Everything You Need to Know About the New Facebook Business Suite

Marketing your business on social media is never easy, but it’s made even more difficult by the ever-changing landscape of Facebook advertising.

Facebook has been rolling out the Business Suite, but as Facebook rolls out Business Suite and moves away from Business Manager…

…we’re noticing some of our client’s accounts are defaulting to Business Suite and some aren’t.

So today, we’re going to cover the differences between Business Suite and Business Manager.

As well as what has changed and what’s coming. Let’s dive in! 

What Is The Facebook Business Suite? 

The Business Suite is where you’ll manage all of the organic and paid marketing efforts for your Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger accounts.

The Facebook Business Suite combines all of the tools from:

• pages,
• Creator Studio, and
• Business Manager

…so you can manage everything from one place. 

Let’s look at specifics, shall we? 

What Is The Business Manager?

The Facebook Business Manager is where you handle everything that’s behind the scenes, like:

• creating and managing ads,
• uploading your Facebook product catalog for shopping,
• adding permissions for partners or agencies,
• creating and setting up your Facebook Pixel.

You didn’t create and schedule posts, respond to comments and message, or edit your pages or groups in Business Manager. 

So What’s Happening? 

The Business Manager isn’t actually going away.

Facebook is combining the best parts of Business Manager with Business Suite.

This is so that you can manage all aspects of your business’ social media presence in one place. 

What Can You Do In The Facebook Business Suite? 

You can do everything in the Business Suite that you were able to do in Business Manager.

They’re not taking away any of the functions we’ve gotten used to.

But, Facebook is using Business Suite to improve advertising, organic posting, and connecting with your audiences. 

The key features include the ability to: 

• Post across platforms 
• Manage your comments and messages
• Create ads 
• See insights and data for organic and paid posts
• Add partners, employees, or freelancers to help you grow your business

If you’ve spent time advertising on Facebook, you may be thinking to yourself, “okay, this doesn’t seem different from what I can do now…”

And you’re mostly right.

However, Facebook Business Suite is going to add a lot of functionality that Business Manager doesn’t have. 

Before we get into the differences between the two properties, here’s a quick reminder about our newly launched social media ads training course.

If you want to take your social advertising skills to the next level, this is the course for you.

Business Suite Is Your New Homebase

If you’re like many of my clients, you may already be landing on the Business Suite as your homepage when you log back in…

…or visit www.business.facebook.com. It looks something like this.

If you’re used to Business Manager, you may be a bit freaked out by this. Where are all of your buttons?

Let us show you how to get to the behind-the-scenes stuff (aka the old Business Manager). 

• When you log into your account, you may see this. Congrats! That’s the new Facebook Business Suite. 
• To access all the nice Business Manager stuff, click Settings and Help.
• You’ll see this page with Business Account Info, People, Business Assets, More settings, Ad account settings, and Billing info.
• The dark grey bar on the far right houses all the other Business Suite tools. 

You can add and manage assets like your pixel, product catalog, billing information, ad account settings, and business info. 

Business Suite Navigation Overview

Let’s look quickly at the navigation in Business Suite so you know where to find the stuff you need. 

Home – Get a quick look at the overall health of your accounts. 

Notifications – Shows you all the activity on your accounts so you can engage with your followers.

Inbox – This is where you’ll find all of the direct messages you’ve gotten to your accounts.

Posts & Stories – Create, schedule, organize, and view your posts for Facebook and Instagram. 

Commerce – This opens the Commerce Manager, which is where you’ll manage your Catalog of products so your fans can shop. 

Planner – This gives you a calendar view of your scheduled posts. The right-hand column includes holidays.

Ads – See ads you’ve run from your page (this is different from the Ad Account found in the Business Manager). You can access this from the All Tools menu.

Insights – Shows you the stats for your page.

All Tools – Access even more tools for engaging with your customers, managing your business, running ads.

As well as analyzing your performance (and running reports), selling your products/services, and creating posts, Stories, and ads. 

Our Favorite Things About Facebook Business Suite 

We want to show you some of the features and additions that we’re most looking forward to.

Some of these are available now and some will be rolling out next year.

We’ll let you know which is which so you don’t get lost trying to find something that isn’t available yet.

A Quick Look at New Page Experiences

If you create a page now and into the future, you’re automatically going to be enjoying the New Page Experience.

However, a lot of the pages that already exist – maybe even some that you’re managing now – don’t have access to the New Page Experience.

What can you expect from the new pages? 

• A cleaner layout that should be easier to navigate.
• Quick switching between your public page and your personal profile.
• A separate news feed for the pages you follow (all full control Admins can see this feed).
• Better insights and notifications.
• Updated page management tools. 

Will I lose anything if I switch from an old page to a new one? 

You might, actually. Here’s what Facebook has changed: 

• If you switch your page to the New Page Experience, you’ll lose anyone who likes your old page but doesn’t follow it.
• Also, page roles like Moderator and Editor are no longer going to be available to you. Task access has replaced these options. 
• You’ll need to schedule posts in Business Suite or Creator Studio.

Speaking of Facebook Creator Studio, be sure to read our post about that next to learn more about it.

Organic Posting Features

In the Facebook Business Suite, from the left-hand menu, click Posts and Stories to see the organic publishing tools available to you.

You’ll be able to create, schedule, and see publishing posts and Stories from here. 

One of our favorite features is the Feed & Grid, which is super helpful if you have a specific look you’re going for or if you’re more of a visual planner.

You’ll need to connect your Instagram Business Page to Facebook to see that. 

Facebook Photos shows you all of the photos and albums you’ve uploaded and created on Facebook. 

A/B tests will house your organic post tests, which we’re really excited about. We love A/B testing for ads.

In fact, we do A/B testing for all of our clients. And having this option for organic posts is going to help you figure out what people are responding to.

Check out this post next on Facebook ad testing to learn more about it.

Work Accounts 

Facebook recently announced that they’ll be rolling out work accounts.

This is probably only exciting for folks who have been working on the platform for a while.

You’ll finally be able to keep your work and your personal profile separate.

It’s not an active feature yet, but should be available next year. 

Conclusion

We hope this helped clear up any confusion around the Facebook Business Suite/Business Manager transition that seems to be lasting forever.

You’ll inevitably come across some bugs as you navigate.

Like when David, one of our account managers, got stuck in a nonsense loop trying to set up an ad for a client. 

Usually though, like in this case, you can chalk it up to being part of the transition.

Sometimes, Facebook needs a minute to collect itself, so if you’re pulling your hair out, take a break and come back to it later.

Or, work with our Facebook advertising services and we’ll help you out! 

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