You’ve heard about Facebook Creator Studio and now wonder why you should pay for a third-party social media management tool. We’ve got answers (and more) to that question.
If you manage a number of Facebook pages, and they play a big part in your social media strategy, you’ve heard of Facebook Creator Studio. This relatively new tool from Facebook offers the ability to manage posts and messages on all your Facebook pages in one handy location. You can even connect your Instagram accounts, too.
I’m sure once you came across Facebook Creator Studio, you wondered, “Why should I pay for a third-party social media management tool?”
That’s a good question. Maybe Facebook Creator Studio will meet all your social media marketing needs, but it’s more likely missing key features that you use regularly.
We here in the Agorapulse Support Team have investigated what’s being offered in the Facebook Creator Studio. Read on to see the key advantages that a social media management tool like Agorapulse has to offer over Facebook Creator Studio.
What Is Facebook Creator Studio and What Can It Do?
Facebook Creator Studio seems to be Facebook’s answer to a social media management tool if all you want to do is manage your Facebook pages and Instagram accounts. It allows you to add some or all of your pages, so you can schedule posts, manage your messages/comments, and view some metrics on your activity.
Page roles
Anyone who manages a Page can use Creator Studio, although your Page role determines the specific information you see and the actions you can take.
You can manage the page roles for your team from within the Creator Studio.
Content library
Facebook Creator Studio has a section called the content library. However, it is not storing media for later use (as the name seems to suggest).
Instead, it looks like the Publishing Lists section in Agorapulse—showing you posts scheduled or already published.
For example, the content library in Creator Studio has an Upload Videos button, but as soon as you upload the video, you have to choose where and when to post it.
When you click on the posts in the content library, you can repost them by changing the date, but this is not a lot different from what Agorapulse offers with duplicating posts with the click of a button.
There is no storage of photos and videos for later use that I can see.
Insights
The only Insights offered by Creator Studio are for video posts. Though one of the Facebook pages we tested with only had photo posts, no Insights were available. Once we uploaded a video, we were able to see some Insights.
If you click on a post in the content library section of Creator Studio, you can view some Insights information on a post. (However, that is the same information that you currently get on the Facebook dashboard for your page.)
When looking for more information in the Insights section of Creator Studio, it will only show you information related to video posts.
You can choose a custom date for your Insights in Creator Studio, but only for your Facebook pages, not for your Instagram accounts. You can view the Insights per Facebook page, but it is not possible to export the Insights for either Facebook or Instagram.
Is video king?
Looking at the Creator Studio for Facebook pages, a strong emphasis is on videos and video posts.
Even when launching, Facebook stated it wanted to make Creator Studio easier for creators to manage their video content.
Though you can use Creator Studio to post an image, link, or text posts, there is a large Upload Video button on the Home page and Content Library page. There’s even a Go Live button on the Home page allowing you to do Facebook Live across one or all of your pages from within the Creator Studio.
The Insights focus on the engagement and views of your video posts only. It shows you the number of one-minute or three-second views of your videos in a given time period, but it does not show the engagement on non-video posts.
You can see metrics given on the number of followers of your page but, for example, the retention metric focuses again on how long people watched videos for, rather than repeated visits to your page or other posts.
This shows that, at least within the Creator Studio, Facebook rates video posts as more important, or more useful to marketing than other post types. Perhaps Facebook sees that videos are the best way to maximize your brand awareness. But it does show a very narrow view of the activity on the average Facebook page—where Facebook businesses are not always posting videos, but want to engage with the customers in other ways.
Instagram features
Right now, Creator Studio has more features available for Facebook pages than for Instagram accounts. Maybe this will change in the future, but this is not clear.
One of the main limitations in Creator Studio for Instagram is that you can only create posts for your feed or for IGTV. It’s not possible to publish story posts. The content library section for Instagram will show you all your posts (carousels, stories, videos as well as IGTV), but some posts will need to be created in the Instagram mobile app.
As with Facebook, the content library for Instagram will show you past or scheduled posts. It is not a medium for storing images and videos for posting at a later date.
The Insights section will show your Interactions, Reach and Impressions; there’s even a section showing your audience demographics.
Unfortunately, though, you can’t customize the date range. Your Instagram Insights will be for the last seven days, and that can’t be changed. Just like for Facebook, this report can’t be exported.
Should You Choose Agorapulse or Facebook Creator Studio?
Facebook Creator Studio is a good option for small businesses that only have Facebook and Instagram profiles to manage. However, if your social media plan includes more than just Facebook and Instagram, or if you have high-volume Facebook and Instagram profiles then maybe you need to pause before making a final decision.
Download your FREE Facebook 101 workbook and essential guide.
Consider some of the limitations highlighted in the comparison chart that follow this section.
Managing comments on multiple active profiles
Managing Facebook and Instagram comments on multiple active profiles is difficult in Creator Studio. The way the inbox works in Creator Studio is awkward. It shows all posts, and you need to select the post to view the comments. That does not offer an improvement really over viewing posts natively. If you have a high volume of comments on your page, that becomes very cumbersome.
You can manage comments and direct messages for both Facebook pages and Instagram accounts, but there are two separate inboxes for comments and DMs.
Again, if you have high volumes of comments and DMs, switching among inboxes for multiple accounts is not ideal.
In Agorapulse, the inbox for your Facebook page contains all comments, reviews, and direct messages together. Nothing unnecessary is included in the inbox, just the engagements from your fans that you need to manage.
You don’t need to switch between multiple inboxes on one Facebook page.
Agorapulse allows you to label your conversations for easy follow-up. So, you can track the specific topics your fans want to talk about. This way, you can really get a handle on what’s important to your fans.
Managing ad comments
To get decent reach on your Facebook posts, you need to invest in Facebook advertising. And with ads come ad comments (good comments, bad comments, and spammy/confusing comments).
For Facebook users with an ad account (or multiple ad accounts), managing comments on your ads is not possible in Creator Studio.
Agorapulse will let you manage ad comments easily. Once an ad account is connected to your Facebook page, Agorapulse will sync the comments on those as posts into your Inbox, where you can easily reply and track the feedback from your customers. Then you won’t miss any comments on your unpublished dark posts.
You can also analyze the performance of your Facebook Ads with Agorapulse’s free AdsReports tool.
Publishing to multiple profiles simultaneously
Facebook Creator Studio doesn’t offer the ability to publish to multiple profiles at the same time. Many users find this feature one of the main benefits of using a social media management tool.
Agorapulse let you publish to multiple social profiles at one time. You can easily customize the content of your post for each social network you are sending it to. So, you can easily reduce the character count on a Twitter post but keep the same links and images that will also be posted to Facebook and Instagram.
There’s even more than that … When scheduling posts, Agorapulse lets you set repeated publishing times for your post. Do you have evergreen content? You can use the Agorapulse queue feature to add posts and have them republish regularly on set days and times. You can even pause and restart a queue to suit changes in your posting strategy. All that gives you more flexibility!
Publishing Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories have become very popular and many users include a number of stories a day in the strategic posting.
With Creator Studios, it is not possible to publish a story.
Agorapulse allows the ability to create a story post on the desktop. As with any other “API-abiding third-party tool,” the Story post will need to be completed through a mobile app, but the possibility to create a story post on the desktop only exists in third-party tools.
Needing to Manage Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube
Creator Studio offers many features for Facebook and Instagram … but if your social media management includes Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube, you will need to use a different tool.
Agorapulse allows you to manage all those social media profiles as well as Facebook pages and Instagram accounts in one place. So with one login, you can stay engaged with your fans across multiple platforms.
Getting reports and statistics
Facebook reporting and statistics are important to everyone.
We all want to know how our posts are performing and compare our engagement from week to week (or month to month). The options for reporting are very limited in Creator Studio, with limited data and no ability to export the reports.
Agorapulse provides reports data on all types of posts for Facebook and Instagram, including engagement, reach, impressions, and much more. You can choose a custom date range for your report then export it as a PowerPoint presentation, which you can edit to suit your needs. You can also get per-post metrics and Instagram Story metrics via CSV.
For those who like to benchmark their performance against other brands, Agorapulse also offers a competitors’ report. This is also available on the Facebook Insights dashboard but not available in the Creator Studio. This is not very convenient, giving you more places to check for your relevant information.
It’s important to be able to track topics both in your published items but also in the types of messages you receive from your customers. Agorapulse allows you to label posts and messages from users and then includes metrics in the reports about the most used labels.
Receiving world-class customer support
The final difference (and we happen to think it’s a big one) is the customer support. And am I biased? Gosh, no!
Creator Studio doesn’t have dedicated support to help you if things go wrong or if you just have some questions.
Here on the Agorapulse Customer Support team, we pride ourselves on giving efficient and high-quality support to all our users. It matters to us that our customers have a good experience with our tool and that they get the benefit of all that Agorapulse has to offer.
Facebook Creator Studio vs. Agorapulse
When we compare the Facebook Creator Studio to a full-service tool like Agorapuse, some differences stand out. This table shows how the two compare:
In Conclusion
Facebook Creator Studio is perfect for small businesses that only have a social media presence on Facebook and Instagram. If you have a couple of Facebook pages and Instagram accounts then you will find Facebook Creator Studio helpful. It will serve your needs pretty well and has an attractive price for new businesses starting out.
However, if you want more flexibility when engaging with your customers; if you manage more than a handful of social media accounts across multiple platforms; and if you want statistics reported on all your profiles, Creator Studio is not going to meet your needs. This flexibility and range of features come from a full-service social media management tool.
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Get started on saving time and energy on your own social media management! Check out our free trial of Agorapulse to help you schedule, track, and measure all your social media efforts.
