Help center

Why Instagram needs a Facebook Page and how to link them step by step

Instagram and Facebook belong to the same company, Meta, and Meta only lets an external tool publish to Instagram if the account is professional and linked to a Facebook Page. You do not need to use Facebook or post on it: the Page is just the way in. It takes four steps, from your phone, in less than half an hour.

Updated Author: Mónica Lorenzo In the app: /settings/connections

Who this guide is for

For anyone who runs their business Instagram from their phone, as if it were a personal account, and who, when trying to connect it to ōrbita, finds they are asked for a Facebook Page. Maybe you do not have Facebook, maybe you do not use it, or maybe you do not want to mix your personal life with your company’s. All of that has a solution, and here we explain it from scratch, taking nothing for granted.

First, four concepts that get mixed up

Before touching anything it helps to tell apart four things that sound alike and are not.

Concept What it is Who it is for
Personal Facebook profile Your Facebook account as a person: your name, your friends, your photos. It is what most people mean by “having Facebook”. People.
Facebook Page A public space inside Facebook for a business, brand or organization. It has its own name, logo, hours and posts. One or several people manage it, but it is nobody’s account. Businesses. It is what Meta asks for with Instagram.
Personal Instagram account The Instagram account you get by default. It is fine for posting, but it gives no access to statistics or external tools. People.
Professional Instagram account The same Instagram account, with the “professional” switch turned on. There are two types: Business and Creator. It costs nothing and takes a minute to change. Businesses and creators. It is what Meta asks for with Instagram.

And a fifth thing worth knowing: Meta is the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. That is why Instagram’s rules and Facebook’s go together, and why Meta Business Suite exists: a free Meta dashboard where you manage a business’s Facebook Page and Instagram account at the same time. You do not need to use it to follow this guide, but you will see it mentioned.

With these definitions, the sentence that sums it all up is this: on Facebook, your business does not live on your personal profile, it lives on a Page. And on Instagram, your business does not live on a personal account, it lives on a professional account. What you need to do is create the first, turn on the second and join them.

Why Meta requires the Facebook Page

When an external tool such as ōrbita wants to post to your Instagram, it does not sign in with your password. It asks Meta for permission, and Meta decides what it can and cannot do. That official “door” for business accounts opens from Facebook: Meta identifies the business by its Facebook Page and, through it, reaches the linked professional Instagram account.

It is a Meta rule, not an ōrbita rule. In its developer documentation, Meta establishes that professional Instagram accounts that use a tool with Facebook Login must be connected to a Facebook Page. And for a tool that posts on your behalf and reads your statistics, it is the route Meta offers with all the features: publishing photos, carousels and Reels, reading the metrics and replying to comments from the Interactions inbox.

How ōrbita connects to Instagram: your personal Facebook profile opens the door, the Facebook Page identifies the business and the professional Instagram account is linked to the Page. Your personal Facebook profile only opens the door manages Your business's Facebook Page identifies the business to Meta and to ōrbita linked to Professional Instagram account where ōrbita posts
ōrbita comes in through the Facebook Page and posts to the linked Instagram account. Your personal profile only serves to prove you have permission over the Page.

A practical consequence: you are not going to use Facebook. You do not need to post on the Page, have friends or open the app. The Page can stay with just the logo, the name and the hours. Its job is to identify the business.

And is my personal life on Facebook exposed?

It is the most common worry, and the short answer is no. What gets connected to ōrbita is your business’s Page and your professional Instagram account, not your personal profile.

  • What is publicly visible is the Page, which is already public by nature. In the “Page transparency” section of any Page, Facebook shows the creation date, the country it is managed from and how many people manage it, but not their names.
  • Your personal profile is still yours. Facebook does not let any external tool post to personal profiles, and ōrbita does not ask for permission to read your posts, your friends or your messages. It only asks for permissions over the list of Pages you manage, over the Page you choose and over the Instagram account linked to that Page.
  • Signing in to Facebook is a formality. When you connect Instagram to ōrbita, Meta asks you to sign in with your personal profile for one reason only: to check that this profile has control over the Page. It is like showing your ID to pick up a company’s parcel.
  • You can undo it whenever you want. From Company settings > Connections in ōrbita, or from your Facebook account settings, in the apps and websites section.

If you still prefer not to use your everyday profile, the alternative is to create a new Facebook profile, with your real name, only to manage the Page. Meta requires profiles to belong to real people, so it cannot be a “company” profile, but it can be one of yours that you use only for this.

What you gain by linking them

Besides being able to connect ōrbita, linking the professional Instagram account to a Facebook Page gives you what Meta reserves for businesses:

  • Posting from external tools, ōrbita included: schedule posts, carousels and Reels with a date and time, and have them publish on their own.
  • Statistics for your Instagram account inside the app itself, and in ōrbita’s Metrics, stored day by day.
  • A single Meta dashboard for both networks. In Meta Business Suite you see Instagram and Facebook messages and comments together, and you can post to both at once.
  • Ads, if you ever want them: Instagram ads are managed with Meta’s tools, and they need this same link.
  • A complete business listing on Instagram: category, contact button, address and hours.

And what does not change: your followers, your posts and your Instagram username stay the same. Switching to a professional account does not delete anything.

Before you start

You need three things. If you already have one, skip that step.

  1. A personal Facebook profile. If you have never had one, create it at facebook.com with your real name and your email. You do not need to add friends or post anything. Meta does not allow creating Pages without a person’s profile behind them.
  2. The password of your business’s Instagram account, and to be signed in to that account on your phone. If you have several Instagram accounts on the same phone, check in the profile that you are in the business one.
  3. To be the one who administers the Page, with what Meta calls “full control”. If you create the Page yourself, you will have it automatically. If someone else created it (an agency, a partner, a former employee), they have to give you full control access or do the linking themselves.

A warning before step 3: if your Instagram account is private, it becomes public when you switch it to professional and pending follow requests are accepted automatically. For a business account that is normal, but it is good to know.

Step 1. Create your business’s Facebook Page

The menu names are those of Facebook on a computer. On the phone the order is the same. If you already have a Page, go to step 2.

  1. Sign in to Facebook with your personal profile and click Pages in the left menu.
  2. Click Create Page (or Create new Page).
  3. Choose Public Page and tap Next and then Get started.
  4. Type your business name as you want people to see it and choose a category (for example, “Restaurant”, “Clothing store”, “Physical therapist”). You can change it later.
  5. Add an introduction if you want and tap Create Page.
  6. Facebook will go on asking for contact details, location and hours, the profile picture (your logo) and the cover photo, and will offer to connect WhatsApp and invite friends. Fill in what you want and tap Next or Skip on each screen until Done.

With that the Page exists and you have full control over it. You do not need to post anything on it.

Step 2. Switch your Instagram account to professional

It is done from the Instagram app, on your phone, inside the business account.

  1. Tap your profile picture at the bottom right to go to your profile.
  2. Tap the ≡ menu at the top right to open Settings and activity.
  3. Scroll down to For professionals and tap Account type and tools.
  4. Tap Switch to professional account.
  5. Choose a category that describes your business and tap Switch to professional account.
  6. Choose Business. (The Creator option also works to connect ōrbita, but for a business with a premises or services, Business is the natural choice.) Tap Next.
  7. Instagram will ask for contact details: add them or tap Don’t use my contact information.
  8. On the next screen Instagram offers you Log in to Facebook to connect a Page. If you already created the Page in step 1, you can do it right here and skip step 3. If you prefer to do it later, tap Skip.

You now have a professional account. On your profile you will see a professional dashboard with the account’s statistics.

Step 3. Link the Instagram account to the Facebook Page

Also from the Instagram app, in the business account.

  1. Tap your profile picture at the bottom right and then Edit profile.
  2. Scroll down to Public business information (if you chose Creator, it is called Profile information).
  3. Tap Page and then Connect or create.
  4. Tap Continue and then Log in to Facebook. Sign in with the personal profile that administers the Page. If the phone suggests another Facebook account, tap Switch Facebook account.
  5. Choose your business’s Page and tap Connect. If you do not have a Page yet, here you can also tap Create a new Facebook Page.

Done: the professional Instagram account and the Facebook Page are linked. From now on, whoever has access to the Page can also manage the Instagram account, and the other way round. Keep in mind that an Instagram account can only be linked to one Page, and a Page to one Instagram account.

If you prefer to do it from a computer, Meta also lets you link them from Meta Business Suite, in the business settings. The result is the same.

Step 4. Connect Instagram in ōrbita

  1. In ōrbita, open the company and go to Company settings > Connections.
  2. Tap Connect on the Instagram row. Before leaving, ōrbita shows you which permissions it is going to ask for and why.
  3. Facebook will ask you to sign in with the personal profile that administers the Page (the same one as in step 3) and will ask which Pages and Instagram accounts ōrbita can use. Tick your business’s Page and the linked Instagram account. If you untick the Instagram account, ōrbita will not find it.
  4. If you administer several Pages, ōrbita will ask you to choose which one. Choose the one for this business.
  5. You return to ōrbita with the connection active and the real name of your Instagram account on the row.

If you also want to post to the Facebook Page, repeat the same on the Facebook row. It is not mandatory: you can have only Instagram connected.

What comes next, how to schedule and what happens if a post fails, is in connecting social networks and publishing from ōrbita.

If something goes wrong

  • “No Page appears” when connecting. The Facebook profile you signed in with does not have full control over the Page. Ask whoever created it, or sign in with the right profile. If the Page belongs to a business portfolio (the Meta Business Suite space where a company or agency groups its Pages), whoever administers that portfolio has to give you access to the Page from there.
  • The Page appears but not the Instagram account. The Instagram account is not linked to that Page, or you unticked the Instagram account when Facebook asked what ōrbita can use. Go over step 3 and connect again, ticking both.
  • I have Instagram “connected” to Facebook, but it does not work. There are two different links that get mixed up. One is the Meta Accounts Center one, which joins your Instagram to your personal profile to share stories between the two. The other is the one in this guide, which joins your Instagram to a Page. Only the second one works for external tools. You check it in step 3: in Edit profile, under Page, the name of your business’s Page must appear.
  • Instagram asks me to convert the account when linking. That is normal: if the account is still personal, Instagram suggests switching it to professional during the linking. Accept and continue.
  • An agency or a collaborator runs it. Whoever connects Instagram in ōrbita needs full control of the Page on Facebook. If you are the business owner and the agency manages the Page, you can give them access to your company in ōrbita as a collaborator and have them connect with their own Facebook profile, as long as that profile has full control of the Page.
  • I have done everything and it still does not work. Write to us at orbita@orbitasolutions.org with the name of the Instagram account and of the Page, and we will look at it with you.

Official Meta sources

The steps in this guide follow Meta’s official articles, which are the ones that rule if Instagram or Facebook change the menus:

Published . Updated .