With over 1.3 billion users, Facebook remains the global king of social media engagement. From the halls of Harvard, ramping to a cultural phenomenon in a mere decade, Facebook is viewed by some on the same level of importance as was once reserved for the telephone and Internet. No matter your view of the importance of this community-builder, it’s hard to argue the site’s role in today’s society and its ability to influence a brand’s reputation. Whether leveraged as a marketing tool, customer service portal — or a blend of both — Facebook has grown into a complex matrix of interactions that requires the right blend of engagement and analysis for optimum results.
While certainly a powerful opportunity, the time and bandwidth needed for content developers to execute a successful Facebook program remains a growing capacity concern. Utilizing an external ad agency, a popular outsourcing option for companies strapped for resources and talent, is a sound option to ensure your brand is getting the proper direction and content. Realizing the need for a centralized hub for activities, Facebook developers began rolling out a new tool this week called Business Manager – aimed at remedying some of these issues.
The premise is simple – Business Manager consolidates all advertising, pages, permissions, apps, payment interfaces and other common functions into one view for easier management and visibility. From one place, you can control who has access to your page – a comforting notion in this age of security breaches and malicious software.
Users can view which external partners, such as agencies or marketing vendors, have access to a business’s pages and can even set individual permissions for them and for in-house team members.
If you handle the advertising for your brand, Business Manager can show pages, ad accounts, and apps linked to your company across the Facebook network. If you work for an ad agency, you’ll see the pages, ad accounts, and apps to which your client has granted you access. You’ll also see the people on your teams who can access them.
Business Manager also gives you more control over who can access your business account information. You can add and delete ad accounts linked to your company, and grant and revoke permission to employees and external partners.
There are 10 roles you can assign team members within Business Manager, depending on the permissions they would need based on their roles. For example, a business admin — who manages all aspects of the business settings, could be assigned the right to modify or delete the account or adding or removing new people. A page analyst, the lowest provided setting, cannot post on the page but can view insights. The end-goal, according to Facebook, is to help social media marketers work faster.
So how do you get Business Manager? Contact your Facebook sales representative. If you don’t have a sales rep, submit your email address in the field at the bottom of https://business.facebook.com/ to be notified when the tool is available to your page.
We are experimenting with this new feature and will report back our thoughts in the coming weeks – a central console to execute multiple functions works great in other areas so we’re optimistic this new tool will be a welcomed addition to the barn.
About the Barn
Just like the audiences we covet, a good home improvement marketing professional has a great appreciation for tools that make their jobs more productive and simple. Ask anyone around our office – I am obsessed with finding new tools to help automate and improve our daily tasks. In future columns, The Barn will take deep dives into some of our favorite tools that you can try for yourself.
