It's no secret—when small businesses succeed, communities thrive. More than 70% of people on Facebook in UAE are connected to at least one small business in another country. And almost 100 million people from around the world are connected to a small business in the UAE and that includes people in India, US, Pakistan, UK, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Germany, Italy, France.

More than 50% of people on Facebook in UAE are connected to at least one small business right in the UAE

We want to build and empower communities, which is why Facebook and Instagram are committed to helping small businesses grow. As more people turn to their phones to discover new things, small businesses need a strong mobile strategy. Facebook is the mobile solution for 65 million businesses with Pages and 8 million with Profiles on Instagram. 

And with more than 5 million active advertisers on Facebook, we need to provide solutions for businesses so customers can learn more about their products, visit websites, download an app, or even send messages. 

We're proud of our online community of small businesses and want to make connecting with customers as easy as possible.

With Facebook and Instagram, small businesses can:

SAVE TIME AND SEE WHAT’S WORKING

With the Ads Manager App, you can manage your ads and get insights in just a few taps. We've even updated the app to optimize your time.

At a glance, you can see how ads for your Pages are performing, or see a snapshot of how your ad account performed this week compared to the previous week. And the improved navigation allows you easily switch between your accounts and Pages. You've even got the ability to select up to five ads and compare them side by side.

We're also committed to helping you improve the performance of your ads. The app now recommends actions you can take to increase ad performance—and makes it easy for you to do so in one click. For example, we'll notify you when a high performing ad (compared to your other similar ads) is about to end and give you a one-click option to extend the schedule for another one, three or seven days. 

You'll receive notifications for relevant interests to add to your targeting in order to increase an active ad's performance, along with a one-click option to add our suggested interests to your targeting criteria. We'll also send notifications about recently-ended, high-performing ads and give you a one-click option to duplicate the ads. 

GET CREATIVE 

Creativity has never been more important for businesses, and now, even the biggest ideas can fit in the palm of your hand. Mobile has leveled the creative playing field, giving all businesses the ability to deliver world class creative to people around the world. But small businesses tell us they want faster, easier and more cost-efficient ways to create new content for Facebook and Instagram. That’s why we created Mobile Studio, a new way to show businesses how easy it is to create great ads using only a mobile device. 

All businesses can improve their creative, and ultimately, the efficacy of their ads with mobile apps and tools—and with Mobile Studio, you’ll learn to do them things in minutes. Don’t miss these important tips to help you bring your businesses to life without eating up time, energy or resources.  

LEARN NEW SKILLS

Blueprint eLearning courses give you the power to learn best practices for advertising on Facebook's family of apps and services at your own pace

The online education platform is available in ten languages and today more than 1 million unique users, half being small businesses, use Blueprint.

Some top courses include, Facebook Terminology to A/B Testing, to Successful Campaigns Best Practices, and we're adding new courses each month. In fact, almost 2.5 million eLearning courses have been taken by people across more than 150 countries, and 50% of our total course enrollments are taken by small or medium business owners and employees.

COMMUNICATE WITH CUSTOMERS 

Responding to your customers quickly is key to delivering good customer service but it can be hard to keep up with the volume of communications coming in. In November 2016, we announced a single inbox to manage communications across Facebook, Messenger and Instagram within the Pages Manager App. Today, we're expanding these capabilities to desktop.

FIND NEW CUSTOMERS, NEAR AND FAR

We’ve made it easier to run global campaigns from anywhere and have new solutions that help businesses connect with new customers: 

•International Lookalikes can help businesses find new people that look like their best customers in other countries. 

•Worldwide/Global Region targeting can help businesses set up a global campaign and find efficient conversions. 

•Country Snapshots and Insights Playbook can help businesses create customized campaigns in each country.

LEARN FROM LIKE MINDED BUSINESS OWNERS

We rely on small businesses to help us learn better ways to help businesses grow, which is why we created the Facebook Small Business Council. Today, we're excited to launch a site dedicated to our council in the US. 

This new site features stories of dedication, passion, and resilience from more than 40 businesses across a variety of industries and geographies, but who share a common belief in the importance of serving their customers, their communities and each other.

We've created small business councils in the US, India, Brazil and Germany—and plan to announce councils in more countries later this year.