Why is Facebook so Complicated for SMB’s

Social Media should be a tool that helps most small businesses reach new customers and engage with current customers through direct communication with these customers. However, Facebook makes managing pages much harder for small/medium-sized companies (SMBs). 

As a Small Business owner, I want tools that help me maximize my time rather than complicate and add new tasks to my day. Facebook has done just that with the management of pages. I logged into a page and went, “WTF?” They have reorganized everything, and while it wasn’t ideal before, you could find what you needed. 

I needed to find out how to add a person as an admin on the account. After about 15 mins looking and Googleing, I found the solution. It was under Page settings but easier to find on mobile rather than desktop. This should be a manageable task; it should take less than 5 minutes to go in, invite a new person, and then accept. 

My preference is there should be two experiences for pages. The first is for influencers and smaller individuals, and another for Larger businesses. Why do I think this?

  1. Small businesses need more time to go through complex setups to get up and running. The Larger businesses have specialized staff at their own company or agency that can do all the heavy lifting. At the same time, a small biz is usually a group of 2-3 people doing most of the tasks and running social media. 
  2. Facebook Business Manager (or whatever it’s called when you read this) must be simplified for SMB. This is especially true for a business managing several pages for different brands. In theory, it’s great to have all your pages and ad accounts together, but in practice, I have had more SMB owners complain about Business Manager, and they don’t understand why they need this feature. 
  3. Compared to other social media sites, Facebook’s site is way more complex than the YouTube Studio page. I think they have done a great job in simplifying the interface and making the process of postings, analyzing, and monitoring videos on YouTube more accessible. 
  4. Lastly, finding help from Facebook is almost nonexistent. It’s tough to get any help from Facebook when you don’t understand the setup of this Business Manager. However, this is true across all social platforms and is not a Facebook-specific problem. 

These are my ideas, and curious about what you think about the Pages experience. 

Tim is the founder of Element33. A social media agency specializing in education, management and strategy for small businesses. He comes from a traditional marketing agency but has embraced all things digital. He considers himself a marketing nerd and believes that all marketing is tied together. This means no matter what silo you are in, social, email, seach, etc, changes in one will affect the other!

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