There is a new round of status updates being shared on Facebook by people who are concerned that their posts are being seen by people they don’t know. First, I want to remind you, please do NOT post anything on Facebook that you would not want seen on the cover of the New York Times. I say this because no matter how careful you are, Facebook IS a PUBLIC platform, and is designed to facilitate social sharing. Please be cognizant of this as you post status updates, comments and/or photos, even if you do think that it is only between friends.
[Tweet “Do NOT post anything on FB that u would not want seen on cover of NY Times”]
That said, when you are posting, you should always choose the appropriate visibility settings from the options offered:
By clicking on the little arrow next to the default setting, you will see additional options.
Friends are those you are connected with on Facebook. These are the people you have accepted friend invitations from and everyone who accepted your invitation – you may want to go in and check that you are only connected to ‘real’ friends, people who you want to be connected to. I work with people all the time who have ‘friends’ on Facebook that they either don’t know or don’t consider real friends. See this post for an explanation of how to view who you are connected to on Facebook and this post for ‘un-friending’ a Facebook friend.
Only Me is self explanatory. Keep this in mind as it is a great option when you are using an app that REQUIRES you to allow it to post to Facebook on your behalf whenever you use it but you would rather not share ever single song you listen to or movie you watch with your entire Facebook community.
Custom actually gives you quite a few options. You can choose to share with specific people and/or LISTS (see this post for a tutorial on how and why to set up Facebook lists). This is helpful if you are posting family vacation photos and would like to share them only with your family members. Create a FAMILY list and share it with them. You can do this for any combination of people, or, specify a single person by name (as long as you have ‘friended’ them!)
Note that you can also indicate who you DON’T want to share the post with. You can indicate the person by name or again, you can create a list. Note that if you are adding a ‘friend’ to this list, the name will auto populate. If you are adding someone you are NOT a friend with, I would NOT trust this as you cannot be sure that the correct person will be connected with the name you type.
Remember, if this is something that you really don’t want someone to see, please share it some other way – preferably NOT digitally!
I can help you effectively use Facebook to engage your community and grow your business.
