Connect Instagram to Facebook Business Manager

Video Transcript:

Tying your Instagram account into Facebook Business Manager to use as part of your ad campaigns isn’t really a hard process, but it can be a little bit convoluted depending on where you’re trying to do it from. And to be quite honest, there’s not very good support documentation out there. So what I want to do today is just walk you through kind of how you’ll know if things are set up the way you want it to be. And then a couple of different paths you can take to get your Instagram account tied to your Facebook Ads account so your ads will look like they’re coming from your Instagram profile. Let’s hop in. 

So the biggest place this is going to make a difference is going to be in the identity portion of creating an ad in Facebook Business Manager. For this account, you can see that we have our Paid Media Pros Facebook page and Instagram account tied to the individual ads. What this means is that when somebody engages with your ad on Instagram, it’ll be attributed to your Instagram profile. If they saved an ad, if they messaged you, if they commented, or if they just went to your business profile. 

While they’re going to see your Instagram business profile, because you have your account tied to it, let’s look and see what happens when there’s an account that does not have an Instagram account. So here, I just want to choose an account that I know does not have an Instagram account. What happens is that Facebook is going to use your Facebook page instead of an Instagram account. So again, that means that when somebody engages with your business profile, any of that on platform performance, it’ll be tied to your Facebook page. 

As opposed to your Instagram page, there are a couple quick ways that we can add our Instagram account to our Facebook account. The first is just by clicking this little blue link down here that says Add Instagram account. It’ll populate this window here where you can either add an existing account, which is the default choice. Or if you don’t have an Instagram account, you can create a new one by clicking this option here, and it’ll give you a couple of additional fields to make sure that you’re getting everything set up. 

If you’ve already got an Instagram account, just enter your username and password and then you’ll just have to click Confirm. I’m not going to do that for this example. So I’m just gonna click out. Once you do that, immediately Facebook will then populate the correct Instagram account in this field. So you won’t have to choose from a drop down or anything. It’ll just automatically show up if your username and password was accepted, and everything is tied together properly. 

Now the other way that you can tie your Instagram account is to actually go into Business Manager business settings. And this is what the business settings section will look like. So it’s the same thing we’re used to with the accounts list. And our typical ad accounts would be where your Facebook ad account lives.

We want to scroll down to Instagram accounts and choose that one. You can see that we already have the Paid Media Pros account here. For the sake of example today, I’m just going to link my personal Instagram account. It’s pretty easy when you add an Instagram account this way in Business Manager. This means that whatever Business Manager you add it through owns that Instagram account, they are claiming it as their own and nobody else can own that Instagram account. 

You can then only assign roles. So keep it in mind when you’re setting up your Business Manager making sure that the structure is right whichever one that you link it to this way is going to own that Instagram account. So if you’re trying to set up ads for a client, and they don’t have their Instagram account tied, it’s probably not the best idea for you to be the person who logs in and adds the account because it will be tied to your Business Manager. 

You’ll need to show them how to do this process so they can own it, and then assign a partner out to you to utilize their Instagram account in their Facebook ads account. Once you’re ready to click Add, and you’re in the proper Business Manager that you want to own the account, just click Add. Click Connect your Instagram account, and then just add in your information. 

So I’m gonna go ahead and do that, and now you’ll see that my personal Instagram account is tied down here. And then there’s a list of the ad accounts that you can tie it to over here on the right. I’m just going to scroll down, hit the one I want, hit finish, and it’ll confirm that you are set up and tied to the ad account that you want to play. So just hit OK. Now we’ll see that there are two Instagram accounts that are linked in here again. Once you want to assign partners and anybody that can use this account, you can use assigned partners. 

So because I tied my Instagram account to the staging account that we have set up in Facebook, that means that anybody who has access to the ad account through Business Manager will be able to use either the Paid Media Pros or my Instagram account as the Instagram property on any of the ads that we’re sending out through the Facebook or Instagram network. And that would be set up the exact same way as any other ad Account link through Business Manager. So just keep that in mind.

Written by Michelle Morgan