Facebook is launching several new offerings that will help entrepreneurs build and grow their businesses: Appointment Booking, Automated Ads, Video Creative Tools and unveiling new Blueprint training courses. The Appointment Booking tool is pretty impactful for the 90M small businesses on FB- it’s completely free way for SMBs to accept and manage appointments digitally.
- Appointments makes appointment-booking reliable and easy for service-based businesses on Facebook. It allows business owners to accept and manage appointments, customer information and send reminders, all from their phone for free.
- Automated Ads takes the guesswork out of buying ads on Facebook, and makes it easier for businesses to create tailored, effective ads that can run across both Facebook and Instagram. Campaigns can be created in four steps using existing business page and images, and tailored to their unique business goals. The majority of our 7 million active advertisers on Facebook are small businesses – and Facebook knows they can’t spend a lot of time becoming an expert on marketing. Automated Ads was created to help small businesses get expert results without requiring marketing expertise.
- New video creative tools help businesses build eye-catching video on their mobile phones in just minutes.
- Blueprint courses to offer more educational resources for small businesses online. This is all about Facebook’s focus on helping businesses anywhere have access to skills training that will help them grow their businesses.
In February 2018, Facebook announced it would be investing $1 billion in small business initiatives, recognizing there is more Facebook can do to help connect people and businesses. Last Facebook also set a goal to train 1 million small business owners and people across the US by 2020. With that, Boost With Facebook (formerly Community Boost) was born – and visited 50 US cities in 2018, including cities like Topeka, Des Moines, Chicago, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Houston.
Washington DC marks the first one of 2019 – and it’s the kickoff of taking the digital skills trainings on the road globally – this year to more than 200 cities all over the world. At Boost with Facebook DC they will also be announcing a number of new tools for small businesses above.
Beyond the trainings, Facebook is partnering with hundreds of local organizations in the U.S to provide continued training for small businesses and job seekers.
Facebook has also worked with educational institutions and formed 20 community college partnerships in 2018 to create digital skills curriculum. For example, in partnership with Central New Mexico Community College, they created the new Digital Marketing Certificate program. They also provide online trainings – and have expanded Facebook Blueprint & launched Learn with Facebook in the US to provide educational resources digitally too.
More information: National Small Business Week Gets a Boost in DC
