Seriously Facebook, who’s on first?
Last fall we published a comprehensive post introducing the Facebook Business Suite. The goal of this platform update was to improve upon the Facebook Pages Manager app, providing a single interface for businesses to manage their Facebook and Instagram accounts across mobile and desktop. The initial rollout, accelerated by heightened eCommerce opportunities resulting from the pandemic, was bumpy at best. Now it appears that the Business Suite was an interim step leading to Facebook Creator Studio.
Most platform enhancements are introduced to groups of users over a period of time, and are offered as an available alternative for early adopters and interested users. Typically, migration is not immediately required; rather, user feedback is gathered to finesse user experience and functionality concerns. Compulsory migration generally follows repeated reminders and warnings.
A rocky start
In contrast with these norms, the initial rollout of the Facebook Business Suite appeared last fall without warning, and did not enable page owners to toggle between old and new applications while acclimating to the new platform. After several weeks (and, we imagine, a strong dose of less than friendly feedback from users), the Facebook Business Suite desktop user experience abruptly reverted back to Pages Manager. Business Suite was still accessible through a series of steps, but like most users, we chose the familiar path and reverted to the Pages Manager for desktop.
Thumbs-up for the Business Suite mobile app
The desktop implementation experience notwithstanding, over the past eight months or so, the Business Suite app has been available on mobile with ongoing improvements. It seemed that development teams were at work tweaking features, functionality and format to enhance usability. Published, draft and scheduled posts, whether created on desktop or mobile, in the (old) Pages Manager or the (new) Business Suite, were all visible and editable in the app. Progress.
And late last week, Facebook updated an earlier press release, announcing new features available on Facebook Business Suite, including:
- Functionality to create and save posts as Drafts
- Access to analytics for published posts
- Ability to edit scheduled posts
- Scheduling functionality for Facebook Stories
All good, right? Ah, nope.
Batter up: Facebook Creator Studio
Just a few days ago, Facebook served up more confusion. Originally introduced as a tool to “simplify the process of building and managing your video business,” the Facebook Creator Studio suddenly became Facebook’s platform for scheduling and managing content on Pages. It almost seemed like there were two different development teams working on competing applications.
The message below, shown in Business Suite, noting that posts and videos are moving to Creator Studio, included a warning that “soon, those tools will no longer be available here.”
Actually, the warning was not quite accurate. In a fumble reminiscent of Bill Buckner’s infamous 10th inning World Series error, posts created and scheduled — or saved as Drafts in Business Suite — were gone. No longer accessible via the Publishing Tools menu, not migrated to the Creator Studio, but simply missing, like a baseball right between the ankles of a Red Sox first baseman.
Another Facebook implementation gaffe … or a World Series level fail?
That depends on whether you had scheduled post content saved elsewhere, or created it entirely in the app.
Getting into the game
After some venting, and more than a few deep breaths, we moved to explore Creator Studio. Upon clicking through to the Creator Studio content library, accessible at https://business.facebook.com/creatorstudio/ we found a sidebar with two sections:
- The top section includes content-related menu items: Notifications, Pre-Published (Drafts or Scheduled), Published, Content Library, and Insights
- The lower section is home to Creative Tools, as well as a mix of other (somewhat oddly placed) items: Inbox, Monetization, Settings and Resources.
When mousing over the sidebar menu, a downward triangle indicates that some of the menu items include sub-menus. Additional options are shown in the body of the page when a menu is selected. Within published posts, for example, results may be filtered by date range, post type (video, text, link, etc.), description (type in a search term) and posts which were shared or not shared. This data is useful for assessing success of various executions.
After selecting a date range, Display options enable viewing as a list or in a calendar view, though we found the calendar option intermittently buggy.
Creator Studio sidebar tour
Below we’ve delved into some key items accessible from the left nav bar. The placement of some items appears haphazard and we expect may be a work in progress. Stay tuned for future releases.
- Create New (green button) – Create New post, story, video or other content
- Notifications – Tabs for Alerts, Recommendations and Updates
- Pre-Published – With options for viewing for Scheduled and Draft posts, and the ability to sort by post type — videos, photos, links, text-only posts, Facebook live
- Published – Includes detailed performance stats for all posts – reach, impressions, engagements – clicks, comments, video view details, along with the ability to sort by post type. Preview a published post to view, edit, change the published date, see insights or delete the post
- Content Library – Offers a broader view of scheduled and published posts; however, the Posts sub-menu features a message that the content will be migrated to the Pre-Published and Published tabs referenced above. The remaining menu options in the Content Library appear to be focused on maximizing visibility for your video posts. Regrettably, videos published in early versions of Facebook scheduling tools are not accessible here yet.
- Insights – High-level views and detailed options provide the ability to drill down into various analytics
- Inbox – Relocated a bit awkwardly
- Settings – Also strangely located, the sub-menu includes Page Roles and Settings
Change is hard, and Facebook often seems to serve up functionality that isn’t quite ready for the big leagues. While the Creator Studio isn’t a grand slam, it has some promise.
Need help with your social media marketing?
From identifying the optimal social platforms for your niche and developing your social presence, to coaching you on using social media strategically, creatively and effectively – or managing your accounts on an ongoing basis — we meet your needs for social media support.
