SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATION CAN BE A HEADACHE!

Do you know who ‘owns’ your Facebook or Instagram business pages? These may have been set up years ago, and it’s easy to lose track of ownership; who is an administrator, or if you have a Business Manager account?! What’s the difference between Business Manager and Business Suite? And how do you avoid the risk of losing access to everything when someone leaves the business? This blog focuses on Facebook and Instagram, part of Meta.

What is a Business Page?

On Facebook and Instagram, it is possible to create either a personal page or a business page. A business page allows you to add contact details and showcase your products and services away from your own personal page, which is kept safe and private. Creating more than one personal page or using a personal page for commercial purposes is in violation of Facebook’s policies, so, definitely, something to avoid.

But it is not possible to set up a business page WITHOUT a personal page! And this, quite frankly, can be a real pain as it means that someone, somewhere in your organisation (or at an external marketing agency, even), owns the page and has ultimate control over it. They can add and remove administrators, change settings and post whatever they like… Is there a better solution? Thankfully, yes! We advise setting up a Business Manager Account and then assigning ownership of the Facebook or Instagram Business Pages to it.

What is a Business Manager Account?

Meta Business Manager is a desktop tool that helps you to organise and manage your business pages, and ad accounts all in one place. While you are encouraged to log in via your personal Facebook login in order to set up a Business Manager Account, you can later change your details to include a business email address, and you can add other people to share responsibility for managing the account.

Once the Business Manager account is set up, you can:

• Add users – individuals within your organisation or partners who have your permission to work on your behalf, such as external marketing agencies or website developers.
• Add Facebook pages, advertising accounts, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts, as well as any apps you may have - Meta call these ‘assets’.
• Assign assets to particular users – for example, a marketing assistant may have some access to Facebook and Instagram pages in order to moderate content, whereas a member of the accounts team may have full access to the ad accounts in order to download invoices and update spending limits.

There are useful setup guides available for all aspects of Business Manager, for example, if you need more than one advertising account, if you want to request access to other Pages or advertising accounts or if you need to assign permissions to people who work with you.

What is Ads Manager?

Meta Ads Manager is the place where you create and manage paid adverts on Facebook and Instagram, keep payment details up to date, view notifications, and see ad performance. It is available on desktop and as a mobile app.

What is Meta Business Suite?

Business Suite is described as a ‘one-stop shop’ where you can manage all marketing and advertising activities on Facebook and Instagram. It can be accessed via both a desktop and a mobile app. Although it was released a few years ago, many people are still in the process of being migrated to it. It will allow you to use the features of Business Manager, Creator Studio (Meta's design and scheduling tool, which was retired earlier this year) and Ads Manager all in one place.

From the new platform, for each Business Manager account you have access to, you will be able to plan and create content, see notifications, respond to messages, gain insights into how your accounts are performing, manage adverts and, of course, access all the business settings that allow you to manage people, assets and billing.

When a social media administrator or account owner leaves the business, what should I do?

It would be better to sort everything BEFORE they leave the business!

We blogged a while back about the problem with trying to regain access to accounts when a business rebrands and changes its website address – and, therefore, all employee email addresses change – important lessons learned! The last thing you want to do if a social media account administrator leaves is start all over again, setting up new online accounts and having to build followers and engagement from scratch.

Most social media platforms and websites offer some help with changing passwords but generally require the original login details i.e. the email address of the person who first set up the account. Two-factor authentication may be an added issue, with verification codes being sent to the mobile number of your ex-colleague. These are real headaches if the person is not easily contactable or is unwilling to help, but having a checklist or procedure in place as part of the company’s wider offboarding process will help.

In relation to any online account access, not just Facebook and Instagram, we recommend that you:

• Create a checklist of all the online accounts that people in your organisation have access to. Do they include your website content management system (CMS), social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, online directory listings, and professional membership sites? What about review sites, Google Ads and the Google Business Profile?
• Ask your colleague to log in to each site they have access to and change the contact details to whoever is taking over the responsibility, or a generic office email address, if more appropriate. Transfer ownership of Facebook and Instagram pages and Ad accounts to the Business Manager/Ads Manager account. Ensure current passwords are known, and two-factor authentication apps or phone numbers are updated.
• Double-check that any former employees can no longer access the company’s accounts. Anyone with administrator access should be able to log in and remove old names.

Cal Partners is a marketing agency working exclusively with professional services businesses. We can set up and administer social media accounts on your behalf, create content and manage messages and engagement. And we can help ensure accounts remain accessible when you experience staffing changes. For more information, please visit www.calpartners.co.uk.