So I realized a little while ago while I was talking with another real estate professional and she wasn’t using lists. I did some research and found that only a small percentage of users are using lists. Given how powerful they are, I wanted to share how to use them in an effective manner! If you are like most, you are probably wondering “what are Facebook lists?” That’s what this series of articles is here to teach you about! How to use lists to compartmentalize your friends and your “friends” so that you can have a personal life and a business life with the same account on Facebook!
Let me start out with a little bit of history and how I ended up using lists. Facebook has been around for many years now. Only recently has it experienced the exponential growth in both personal and business related arenas. When I first started using Facebook, it was only a limited number of colleges in the US and UK. It was an awesome place to see what was going on with your friends, share photos, and it took it all into the digital age, which as a geek at heart, I loved!
Now fast forward to circa 2009 or so. I have now had a Facebook page for 5-6 years or so. I realize that I need to get with it and get a business page up and start utilizing Facebook for business as well as personal. Enter the conflict… My business “friends” don’t need to see the pictures of me last night doing that shot from an ice luge at a bar… but what to do? I have been using Facebook for my personal life for so long now and I just can’t give it up, I enjoy it too much! This is where lists are PERFECT. It allows me to categorize my friends into lists of people and then I can segregate who sees what! The one catch… at first it seems overwhelming… and I am not going to lie… it will take you a good chunk of time to get it all setup. The good news though, is that once it is setup, it’s insanely easy to maintain!
What is the point of lists?
Well simply put, lists allow you to control what lists of people can see what information that you post and share on Facebook. However, it is at its core, more complicated (interesting) than that. See lists allow you to abide by the pesky (but important) rule within the end user license agreement (EULA) that says you may only have 1 account on Facebook. The penalty for having more than one is removal of all accounts from Facebook… so unless you don’t really care about your account, this is a pretty important rule!
A list, at its base, is like a group of people. You put people into groups or lists based on whatever you want since you can name the list whatever you want. For example, I have lists for Family, Friends, Real Estate, etc… The first step you need to do is to categorize everyone into at least 1 list (you can put people onto more than 1, but I wouldn’t recommend it, this will just create more confusion for you in the end). A little bit later will be step by step instructions on how to do this.
Once you have everyone on a list, you need to go to your privacy settings and customize your privacy to only share many grouped facets of Facebook information with the lists of people you want. Again, this is covered in more detail during part 2.
Once you have done both steps, you will be able to share those personal moments with just your friends, and your business moments with just business people. What’s great though, is that these lists are not mutually exclusive. You can cross share between lists, exclude lists, include lists; you have a LOT of control!
How to create lists, pictures included!
*Note, this guide was created as of January 2011. Facebook may have changed since its creation, and moved the exact links to different places, but they should not have changed the process
Step 1: Go to “Edit Friends” under “Account”:
Step 2: Click on “Create List”:
Step 3: A “pop up” window will now appear. First thing to do is type in the name of your list:
Step 4: All of the people who you are friends with appear in this box. Simply select the people you want to be on that list. They will be selected with a blue box and a check mark next to their name:
Step 5: After you have selected everyone you want in your list, simply hit “Create List”. Repeat this process untill of your friends are on lists. You can create as many lists as you want. Each time you add a list it will show up on the left hand side. You can also add people to lists if you forgot them by hovering over their name in the Edit Friends screen. You will see a drop down box appear and you can add that person to any list you have already created:
That’s it for list creation! Just make sure that you put everyone on lists. Part 2 will discuss using lists within your privacy settings to control what people can and more importantly, can’t, see!
Please visit us on Facebook, you can click the giant Facebook logo to the right. Please also share this with everyone (use the cool share bar to the left)! I think it is very important for people who are using Facebook to set their privacy settings correctly! If you have any comments I would love to hear them or discuss them with you, so don’t hesitate to leave them!!
-Bob