How to Create a Reel on Meta Business Suite

Creating engaging Instagram Reels is no longer optional for businesses - it's one of the best ways to reach new audiences and build community. While crafting Reels on your phone is convenient, using Meta Business Suite from your desktop unlocks a more powerful and streamlined workflow. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create, edit, schedule, and analyze your Reels directly within Meta Business Suite.

The Advantages of Creating Reels on Your Desktop

You might be wondering, "Why bother using my computer when the Instagram app works just fine?" Moving your Reels creation to Meta Business Suite offers several key benefits that serious marketers and business owners will appreciate.

• Centralized Management: Instead of juggling multiple apps, you can manage your Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels in the same place you handle your posts, stories, messages, and ads.
• Easier Media Handling: Dragging and dropping high-quality video files from your computer is often much simpler than trying to airdrop or transfer them to your phone, especially if you use professional camera gear or editing software.
• Advanced Scheduling: Plan and schedule your Reels weeks or even months in advance. Consistency is essential for growth on social media, and a desktop scheduler makes it much easier to maintain cadence.
• Team Collaboration: If you work with a team, everyone can access, review, and schedule content from a central dashboard without needing access to a specific company phone or personal accounts.
• Access to Deeper Analytics: Business Suite's "Insights" tab provides a comprehensive look at your Reel performance, making it easier to see what’s working and what isn’t on a larger screen.

How to Create an Instagram Reel in Meta Business Suite

Ready to get started? The process is straightforward once you know where to look. Here's a step-by-step breakdown of how to build your Reel from scratch on desktop.

Step 1: Navigating to the Reels Creation Tool

First, log in to your Meta Business Suite account. Once on your dashboard, look at the main content creation panel or the left-hand navigation menu. You'll see several options like "Create Post" and "Create Story." Find and click the "Create Reel" button. This will open up the dedicated Reels composer, a streamlined interface for building your short-form video.

Step 2: Uploading Your Video Content

The composer will prompt you to add your media. Click the "Add video" button to open a file browser or simply drag and drop your video file directly into the designated area. For best results, your video should already be in a vertical, mobile-first format. The ideal aspect ratio for Reels is 9:16 (1080 x 1920 pixels). If your video is in a different format, like a landscape 16:9, Meta will allow you to crop it in the next step, but you risk cutting out important parts of the frame.

Step 3: Editing Your Reel (The Fun Part)

Once your video is uploaded, you'll see a preview and several editing tools on the right side of the screen. While the desktop editor isn't as feature-rich with stickers and trendy effects as the mobile app, it covers all the core functions you need.

Audio and Music

Click the "Audio" tab. Here, you have two primary options:

• Add Music: You can search Meta's library of commercially licensed music and audio tracks. Search by keyword or browse through recommended songs. Use the slider to select the exact "in" and "out" points of the song you want to feature. You can also adjust the volume of the original audio versus the music track.
• Use Original Audio: If your video already has narration or a specific sound, you can simply use the original audio.

Trimming and Cropping

Under the "Edit" tab, you'll find the trimming tool. A timeline of your video will appear, allowing you to drag the handles at the beginning and end to shorten its duration. Instagram Reels can be up to 90 seconds long. This is also where the "Crop" tool lives. Meta will automatically suggest a 9:16 vertical crop. You can manually adjust the placement to ensure the most important action is centered in the frame. You'll also see a "Smart Cropping" toggle, which uses AI to try and automatically keep the main subject in view.

Adding Text

Click the "Text" tab to add text overlays. You can type out your message, choose from several font styles, and pick a color for both the text and its background. Drag the text box wherever you want it to appear on the screen. On the timeline below, you can also adjust exactly when you want the text to appear and disappear during the video.

Step 4: Writing Your Caption and Adding Hashtags

After you’re happy with the edits, it’s time to fill in the details. In the "Reel details" section, write a compelling caption that encourages viewers to engage. Ask a question, tell a short story, or provide context for the video. Remember to include a clear call-to-action (CTA) like "Visit the link in our bio" or "Comment your thoughts below." This is also where you should add a handful of relevant hashtags. Researching hashtags that are specific to your niche, industry, and the video's content will help Instagram show your Reel to people who are most likely to be interested.

Step 5: Finalizing Your Reel Settings

Before you publish, go through the remaining settings:

• Share to Facebook?: You can choose to automatically publish the same Reel on your linked Facebook page. This is a great way to maximize your content's reach with a single click.
• Choose or Upload a Cover Image: Select a frame from your video or upload a custom thumbnail to be your Reel's cover. A strong cover image can dramatically increase clicks.
• Enable Remixing: Decide whether you want to allow other creators to remix your Reel. Enabling this can increase its viral potential.
• Add Collaborators: If you created the video with another account, you can add them as a collaborator. The Reel will appear on both of your profiles, and you'll share the view count and engagement metrics.
• Add a location or other content tags, as needed.

Scheduling Reels for Maximum Impact

One of the biggest advantages of Business Suite is its powerful scheduler. Instead of having to post in real-time, you can plan your content calendar and schedule Reels to post at the optimal time for audience engagement. Instead of hitting "Publish," click on the dropdown arrow and select "Schedule." A calendar will appear. Meta often provides "Optimal times" suggestions based on when your followers have been most active in the past. These are fantastic starting points. Select your desired date and time, click "Schedule," and you're all set. Your Reel will automatically go live without any further action from you.

Publishing Immediately vs. Saving as a Draft

In the same dropdown menu where you found "Schedule," you'll also see an option to "Save as draft." This is a really useful feature if you've started working on a Reel but aren't quite ready to post or schedule it. Maybe you're waiting for final approval from a client or team member, or you just want to come back to it later with fresh eyes. Your saved drafts will be accessible from the "Planner" or "Content" sections of Business Suite.

Using Meta’s A/B Testing Feature for Reels

For those who want to get more advanced, Meta Business Suite has a powerful A/B testing feature for Reels. This allows you to test up to four different versions of an idea to see which performs best before you share it on a wider scale.

Before publishing or scheduling, look for a button that says "Create A/B Test." You can create variations that test different things:

• Different captions to see which one gets more engagement
• Different thumbnails (cover images) to see which drives more clicks
• Completely different audio or music tracks

Meta will show the different versions to small, separate subsets of your audience. After a short period, it will notify you which version is performing best and automatically distribute the winning version for you. This is a brilliant way to let data, not guesswork, drive your creative strategy.

Understanding Your Reels Analytics

Your work isn't done once the Reel is live. The final step is to analyze its performance to learn what your audience responds to. In Meta Business Suite, navigate to the "Insights" tab from the left-hand menu. From there, you can view your content performance and filter specifically for Reels. You can review all the crucial metrics you'll need like:

• Views/Plays: The total number of times your Reel started to play.
• Reach: The number of unique accounts that saw your Reel.
• Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and saves. Saves are a particularly strong signal to the algorithm that your content is valuable.
• Average Watch Time: How long, on average, people watched your video. A high average watch time indicates your content is successfully holding attention.

Final Thoughts

Meta Business Suite transforms Reels creation from a phone-only task into a streamlined, powerful part of your desktop workflow. By managing your uploads, scheduling your content calendar, and digging into the analytics all in one place, you can build a more consistent and effective short-form video strategy for your business.

Tracking individual Reel performance is a great start, but understanding how your social media efforts truly impact your business goals - like website traffic, lead generation, and sales - requires connecting the dots across all your marketing channels. This is why we built Graphed to help. By securely connecting all your marketing data sources in one place, you can finally ask plain English questions like, "Which Instagram Reels drove the most traffic to my Shopify store last month?" and get instant, clear answers and dashboards, without ever having to touch a spreadsheet again.