Do you ever feel confused about how to make Facebook work better for you? It’s easy to get frustrated when you don’t know how to see fewer posts from an annoying acquaintance or how to make sure your posts reach the people you care most about.
To make things worse, Facebook is frequently improved and updated, changing what works and what doesn’t. To help you out, we’ve got 11 hacks for your Facebook news feed that will completely change how you use Facebook.
Categorize Your Friends Using Lists
Creating lists for different types of friends makes it easy to control what posts people see from you (more on that in the next step). It also affects how you see their posts.
Here’s how you do it: on the left-hand side of your News Feed, go to “Friend Lists.” From there, you can see all the lists you already have. You’ll find that Facebook has created some lists for you, possibly including the places you’ve lived or your workplace. You can create new lists right here and add people to them, or use the ones already created. You can also archive lists you no longer want to use.
Click on a list and go to “Manage List” in the top right to edit the list. You can easily add or remove people from the list here.
Close Friends
Putting a friend on your “Close Friends” list gives those friends’ posts priority in your News Feed. This is basically a great way to force people out of Facebook’s algorithm so that you see everything from them.
This is a great option if you’re trying to develop “A” relationships with close referrals, past clients, or potential clients.
Acquaintances
The Acquaintance is probably my favorite Facebook news feed feature. Many Realtors are afraid of being friends with their clients on Facebook for fear that they can’t “be themselves.”
A great way to get around this is to mark your clients as an Acquaintance on Facebook.
Then, when you want to post a half-naked photo of you on the beach or you want to rant about your favorite politician, you can create a post for Friends EXCEPT Acquaintances.
Marking them as acquaintances means they show up less.
Restricted
Even more, well, restricted than acquaintances is the Restricted list on Facebook. Putting people on your restricted list means they will only see posts you make public.
Friends aren’t notified when you add them to or remove them from lists, so don’t worry about someone finding out you made them an “acquaintance.”
Create Posts for Specific Groups of People
Did you know that you can easily control who can see posts you write (and who can’t) with just a few clicks? If you don’t want your real estate clients to see your latest political rant, you can make sure they never know about it. On the other hand, if you want just your closest friends to see the pictures from your trip to Mexico, you can do that, too.
Here are the types of posts you can create:
- Public—Posts anyone can see
- Friends—Posts only people you’re friends with can see
- Friends except…—Posts all your friends can see except for people you’ve marked as “Acquaintances” and/or certain friends you specifically exclude
- Only me—Posts for (you guessed it) only you
- Specific friends—Posts for specific individual people
Choose the dropdown that says “Friends” and then select the option you want for that particular post.
Hear Less from Specific People
Sick of seeing post after post from certain people? (I know you have friends like that. We all do.) Well, you can snooze them for 30 days, or you can unfollow them altogether. You can always re-follow them later, and they won’t be notified about any of your actions.
Just choose the three dots in the top right corner of any post from that person, and select whether you’d like to snooze or unfollow.
Share Posts to Different Places
There are several places where you can post something on Facebook. Where you post affects who will see the posts (and how likely those people are to see it). These include:
- Your personal timeline (most people will see)
- Any friend’s timeline (their friends can see it)
- A group you’re in (people who are following the group are likely to see)
- A business page you’re the admin of (people who follow the page may see, but many will not)
At the bottom of the post, choose “Share” to see the different options for where to share the post. (To share something to a business page, click “Share. . .” from the dropdown).
Visit Someone’s Profile to “Re-engage” Them
Have you ever noticed that sometimes you stop seeing someone in your news feed? Or someone you haven’t talked to in a long time suddenly resurfaces and you’re seeing them all the time?
This is because if you visit someone’s profile or interact with a status of theirs, this tells Facebook that you’re interested in them again, and you’ll start seeing them again in your own news feed. If you quit interacting with them, they might drop back out of your news feed.
So, if you want to start seeing more from someone, simply visit their profile by clicking on their name or searching for them.
Share from Instagram to Facebook
If you share something to Instagram, you can also post it on your Facebook account very easily. Here’s how you connect your Instagram to your Facebook.
If you have an Instagram for Business account, the Instagram post will go to your Facebook business page. If you have a personal Instagram account, the post will go to your personal profile.
Once your profiles are connected, you can share to Facebook from the same screen where you add your caption. Easy peasy!
Get the Pages App
If you have a Facebook business page, check out the Pages app. This will help you keep track of where you’re posting when you’re on your phone. If you’re using the regular Facebook app, it’ll likely be your personal profile. If you’re using the Pages app, you’re posting to your business page.
Don’t Miss an Important Post
Similar in purpose to the “Close Friends” hack we explained above, if you want to make sure you catch posts from favorite influencers or friends (but they’re not necessarily actually close friends), you can make sure you get notified when they post. Go to their profile, click the “Friends” button on the cover photo, and then choose “Get Notifications.”
You can also add friends to your lists this way.
Modify Your Ad Settings
To modify the types of ads you see on Facebook, go to Settings and select Ads from the bottom group of options.
Ads Based on Data from Partners
You can choose to allow or disallow Facebook to show you ads from partners about your activity when you’re off Facebook. Facebook does not sell your data or tell advertisers who you are.
When you allow Facebook to use this data, you might see ads for a pair of shoes after visiting a shoe store website, for instance. If you don’t share this data, ads will be based on things you do on Facebook (or Facebook-owned products) or from a specific business that you’ve shared your information with.
Again, only Facebook knows that you’ve visited a page for that particular shoe. The company marketing the shoe does not.
Ads Based on Facebook Products
If you allow this data to be shared, you’ll receive ads based on things you do when on Facebook or Facebook-owned products. If you don’t, you’ll see ads that likely aren’t as relevant to you.
Nix Nostalgia
Some people love nostalgia, but some don’t care for it or don’t want bad memories shoved in their faces. You can effectively disable the “On This Day” feature by going to “Memories” on the left-hand side (you may need to click “See More…”) and then choosing “Preferences” in the top-right corner of the page. Here you can choose to not get memories of certain people and dates. You can choose to block a really, really long chunk of time to stop the feature entirely.
News Feed Preferences
Click the dropdown arrow in the top right of the blue navigation bar and select “News Feed Preferences” near the bottom.
Once here, you can do some of the things we’ve talked about in one place. You can prioritize who to see first, unfollow people and groups, reconnect with people and groups you’ve unfollowed, and see the apps you’ve blocked from appearing on your News Feed.
We get so many questions about how to manage Facebook, and we hope this helps make you feel like you’re in charge of your news feed. That’s how it should be!
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