Managing Your Online Connections – Facebook

It’s a Catch-22 situation: you’re using social media to promote yourself or your business…or both. But, you’re overwhelmed with all of the connections you have! You feel like you can’t keep up and more importantly, how do you reach out to them with the messages you want them to read? In addition, you also want to keep some things private from your business connections. What to do? What to do?

Each social media platform has a variety of ways to manage your connections. I’ll cover managing your Facebook Friends in this post and LinkedIn and Twitter in the future.

Once I got over the notion that I had to read every post that every Friend wrote, my life got much easier! However, there are some posts (for example from my family) that I always want to read. There’s also business associates I want to see as much from as I can. The problem was that once I had more than about 100 active Facebook Friends, things got a bit unmanageable. That’s why Facebook has the ability to create Lists.

Lists are a simple way to categorize your Friends. To create a List, go to Account, then Edit Friends. There’s a “Create a List” button. You can name your Lists whatever you want. As of right now, your Friends don’t know what List you’ve put them on. However, you never know when Facebook might change things, so don’t give your Lists names that you’d be embarrassed for people to know they’re on!

Once you’ve created your Lists, to add your existing Friends to them, go to Edit Friends and hover your mouse over the area just slightly to the left of the “X” by each name. “Edit Lists” appears and you can select the List you want that Friend to be on.

You can view posts only from people on a specific List by going to Most Recent in the News Feed. You’ll see a small down arrow next to Most Recent. Click it, then select the List name. Voila! Makes catching up on posts a quick process.

You can also send posts just to people on a List—or have people on a List blocked from seeing a post. When you write a post, there’s a small padlock next to the Share button. Click the down arrow, then Customize. From there, select specific people or specific Lists to either send the post to or block from seeing the post.

Lists can also be used in your Privacy Settings. For example, you may have posted photos from your family reunion, but you don’t want your business connections to see them. When you set up your album, use the Privacy Settings for that album to block the Lists you don’t want to see the pictures—or set it so only those on “your family list” see them. You can do the same thing with individual pictures.

You can have many Lists, people can be on more than one List and you can add new Lists as you need them. You can also put the Pages you “Like” on Lists. Unfortunately, Lists aren’t available on Pages…but there really shouldn’t be anything on a Page that you wouldn’t want every follower to see.

I realize that this seems like a lot of work, and initially it is, especially if you have to go through and put your existing Friends and Pages on your Lists. However, once you have your Lists, it’s easy to manage. When you send a request for a new Friend, pre-select the List they’ll be on once they accept. When you accept a Friend request or “Like” a Page, put them on a List at that point.

Lists are a great way to make Facebook manageable. I’d love to hear how you’ve used them and what tips you have.