A Social Media Manager's Guide to Facebook Creator Studio
We'll cover everything social media managers need to know in this comprehensive Guide to Facebook Creator Studio - Facebook's post management tool that allows you to schedule FB and Instagram posts from one place.
Updated: February 24, 2020
Facebook Creator Studio is a powerful solution that lets you create, manage, monetize, and measure content across all of your Pages and Instagram accounts from one place. Best of all, it removes all the distractions that come with your personal Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Unfortunately, learning how to use FB Creator Studio requires learning how to navigate through an entirely new interface.
Overwhelming, I know. But, we're here to help.
Getting Started with Facebook Creator Studio
Facebook Creator Studio is available on desktop and mobile devices, but many social media managers feel that the mobile version has lot of room for improvement.
We'll focus on the desktop manager below.
What is Facebook Creator Studio
Let's let the folks at Facebook take care of this one. According to FB:
Creator Studio brings together all the tools you need to effectively post, manage, monetize and measure content across all your Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts. It also helps you take advantage of new features and monetization opportunities when they become available.
In other words, Creator Studio is a streamlined place to manage your Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Best of all, it's a distraction-free environment that doesn't include any of the notifications or distractions from your personal accounts.
How to access Creator Studio
There are two ways you can access Facebook Creator Studio:
- Visit facebook.com/CreatorStudio
- Navigate to your Facebook Page > click the Publishing Tools button on the sidebar > select "Creator Studio" under the "Tools" section in the sidebar
Facebook Creator Studio Features
Below we'll cover the different features you can use in Facebook Creator Studio and how to access them.
Home
When you access Creator Studio, you'll find yourself on the Home tab. This page is pretty straightforward and acts as a dashboard for your account(s).
From the Home Tab, you can:
- Switch between your Facebook & Instagram accounts
- Create a post, add a Story, upload a Video, or launch a Live Video
- See account optimization recommendations
- See a quick snap-shot of your Insights
- See a quick summary of recent posts
- Check notifications
TIP: You can switch between the different accounts you manage or view a summary of all your accounts by clicking the account selection feature at the top-left of your screen. This can be done from any page in Creator Studio.
From the sidebar, you can navigate directly to Creator Studio features like:
- The Content Library
- Insights
- Inbox
- Monetization
- Rights Manager
- Creative Tools
- Settings
- Resources
- Or, create a post
Let's take a closer look at these features.
Creating & Scheduling Posts
Scheduling Facebook Posts in Creator Studio
While these features have existed in Facebook for a while, Facebook Creator Studio allows you to draft, create, and schedule posts directly from the tool.
The "Create Post" button is readily available at the top of your sidebar at all times.
The true power in Creator Studio's scheduling features lies in the ability to access your posts drafts, scheduled posts, and past posts from the Content Library (which we'll cover in a moment).
Scheduling Instagram Posts in Creator Studio
Creator Studio's Instagram scheduling features used to be, well, less than desirable.
Thankfully, they've made some tweaks to enhance the experience and now you can use it to schedule Instagram Posts directly to IG.
Note: You will need to connect your Instagram Account to Creator Studio in order to use this feature.
Once your account is linked, all you have to do is click the Instagram icon at the top of your page and select the Create Post button at the top left of your screen.
Here you can schedule an Instagram or IGTV post from Creator Studio. You'll even get access to features like multi-image posts, tagging, turning off comments, etc.
Unfortunately, at this time you can't schedule Instagram Stories in Creator Studio, but you can use a tool like HeyOrca's social media calendar to create Instagram Stories and publish them with the Mobile App or Email Publishing features.
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Content Library
The Content Library in Facebook Creator Studio is where you will access all the posts from your Facebook Pages.
When you first land on the Content Library page, you'll see a summary of all your posts by default with information displayed in the following columns:
- Post (snapshot of your post media + text)
- Post Status
- Date
- Details (whether the post is "Boosted" or not)
- Impressions
- People Reached
- Engagement
- Link Clicks
- Comments
- Shares
- Reactions
- Distribution
TIP: If you are unsure about what the columns represent you can hover over the column headings for a quick overview of the data that is being displayed.
Tabs at the top of the page will allow you to quickly filter your results. These are the default tabs in you'll see:
- All Posts (default view)
- All Published
- Scheduled
- Drafts
- Expired
- Expiring
- 3-Second Video Views
- 1-Minute Video Views
Below the Content Library tabs, you'll find several options to narrow your results down even further.
You can select:
- Post Types
- Date ranges
- Filters (a variety of granular filtering options)
- Or search for a specific post or group of posts using the search bar
Insights
The Insights feature in Creator Studio is, arguably, the most powerful tool. Insights and data are critical in improving our digital marketing efforts and getting the most out of our social media posts.
As you would expect, this is where you can access reporting metrics like:
- Content performance
- Estimated earnings
- Advanced insights about your audiences
Using the sidebar, you can access the following insights:
- Overview - 30,000 foot view of all your Facebook posts based on the date range you've selected
- Audience - Overview of audience engagement broken down by various demographic, psychographic, and behavioral metrics
- Video Performance - Overview of video post performance and summary of top videos
- Video Loyalty - Summary of new followers, how often they're watching, and when they return to watch most often
- Video Retention - Overview of where video views are coming from, how long people are watching, and summary of video posts
- Earnings - Insights on your Facebook paid ads performances (note: if you do not see this, you'll have to set up monetization in Creator Studio)
- Stories Performance - Access your Stories insights for up to 28 days (note: you'll need to turn on this feature by visiting the page)
- Instant Articles Call-to-Action - Breakdown of your Instant Article sign-ups
- Instant Articles Performance - Overview of how your instant articles performed over time
TIP: At any time, you can export insights by clicking the Export Data button at the top right of your screen.
Inbox
The Facebook Creator Studio Inbox is a catch-all place to see all your accounts' comments and direct messages.
This is a handy feature that helps you stay on top of communication with your fans, followers, and customers. Best of all, the Inbox feature comes free of distractions like personal Facebook notifications or your distracting feed.
The Inbox lets you view:
- Facebook Messenger messages
- Facebook comment notifications
- Instagram comment notifications
- Instagram direct messages and Story mentions
Each view also comes with handy filters to help you keep track of your notifications.
Only seeing unread messages means that none should slip through the cracks and marking messages for follow-up means that you can easily get back to the people who need additional information or assistance.
This is great for deliverer top-notch customer service. If you’re a brand with a big following, this would enable you to stay on top of all of your engagement, which can be challenging through the mobile apps.
Monetization
You can monetize your page by allowing ads to display before, after, or around your content.
Depending on the platform, the rules for monetization can be pretty confusing but Creator Studio makes it simple.
This page clarifies whether or not your page is eligible for monetization and why or why not. They also provide other resources and tips to help you get started with and manage monetization:
DO:
- Stay up to date with our Content Guidelines and Community Standards.
- Share authentic content.
- Develop an established presence and create an active and consistent experience for your viewers.
DON’T:
- Post content you did not create or that you do not own or have rights to use.
- Post content that could be considered misinformation or false news or promote clickbait or sensationalism.
- Engage in sharing behaviors that prioritize distribution over quality.
Creator Studio also provides you with the ability to add "ad breaks" to your videos. This handy feature lets you control when an ad will appear so that your viewers don't see an ad in the middle of something important.
You can allow Facebook to choose placement for the ads automatically or you can choose the placement for the ads yourself.
Here’s Facebook's recommendations for each of the settings:
Automatic Ad-Break Placement
- Facebook’s automatic placement feature is on by default, meaning ad breaks will be added to your videos automatically. The automatic placements feature can find the best natural cue point for an ad break in your content while trying to maximize your earnings.
- The automatic placement feature works best if your video is structured to accommodate an ad break.
Manual Ad-Break Placement
- You can add cue points in your videos to signify where you’d like ad breaks to be placed.
- You can start placing cues after the 60-second mark of your video.
- You must leave at least 120 seconds between each cue point.
- Facebook may not be able to fill every cue point you suggest.
- Viewers will see ads at different points in your video depending on the last time they saw one.
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Rights Manager
The Rights Manager feature is a powerful tool that helps you protect your copyrighted Facebook and Instagram content at scale. The tool will automatically detect audio and video content that matches yours to prevent unlawful use of your content.
The ability to police Facebook for stolen content has existed for a while, but it was convoluted and involved third-party API integration. Facebook has now partnered with proven industry leaders to integrate these features directly into Creator Studio.
In order to get started with this feature, you'll need to apply here to request access to Rights Manager.
Once you've been accepted, you can upload references files that Creator Studio will analyze and use to detect content that infringes on your copyrights.
Creative Tools
The Creative Tools feature gives you access to your Live Dashboard and Sound Collection tools.
Here's what you need to know.
Live Dashboard for Gaming Streams
Creator Studio's Live Dashboard is a relatively new feature that's specifically designed for Game Streaming. It allows you to manage your Game Streams with the following features:
- Launch Live streams or test your broadcast before going live
- Update information on your streams
- Manage alerts and notifications on your streams
- View insights on your streams
- Schedule streaming events
- View clips and access your Clips Library
- Add polls to streams and view poll results
- Schedule replays of your past streams
Sound Collection
Creator Studio has given us the ability to create posts, monetize them, measure how well they’re received, and protect them from unauthorized use.
It seems only natural that they’d also give you access to copyright-free elements that you can use to create content. The Sound Collection section gives you access to free, legal music and sound effects that you can use in your videos.
You can use the Sound Collection tool to search for Tracks and Sound Effects for your posts.
Facebook did a really nice job with this one by including powerful filters and search functionality to help you find the ideal sound assets quickly.
Settings
The Settings page in Facebook Creator Studio is where you'll access settings options for the various pages you manage.
Facebook Page & Permission Tab in Creator Studio
By default, when you click into the Settings tab, you'll be taken to the Page & Permission tab where you'll find an overview of all the Facebook Pages you manage and at-a-glance details on:
- The #1 of followers your pages have
- Your role on each of the pages
- The option to view other users assigned to the page and their roles
If you have selected an individual page from the page selector, you'll only see the data for the specific page you've chosen.
To view all pages, simply select the page selector dropdown located on the top right of your screen (it will display your active page's name and logo) > then select the "all pages" option from the dropdown.
From this tab, you can also Create a New Page from scratch or Add a Person to your account. These options are located at the top right of your screen.
Facebook Page Settings in Creator Studio
Clicking on the Page Settings option will launch your Facebook Page Settings in a new tab. This is not currently a feature that's built into Creator Studio.
Facebook Page Quality View in Creator Studio
Similar to the Facebook Page Settings option, clicking the Page Quality will link will open up the tool in your Facebook Business Manager.
Note: The settings tab in Creator Studio for Instagram is limited. It currently features an overview of the Instagram Accounts you manage and the option to add new accounts.
Instagram Creator Studio Features At-A-Glance
Instagram Creator Studio has come a long way since its initial, poorly-received, release.
While it doesn't offer all of the same functionality as its Facebook counterpart, it still gives you access to core features like:
- The Content Library
- Insights
- Monetization
- Accounts
One thing it holds over Facebook's CS, is the Calendar Feature which allows you to see a visual overview of the Instagram Posts you have scheduled.
TIP: Did you know HeyOrca's social media calendar tool for agency offers Direct Instagram Publishing?
You can create and schedule Instagram posts directly from HeyOrca, collaborate with clients, request client approvals, and report on your results all from one place.
You can even preview and customize how your scheduled posts will appear on your clients' profiles with the Instagram Grid Previews feature.
Want to Save Time Managing Social Posts, Client Approvals, and Reports?
HeyOrca lets you effortlessly schedule social media posts, collaborate with clients, and report on your results… all from one place.
Discover how easy it is to manage all your clients and publish social media posts directly to their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and Pinterest accounts!
(no credit card required)
Wrap-up
Overall, Creator Studio is a valuable tool for anyone who manages Facebook or Instagram accounts.
It allows you to track and manage content performance, even across different pages. It provides insights on how your audience interacts with your content and facilitates interaction with fans.
Creator Studio reflects the importance Facebook has placed on video content and can become a hub for content management and measurement.
It does it all using a simple and pleasing interface that prevents distraction or clutter from all of the different elements of Facebook.
While none of these features or options are unique to Creator Studio, where it shines is in the simplicity and ease-of-use that it offers. Facebook can be cluttered and filled with distractions.
Creator Studio strips those things away and allows you to focus on managing your accounts.
Try HeyOrca free for 14 days and see how you can fight burnout by saving time planning, publishing, and collaborating on your social media content in one place.
