The Mystery Behind Facebook Business Manager

Benefits of Facebook Business Manager

Most businesses are active on Facebook, aiming to reach a portion of their one billion+ daily users; and many of those companies have been switching from using a personal profile as a business platform, to a Facebook Page because if not, they risk losing the page entirely. It is against Facebook Terms to use a personal account to represent something other than yourself, so they have the right to deny access to that account. If you manage one or more pages for a business, company, or organization, you have probably heard of Facebook Business Manager.

What is Facebook Business Manager?

It is a free tool, released in 2014, for agencies and organizations to manage access to their Pages and ad accounts without divulging their account passwords, and giving full access to each user. Facebook has been asking anyone who shares login information with others for their pages and ad accounts to change the way they sign in. This has become almost mandatory, unless you have a small account and have the option to choose to link your Pages and ad account to your personal profile.

The initial setup the Business Manager is actually very simple. However, it can take about an hour to figure it all out. I would caution you to make sure that the personal account you are using to get to https://business.facebook.com/ is the CEO of the business, or the main admin as they will have the highest power when managing all of the Pages and contributors on this account. What kinds of benefits are there to Business Manager? Here are a few:

Business Manager keeps you focused and efficient

You can keep your work and personal life completely separate with the use of business manager. Your Business Pages login is not the same as your personal profile login, which means that you are brought directly to the timeline of your projects, and your pages. This tool brings all of your pages and ad accounts to one centralized location, which you can easily flip through using the tabs provided. There is no more need to log into different accounts for multiple platforms, they can all be accessed through the same account.

This tool has made managing multiple Facebook Pages much easier and less daunting. It is more simple now to request access to a client’s page, and you can specify what kind of access you need, such as ad analyst, or editor. The client receives an email and can approve the request with just one click.

Assigning roles

One of the best features of business manager is that you can easily assign roles. This means that you can grant people access and tasks to different pages and ad accounts. There is a tab that allows you to easily see who is working on what page, whether it be an individual or a group. The master admin has the power to remove people easily, and grant specific access based on each project or task.

The beauty of this is that you do not have to be friends with someone to grant them access to a page. You simply need a coworker’s work email, avoiding seeing photos of their new dog on your personal timeline.

Recommended improvements

As mentioned previously, Facebook Business Manager was released in 2014. Since then, a number of bugs and technical difficulties have been erased and improved. We couldn’t help but notice a few ourselves, like the difficulty to comment or like posts from pages in business manager from a mobile device. Additionally, the steps to access a page’s newsfeed seem to change often, however Facebook does not provide this update information to its users. Please keep us in the loop, Facebook! Overall, it seems that Facebook Business Manager is a great tool for managing pages and ad accounts, but less ideal for interacting as a page.

The mandatory switch may feel harsh, but take the time to explore the benefits of Business Manager. Have you used Business Manager? How is your experience with it? Let us know in the comments below!

How Instagram Stories are kicking Snapchat’s Butt

The new Instagram Stories feature hit the social media scene on August 2nd and has been making more of a splash than anyone expected. Instagram stories are photos or videos where you can add text that only appear for a period of 24 hours.

Among my own personal network, I’ve noticed a surprisingly consistent decline in Snapchat usage ever since Instagram stories launched. Gone are all the stories from my friends and family, stories of the few celebrities I follow are seem to be the skeletons of what remains.

This could also be attributed to the unfortunate timing of launching an anime inspired filter that many thought to be racist and caused multiple brands like Buffer to jump ship from Snapchat. This was the perfect moment for Instagram to creep up and steal the spotlight, while many users were already questioning Snapchat’s values. Although Snapchat removed the filter and made a statement ensuring it wouldn't be put back into rotation, the damage was already done and the opportunity created. 

Here’s how Instagram seized it:

• Going after growth

One of the main reasons Instagram stories are successful is because they aren’t trying to covert current Snapchat users (even though they may successfully do just that), rather they are going after the ones who haven’t jumped on the Snap bandwagon yet. They aren’t trying to diminish or take over the app and it’s current following, but tackle it’s opportunity for growth. This TechCrunch article does a great job of explaining how they are using the “good enough” strategy, stating that "The real target for Instagram Stories, though, are all the people who've been curious about Snapchat's fun creation tools and format, but either tried and abandoned it, or wrote it off as just for teens or too much work to adopt"

• One platform

Instagram stories offer the added benefit of being embedded right into Instagram, allowing you to have both features (short term stories and long term photo posting) in just one app. In a world where a new “it” app is popping up every day, and storage space on our cell phones is a constant struggle, this is huge. We already have so many apps to keep up with on a daily basis, adding stories to an app you’re already using anyways simplifies your life, and who would say no to some simplifying? Not me, that’s for sure!

Instagram CEO even openly admitted "They (Snapchat) deserve all the credit. This isn't about who invented something. This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it."

• The numbers

I’ve read multiple articles about how Instagram stories are booming, but I always like to test the theories for myself for multiple reasons: 

1) Many of the articles are based out of the US and don’t take into account a Canadian market, 

and 

2) they usually use large companies as examples for statistics and numbers, which isn’t overly pertinent or accurate when it comes to small business and/or personal branding.

On average, my Snapchat stories get between 20-40 views. I would attribute this to many factors, how many friends I have, time of day, content, etc. My very first Instagram story received over 90 views within the first few hours. I’ve been on Snapchat for months, but have been on Instagram for years. It only makes sense to take advantage of the platform you’ve invested more time into building your brand and audience on.

Facebook owned Instagram clearly had timing on their side, but also had strategy to back it up to ensure success.

Have you used Instagram stories yet? Which social media platform do you think will win the battle to share our stories?

Team Canada: A Nation of Success

Over the past several decades, Canadians have been able to come behind individual athletes to watch them achieve greatness. Though unable to compete themselves, the loyalty and devotion shown to them as fans has been a driving force in the success known as “Team Canada”. Team Canada’s social media is an avid portrayal of their willingness to make sport accessible and to demonstrate that anyone is capable of achieving greatness if they only believe. From inspiring graphics that feature athletes young and old alike, to articles that showcase Canada’s triumphs on the playing field, Team Canada is able to perfectly capture what it means to be Canadian. 

Due to the fact that Team Canada is nearly a cult phenomenon, they have a fairly large social media presence and therefore are able to gain a lot of traction with their posts and content sharing. The Team Canada Facebook page has 756,992 page likes, with post likes ranging from 24 to 50,000 depending on the content relevance. Twitter comes in with a close second at having 561 thousand followers, and Instagram with 84.5 thousand followers. Though not reaching over a million likes/followers on either page, Team Canada  also maintains several other forums, such as the Paralympic pages, the Canadian Olympic Team Foundation, and individual sport pages (Cycling or Hockey to name a few). Surprisingly however, they are able to interact with their followers on nearly every platform; whether it’s by adding to the conversation, addressing concerns or simply stating another point. They seem to keep their commentary relatable and often times add inspiring messages to satisfy their fans. By using the “Join the Olympic Club” slogan, they are able to make the Olympic team exclusive yet also widely attainable for anyone who wishes to participate. By highlighting the word ‘Club’, Team Canada has ensured that their fan base will feel included and apart of the selection process for every Olympic Games. In some ways, they encourage you to pretend to be an Olympian without actually having to be one.

Though the message that they are sharing online is relevant to their content, the one noticeable issue with their three social media platforms is that the same content is shared across the board. Their Instagram and Twitter are fairly similar with an image and a link being shown for both; the same image and link is later shared in full on the Facebook page. By having the same content across three platforms poses the risk of losing a follower base for each one. If viewers see that the same content is being shared on all three platforms and they follow all three, they will most likely unfollow one or the other due to repetitive content – no one wants to see the same thing twice (or three times in this case). The upside to this however is that the content itself will get more views and more traction because it is being shared on multiple platforms; everyone has their chosen media source and therefore will prefer one over another. Instagram leverages graphics and images, such as one of their most recent campaigns, the 100 day countdown to Rio 2016. Everyday Team Canada showcases a moment in Olympic history achieved by a Canadian Athlete; they highlight up and coming Olympic athletes and give them an opportunity to say hello!

The use of these images on Instagram are clean and easy to understand, and basically begging to be shared and screenshotted for use on followers accounts. By having athletes as the mainstage of nearly all their posts, fans and young athletes alike can print out the images of their favourite athletes for inspiration. In some ways, this brings back a devoted follower base who rely on real time images of their favourite athletes to watch; the Team Canada page gets more hits and interaction if you have people returning for content based images and ideas. Take the #iceinourveins campaign for example; the use of new and veteran athletes has people returning to the site time after time to re-watch the magic of what enfolded in the Arctic. In fact, this video now has over 75,000 views on YouTube and thousands more across the platforms on which it has been shared. 

 The #iceinourveins campaign was an idea to demonstrate that Canadians no matter where we go, will take a piece of our northern pride with us. Even though we are travelling to Brazil, we will take the snow and ice with us to win Gold this summer. The video is a great portrayal of who we are as Canadians; individuals who can brave the cold to achieve their dreams however, it would have been interesting to see this version of what they did, shot down in Brazil. It could have been foreshadowing showing Team Canada arriving in a gust of cold air and swirling snow (embracing the stereotype) and emerging as victors in the hot summer sun. Instead of using the #iceinourveins by itself, you could introduce a second hashtag, #heatinourhearts – Team Canada is fired up for Gold!

Overall, Team Canada’s social media can be considered to be greatly successful. They help athletes find sponsors, motivation and help them realize their fan base. They do an excellent job of reaching out to their fan base and encouraging them to donate, connect and envision themselves as a part of the team; after all, the slogan “Join the Club” is used throughout every platform. Though the content that they share could be divided more equally between platforms, the message itself is for the fans and those fans seem to enjoy exactly what Team Canada is serving up.