. “[Doing this] mitigat[es] the need for creating odd posts here and there and help[s] with time management.”
The calendar view in Meta Business Suite can help you create a content plan for your social posts (across both Facebook and Instagram) and can even spark your creativity with third-party templates to help fill your content gaps.
Leverage real-time insights.
In addition to automated content scheduling, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) should leverage the Insights dashboard, said Arias WebsterBerry, CEO of WebsterBerry Marketing.
“Monitoring KPIs in real time and using the customer messaging feature can strengthen customer engagement and lead generation efforts,” WesterBerry explained.
With real-time data at your fingertips, you can make quick decisions about your marketing and advertising that your customers will respond to immediately.
Run optimized and targeted ads.
Paid ads on social media are the key to reaching your desired audience, especially because frequent algorithm changes can impact your organic reach. According to Brian Kroeker, president of Little Rock Printing, the Saved Audiences feature is the best way to refine your ad targeting.
“I find that by creating specific audience segments based on location, demographics and interests, SMBs can ensure their campaigns reach the right people, maximizing engagement and budgets to help ensure a proper ROI,” Kroeker said.
Once saved, these audiences can be easily selected to reach the right audience at the right time.
Focus on quality over quantity.
When you’re creating your content plan, it’s important to ensure the quality of your posts is substantial rather than focusing on posting as much content as possible.
Christian Hed, chief marketing officer at Dstny, said the quality of your content is proven to increase your return on investment by 250 percent.
“Most companies will increase the content volume now with AI,” Hed said. “But I would stay away from that because producing fewer high-quality pieces is better.”
Meta Business Suite is an invaluable tool for small businesses that are looking to manage their online presence more effectively and maximize their impact on Facebook and Instagram. With its useful features, real-time insights and automation capabilities, Meta Business Suite helps small business owners save time, engage with their audience and drive meaningful results. Visit business.facebook.com to get started.