How to separate facebook pages
How to separate facebook pages
How to Unlike Pages on Facebook in 2020
December 7, 2018
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Are you looking to learn how to unlike pages on Facebook?
Causes and companies all over the world use their Facebook business page as a key component of a broader social media marketing strategy. For consumers, liking Facebook pages for causes, bands, or anything else you’re passionate about is an easy and effective way to stay up-to-date on their latest news and events.
How to unlike pages on Facebook:
However, liking too many pages will clutter your newsfeed (take it from somebody who knows) and make it harder to keep track of your family, friends, and all of the other updates you actually care about.
| TIP: If you don’t know where to start, look back at your Activity Log to find pages you engaged with a long time ago and no longer wish to follow. |
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how to unlike pages on Facebook and clean up your newsfeed. There are two separate ways, depending on whether you want to unlike a single page or multiple at a time – we’re covering both!
Let’s get started.
How to unlike pages on Facebook
Maybe, you’ve reached Facebook’s limit of 5,000 pages liked and you’re ready to scale back. Maybe, like me, you liked silly pages in the past and you no longer relate. Either way, you’re ready to unlike pages on Facebook and take control of your newsfeed. First, we’ll cover how to unlike multiple pages at once.
How to unlike multiple pages on Facebook
If you know your feed is too cluttered and you’re ready to do some cleaning, unliking multiple Facebook pages at once is the way to go. This method is easy and efficient.
1. Open the Facebook homepage and log in to your account. When you’re logged in, navigate to your own profile by clicking the small button in the top right corner that has your name and profile picture.
2. Across the top of your profile, you’ll see six tabs: Timeline, About, Friends, Photos, Archive, and More. Click on More. This will open a drop-down menu. From that menu, select “Likes”.
3. Clicking on “Likes” will pull up a page that shows you all of the Facebook pages you’ve liked in the past. You can pull up particular categories of pages you’ve liked by selecting one of the tabs on the top (Movies TV Shows, Music, Books, Sports Teams, Athletes, People, Restaurants, or Apps and Games), or, stay on the All Likes tab to see them all in one place.
4. From here, you can scroll through the Facebook pages you’ve liked and start unliking the pages you no longer want to follow. To do this, find the page you’re looking for, click the drop-down menu that says “Liked,” and select “Unlike.” Easy as that! Repeat this step until you’ve unliked all of the pages you’ve wanted to.
How to unlike a single Facebook page
Say you come across a page in your feed and you realize you’re no longer interested in seeing its constant updates. No problem! Unliking a single Facebook page is simple.
1. First, wait until you come across a page that you want to unlike when scrolling through your Facebook feed.
2. Hover your mouse over the page name. This will open a pop-up that offers additional information about the page. At the bottom of this popup, there will be two buttons that say “Liked” and “Following”.
3. To unlike the page, click the “Liked” button. You will no longer appear like or follow the page. However, you can also opt to simply unfollow the page, which means you’ll still “like” it, but you won’t receive its updates or posts in your newsfeed.
If your purpose behind unliking pages is that you’re nearing Facebook’s 5,000-page limit, then you’ll most likely want to unlike the page altogether. However, if you just want to declutter your newsfeed, but still remain a fan of the page, unfollowing may be a better option for you!
4. You’ll know that you successfully unliked the Facebook page if the bottom two buttons that said “Liked” and “Following” switch to two buttons that say “Like” and “Follow.” If you see that change, then you were successful!
Continue clearing away clutter on Facebook
Congratulations! You’ve successfully unliked Facebook pages. This will clear away some clutter and make way for all of the Facebook 3D photos of puppies (you know, the content we actually crave).
To clean up your Facebook newsfeed more, be sure to check out our additional resources:
Claire is a Senior Marketing Manager at Blueprint and a former growth marketing team manager at G2. Born and raised in the Chicago area, her brief stint in Ohio (University of Dayton) gave her a new appreciation for deep-dish pizza, but left her well-versed in Cincinnati-style chili and «cities» with a population fewer than 400,000. While not writing, Claire can be found practicing calligraphy, seeking out the best dive bars in Chicago, and planning her next trip. (she/her/hers)
How to separate Facebook Pages
Keep Facebook Business And Personal Page Separate
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00:00 One of the most common questions I get from people is about how to keep their
00:03 Facebook business and personal pages separate. In this video I’ll show you how
00:07 to do that so you can have a Facebook business page with no public affiliation
00:10 to your personal profile, and show you how to make sure you never post as or
00:15 on the wrong business page, alright? Let’s get into it
00:21 What’s up busy people welcome to Five Minute Social Media. If you have had
00:26 your social media marketing going around in your head and it feels like you’re
00:29 never getting anywhere, you’re putting time in and wondering, «Am I getting
00:32 anything back from this?», you are in a great place. Every week we put out a
00:36 quick video to help you with a different piece of your social media marketing
00:40 strategy. If that sounds like something you could use
00:42 take a second, click Subscribe, click that bell, that way you’ll be notified
00:46 whenever a new video comes out. My name is Jerry Potter and today we are talking
00:51 about how to keep your Facebook business and personal pages separate. By the end
00:56 of this video you’ll understand how Facebook business pages and personal
00:59 profiles are set up and how they relate, also how to post as your business page
01:04 or one of your business pages or as your personal page in different situations,
01:07 and why Facebook won’t let you just post as your business page wherever you want
01:16 Facebook personal profile. Sometimes people say, «Well I don’t want to have a
01:19 Facebook page for myself, just for my business.» You still have to create one.
01:23 You don’t have to use it, it’s just the way that you log in to your business
01:27 page. Every Facebook business page has at least one admin, or administrator, who is
01:32 there to run the page but you do that through your personal profile
01:35 If you created the page you are the admin. So the login for your business
01:44 profile and your business page are not linked publicly anywhere by default, so
01:49 you could have a Facebook business page called «I Hate Puppies» and none of your
01:53 personal friends would have any idea that you’re the one running that
01:56 terrible page. Now your page can have more than one person who helps run it,
02:00 like maybe you are the admin but somebody else helps reply to comments or
02:04 messages, or helps with posting. So you can go into settings in the upper right
02:08 corner of your Facebook business page, click on Page Roles and there you can
02:12 add additional people to help you run your
02:14 page and you can give them different access levels. If you want more
02:17 information about how to properly setup page roles on your business page I’ve
02:21 got a video about that and you can get that in the description of this video. So
02:25 how do you post and comment on Facebook as yourself versus as your business page?
02:29 Well let’s go through a few scenarios and I’ll show you. So first of all if
02:33 you’re on your own business page and you wanted to comment on something, down in
02:40 comment as this page but right above that on the lower right there is a
02:44 little drop-down box. Now I can go through and I can choose to comment as a
02:49 different business page or I can actually just choose myself. So if I
02:54 wanted to comment just as a person instead of as the company to get some
02:58 engagement going (or whatever it might be) I can just do that. This is actually true
03:05 choose who you want to comment as. If you don’t see the page or account you’re
03:09 looking for you probably don’t have the permission to comment in that place. Now
03:13 if I go to another business page (I am NOT an admin on the Under Armor business
03:17 page) I click that same drop down. You can see I can comment as any of these pages
03:21 in these different categories or as myself. By default my personal profile is
03:33 drop-down to choose other things. That’s because this is shared by somebody on
03:37 their personal profile. I can’t comment on their stuff as a business. Meanwhile
03:42 just a few posts later in the same feed here’s something from People magazine
03:48 from. Last thing I want to show you is here in Facebook groups. This is my group,
03:53 the Five Minute Social Media group, and as you can see if I click the
03:55 drop-down I can post as myself or I can post as my business page because my
04:00 business page is attached to this group. But if I go to another group that I am
04:04 in but it is not my group, I have no drop-down. I can only comment as myself
04:08 Finally I often get asked, «Hey I want to post on my friend’s personal profile as
04:13 my business page. Why can’t I do that? Well the reason for that is pretty
04:17 simple. If Facebook let business pages post anywhere they wanted, there are
04:21 people in the world, not you, not me of course but terrible people
04:24 that would go around and just spam people by posting on their pages all the
04:28 time as a business. The general rule of thumb is a business can’t interact with
04:32 a person on Facebook unless the person has interacted with the business first,
04:36 aright? Do you have a question about this that I didn’t answer? Let me know in
04:39 the comments and we can chat there. Also grab our free Five =Minute Facebook
04:44 Facelift. This is a quick makeover for your Facebook business page to optimize
04:48 it for profit. You can get that in the description of this video. If you like
04:53 this video consider giving it a Like, hit Subscribe. You’re not supporting me but
04:56 also my two tiny superheroes at home. Thank you for watching Five Minute
Watch the video version above.
Are you thinking of growing your business with Facebook? If so you made a great choice. For a lot of different reasons. Make sure to check out my Free Facebook Marketing Training so I can help you get faster results.
One thing that is probably holding you back is how to even get started.
Here is what I mean:
Are you not getting started with Facebook to grow your business because you just don’t know how to keep your business activities separate from your personal ones? I know how you feel. I did not consider using Facebook for years because I assumed that all my personal stuff would be get mixed in with my business stuff. No matter what Facebook said. I just didn’t trust them.
It wasn’t until I finally figured it all out that I started seeing real success with using facebook for my business. Follow the tips in this article and you can get started with Facebook the right way from the begining.
Here is one of the most common questions I get asked:
Do You Need a Separate Facebook account for Business?
No. No. No. This is a big No No. Facebook wants you to add your business’s page to your personal profile. So just follow their rules. If they find out that you opened a separate account for your business it will be shut down. All those likes, fans, blood, sweat, and tears are down the tubes! So don’t make this mistake.
If you already have a separate Facebook business account you will need to create a brand new Facebook page under your own personal profile. Sorry. That is just how it is. Do it now before your business account is closed. There is nothing worse than waking up one day only to find your Facebook page is removed because of a terms of service violation. In my experience whenever I had to make these kinds of changes (starting over) the second version is ALWAYS better. Your new Facebook page will be too.
Here is how to set up a Facebook business page the right way:
First sign into your personal Facebook account. Then click the “Create Page” link using the drop down on the upper right (desktop version of Facebook):
Next just follow the instructions for the kind of page (category) you want to create. Pretty much everyone reading this article will pick one of these 3:
The biggest differences between them are the types of fields you can enter about your business. When you look at the chart below only really look at the first 3 columns. Here are the differences (click image below to enlarge) :
Don’t worry too much about which category (type of facebook page) you pick. You can always change it later. Facebook lets you change it as often as you want. But your Page’s Name can only be changed while you have under 200 likes. After that you are locked in. So make sure to pick a page name that you can live with. All other fields can be changed at anytime.
After you create your page add a custom graphic to it. You can see how to do this in a previous article here: Facebook Cover Photo Tutorial
How To Keep Everything Separate
Now the big question is “Great I got a Facebook page. Now how do I keep it seperate from my personal stuff?”
Well to do this just go back to the drop down on the upper right side of the Facebook desktop version. Just pick the drop down and you will see “use Facebook as…”. Then pick your new page.
After you pick your page you can now use Facebook as that entity. When I pick the buildingsocialproof facebook page from the drop down every comment I make in a group or on someone else’s Facebook page shows it came from the “buildingsocialproof” brand and not myself.
Now when you want to do business stuff you can do it as your brand (Facebook page). When you want to do your personal stuff you can do it as yourself. The two really don’t get crossed up that much. You can sleep well at night knowing that your personal friends don’t keep hearing about your work (your Facebook page) and your business clients and fans don’t hear about your personal stuff.
Having Other People Manage Your Pages
Facebook makes it easy to take things a step further too. You can have other people manage your page on your behalf. Or you can manage other people’s pages (clients) on their behalf. Here is how to do it:
First go to your Facebook page.
Choose “Settings” in the upper right
Choose “Page Roles” on the left hand side.
Enter the email of the person you want to admin or manage your page
Here are what the different roles do (click to enlarge):
You can see it is pretty easy to make someone the manager of your page. To manage someone else’s page just have them complete the process above and enter your email.
Stay tuned for next week when I show you they very first thing you need to do before you ever run a Facebook ad. I know you will like it.
HOW TO: Separate Personal and Business with Facebook Pages
Facebook serves two audiences – individuals and businesses. In real life, individuals work at businesses. They are attached, if you will, to businesses. In the same way, Facebook works the same. Your individual Facebook profile must be attached to a Business page. But you don’t want to be associated with the public page. Facebook needs a real body with a business, but I’ll show you ways you can keep your private life away from your public business page and make costly mistakes like posting personal message to your public Facebook page.
To be clear, here is an example of the difference between a Personal Facebook Profile and Facebook Business Page: 
Can I have a business page without a personal profile? Pretty please?
For sure the answer in mid-2022 is no. HOWEVER, in July 2022 Facebook announced they are testing a way for users to have up to four profiles tied to one account – one for business / work, one for friends, one for groups, etc. The extra profiles won’t need real identities. This is great for Facebook Groups especially since Reddit is so popular based on the anonymity that the user account gives you. Personally, I love Reddit and this should be a huge boost for FB Groups and will be especially useful for business owners and marketing managers. Bookmark this post for updates and subscribe to my blog.
Assuming you already set up a personal profile and business page, you might be wondering:
Can I separate my business page from my personal account on Facebook?
Facebook automatically separates your personal profile identity from public Facebook pages, but there are some gotchas. You want to be sure you are posting as the business and not confusing the status update text box with your personal status update box and vice-versa. Facebook has tools to help you do this.
Business Accounts in Meta Business Suite
Meta Business Accounts make it easier to manage your Pages, Instagram accounts and the people who work on them.
Grow your business with advanced tools and insights
Securely collaborate with partners and manage their access
Separate your work and life for privacy and focus
Creating the Meta Business Account at businesss.facebook.com can enable the special admin area that will enable to visually distinguish your personal profile area from the business area.
Here’s an example of the Facebook Meta Business Suite area: 
You’ll notice an organizational structure:
An LLC business with Facebook properties (pages, instagram accounts, etc.) rolled up under it. This give flexibility when working with vendors and additional people.
Here’s a tip: Facebook needs a real person to manage a business page. That person DOES NOT need to be you. You can have a social media agency or friend post to the page while you maintain control of the Facebook business assets like the Ad Account. The Meta Business Suite can enable full management of people associated with the business.
I have lots of business pages and personal accounts but I don’t know how to access them or where they are. What can I do?
As a consultant that specializes in Facebook, I can tell you I hear this question a lot. Over the years I have clients that often set up personal accounts and business pages and lose track of them and can’t find them. Also what I will demonstrate is also helpful for locating business page assets.
Here’s what you can do:
Find your current personal profile information:
Visit this page to see your current personal profile:
https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=account 
You will see your Facebook Username. This is important to differentiate between your personal and business assets because your personal username identifies you personally on the Facebook platform. You will also see the email address associated with your personal profile.
If you use your name as also a business name, like I do or some real estate agents, your Facebook name would probably be the same, but they can’t be. Usernames on Facebook are unique. What I do is I use a nickname for my personal Facebook Profile – Kennymorico. I use KenMorico for my business page.
To view all the page you manage with your currently logged-in personal profile, visit this page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?category=your_pages 
Now you can see all the pages you have access to. Once you see the page you are interested in, click it. You will see the main page. Note the @username at the top left. That is the page username. You can also see the username in the URL of the current page in your Web browser.
Once you know the username of the business page, you can now assign other people to manage the page for you or keep yourself as admin or just see the current admin status by visiting this URL, filling in your business username:
Facebook Business Pages Need an Authentic Person
You might be thinking, why don’t I just create a separate personal profile with another email address and phone number? You can, but you will violate Facebook terms.
Facebook is a community where people use their authentic identities. …
If you want to represent your business, organization, brand or product on Facebook, you can use your personal account to create and manage a Page. Keep in mind that a personal profile is for non-commercial use and represents an individual person.
Facebook doesn’t really have “customer service.” If your page and profile violate terms you risk losing everything you have created and NEVER getting your assets back. Too risky for me and probably you too.
In this video I outline how to use the Meta Business Suite App to easily separate your personal profile from your Business account. Get it on iOS for iPhones. | Get it on Google Play Store for Android Phones.
Think Facebook is just for friends? I did too until Facebook rolled out a massive structural change to Facebook Pages. Now businesses that setup “Pages” have more options to use Facebook like a regular user. How does this benefit a small business or professional person like a blogger?
Facebook Page and the Facebook Profile
I’ve heard of people using Facebook to network before with their personal profile. To me, it just doesn’t make sense. I think people live in two worlds – a business world and a personal world. In my case, my name is my brand. Since my business / professional name is the same as my real name, it causes an obvious problem on Facebook. I used to think that there were better tools to use for networking like Twitter and LinkedIn. But these new Facebook Page capabilities make networking on Facebook easy. Plus, Facebook opens your personal brand / business to nearly a billion people.
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I offer affordable 1-on-1 sessions tailored just for your needs. Facebook has constantly changed the user interface and methods to separate your business and personal matters. Get a review of your social account and solve your issues now.
HELP! I need a 1-on-1
You don’t want your messages exposed to people who are not interested in receiving them. That’s why it’s important to have a separate Facebook Page. We all know people who send business-related messages on their personal accounts. Nobody likes that! If you don’t have a Facebook Page, creating one is easy.
Facebook now has a Follow Button to enable anyone to subscribe to your public updates. This may make sense for a personal brand, as long as your friends don’t mind seeing your topic-specific posts. You can create filters in Facebook for your posts, but this is kind of a hassle. Separate pages can make more sense. In all, it’s not easy to separate business and personal in Facebook without some work.
The Follow button language is inline with Twitter, so users are familiar with its functionality.
FaceBook Page Tab and the IFrame
You’ll notice a big design difference with regular Facebook user profile and business Facebook Pages because of what’s called the tab feature of the Facebook Page. Facebook pages can have a design (if the owner chooses) that look like mini Web pages. They are even easier to create now that Facebook has migrated to what’s called the iFrame to display tab content. 
iFrames are literally Web pages within Web pages, so regular Web designers can easily create pages and host them on another server outside of the Facebook domain. When users visit your page for the first time, your welcome tab can appear with your logo, fonts, videos, and any other marketing material. The sizes are small though, only 520 pixels or roughly 5 inches wide on a standard computer monitor. Facebook Pages don’t automatically come setup with the iFrame component,and there are limitations for pages with small audiences. According to Facebook:
Major brands, celebrities, and organizations use Facebook Pages as their social home on the web. Besides standard tabs like “About”, “Events” or “Photos” you can add custom Page tabs via the Facebook platform. These custom Page tabs load content from your webserver using an iframe. Page tabs will only be displayed in the web UI. Mobile custom tabs are not supported at this time.
Limitations
Only Pages with 2000 or more likes can create custom Page tabs.
Simple pages aren’t all that you can do. Having developed Facebook Applications professionally, I can tell you there is so much you can customize to make your page fun and viral. Pages give you access to limitless creative possibilities – you just need a skilled programmer familiar with the Facebook platform. Wanna add a game to your page? No problem! Want to use their friends list or gain access to useful personal data to build your database? Yep, you can do that too.
Small Businesses Spending More on Facebook Marketing
Did you know small businesses are stepping up spending on Facebook marketing this year? According to an Inc Magazine survey, businesses will spend more on Facebook than Twitter. Interesting. Twitter, blogs, and LinkedIn made the other top spots. What does this tell me? 1 billion Facebook users can’t be ignored. If you’re a small business or professional you need to respect the size of Facebook and its growing importance in the business community. With the increased features for separating personal accounts and business accounts, you can be sure Facebook has more in store for businesses. The place check-ins are already evidence of that. Think you can’t know what’s happening next? Developers usually know through a page Facebook has called Pages API. It helps them prepare their code for services changes and major upcoming shifts. You may want to check it out as you get deeper into Facebook marketing since Facebook changes can derail your marketing if they remove features.
Can I Convert My Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Business Page?
How Do I Convert My Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Business Page?
Yes, you can, but this isn’t a great option. If you want to convert a personal profile to a business page it’s probably because it wasn’t setup properly. Business pages are for businesses. Before Facebook Pages, many business setup personal profiles for their businesses because that was the only option available to them. Now, you can convert the personal profile to a business page, but would your personal friends appreciate it? Do you want to lose your personal friends? I suggest creating a new, separate Facebook Page and let your friends know about it by posts in your personal feed and through page invitations.
Here is the official word from Facebook:
“When you convert your personal account to a Facebook Page, a business account will be created to manage your Page. We’ll transfer your current profile picture and add all your friends and followers as people who like your Page. Your account’s username will become the username for your Page, and the name associated with your personal account will become your Page’s name. If you want your Page to have a different name, consider creating a new one.
No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning the conversion”
What Benefits / Features do Facebook Pages Have Versus Facebook Profiles?
Like me, many people have a personal brand. I created a Facebook business page that included my real name. So, for example “Ken Morico.” I keep my personal account private using privacy settings so my business page doesn’t compete with my personal profile. It helps me separate my family and my professional contacts on Facebook and helps me target my status updates. Review your personal account privacy settings here: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=privacy
Here’s what Facebook analytics look like: 
I Want To Convert My Facebook Profile To A Facebook Page. What Do I Lose / Need To Watch Out For?
Some people report that you lose the ability to comment in Facebook Groups once you convert your Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page. If you want to participate in groups, you can instead comment as your page on the walls of other pages and get conversations going that way. Also, Reddit and LinkedIn have strong communities and groups, so you may want to check out those as well.
When you convert your personal profile your friends will become your fans/followers. Do they want to? My guess is no. Be careful.
I am a Consultant / Advertising Agency, How Can I Manage Many Facebook Business Accounts?
When I worked for an agency, I setup a new, dummy Facebook profile to connect all the Facebook Pages to that separate account. It’s a good way to fully separate many business accounts from your own personal account. You might name that separate Facebook profile “Ken at Work” or make up a name. Then you can create pages using that account. For most small business users and entrepreneurs with only a few pages, I would recommend just using your own personal Facebook profile to connect your pages plus you won’t violate Facebook’s community guidelines like I mentioned earlier.
Manage Accounts with HootSuite
HootSuite can help you manage your social media accounts and help you separate your personal and professional social media lives. Basically, it uses tabs for each stream in a social media account. You can create custom tabs, for instance called “Personal” and “Professional” and keep track of feeds and special search feeds. For instance, I have a tab called “Monitoring” where I keep up to date on what people are saying in the blogging world, allowing me to enter the conversation at any time. With HootSuite’s posting abilities, you can choose which accounts you want to post from and schedule them in the future. Very handy. I’ve found monitoring works better with Twitter than Facebook primarily because I think people are better with hashtagging on Twitter.
I also created a “Me” tab where I gather mentions and searches for my name so I can monitor my personal brand. I suggest you do the same.
Updates
Facebook is constantly changing the user interface and methods for separating business and personal. I’ll be posting more articles on Facebook strategies and learnings as I go, so please subscribe to my blog to stay notified and schedule a Facebook consulting session with me to help with recent changes. Also, I periodically update this page with new information, so bookmark it for reference.
How to Use Facebook: A Beginner’s Guide
Get more insights on Facebook with HubSpot’s Facebook Engagement Guide
Facebook has changed quite a bit since I first signed up for an account in 2008. Back then, Facebook was still called “The Facebook”, and my bio literally said, “Check out my MySpace, it’s waaaay better than my Facebook.”
Needless to say, Facebook has evolved at breakneck speed since my middle school years, and it’ll keep adapting at a swift pace for as long as it exists.
If you need a refresher on how to use Facebook for marketing your business or you want to sign up for a personal account, check out this in-depth explanation of how to use the most popular social media network in the world.
What is Facebook?
Facebook is a social media network that connects people through an online platform. By sharing content like text status posts, images, videos, and external links like blog posts, Facebook users can contribute ideas and join conversations with other people who share the same or different interests.
In addition to sharing their own ideas, users can engage with the content other people share on Facebook by reacting to it with a like, a laugh, disapproval, and even a hug. Comments and shares are additional ways users can interact with each other’s content.
Facebook for businesses works similarly, except businesses have Facebook Pages not profiles like individual users do. Businesses can use their Facebook Pages to engage with existing customers, target new customers, and administer customer support.
To fully understand Facebook and how it works, you’ll want to become familiar with common terms used on the platform. Here is a list of key Facebook terms and what they mean.
Profile
The Facebook profile is where your information will live. Your name, photo, hometown, workplace, education history, and so on can all be added to your profile. You can make your profile as public or private as you want by disabling the information you don’t want publicly visible.
Newsfeed
This is the place where all of your friends’ posts will appear. You’ll also see updates from business pages that you’ve liked. Your posts will also appear in the newsfeed where your friends can see them.
Timeline
Often confused with a newsfeed, the timeline is your personal record of all the posts you’ve shared and posts you’ve interacted with. While you won’t usually see friend’s status updates here, there is one exception — if they’ve tagged you in a post or a photo, it’ll appear on your timeline. Your friends can see your timeline by default if they search your name unless you’ve set your privacy settings to do the contrary.
Algorithm
The algorithm is an elusive concept. Essentially, the algorithm is a series of computations that Facebook’s servers do every second to determine what content you want to see, interact with, and click on next. The algorithm uses dwell time (how long you view a post), engagement, page likes, posts, and more to determine the type of content you might like to see. Over time, the algorithm gets better at determining what content to show you.
Status/Post
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but “post” is the term Facebook uses to describe something you share on the newsfeed. Text, images, videos, and location are just a few of the types of posts you can share to the newsfeed for your friends to see.
Friends
These are people you’ve either sent a request to and they’ve accepted or people who have sent you a request and you’ve accepted. Unlike other social networking sites that allow someone to follow you without you following them back, Facebook’s friend system requires both you and the other person to be friends with each other. A personal account for an individual cannot have more than 5,000 friends (and it’s not a good idea to make a second Facebook profile to get around this rule).
Followers
Facebook has a follower option as well. When you add new friends, you automatically follow them (and they follow you, too). This is Facebook’s way of adding this new friend to your newsfeed and making sure you see their posts (at least for a little while unless you stop engaging with them). For individuals who exceed 5,000 friends on their personal Facebook profiles, people can opt to follow them instead to stay up to date on their posts. Keep in mind, while Facebook automatically follows your friends for you, you can manually unfollow them without unfriending them. This action removes these individuals’ posts from your newsfeed. If you do this, you’ll need to search your friends individually and surge their timelines to catch up on their latest posts.
Groups
Facebook users with similar interests might find it helpful to create a group on the platform. A group is a community of users who interact with each other based on various topics set by the group’s admins and other users. Only individual users can be added to groups — pages cannot be part of Facebook groups. Admins have a wide range of permissions they can enable or disable to have the group function in a particular way.
Pages
Businesses use Facebook Pages to create a presence on the social network. Pages are not individual Facebook users — think of them as profiles for businesses. They can post updates, images, videos, and all the other types of content that profiles can. However, they have an advantage — Facebook Pages have the ability to connect to Facebook for Business and run ad campaigns.
Events
With so much community happening on Facebook, individual users and businesses have the option to advertise events. The events can accept RSVPs, create a guest list, and share the date time, and location of the event. Events can be virtual through a video platform or they can be in person with a physical location.
Messenger
Instead of a direct messaging platform in the native Facebook app, Facebook Messenger exists as a separate application so users can chat one-on-one or in a private group setting. When using Facebook.com on a desktop computer, the messenger is accessible through the native Facebook website.
Story
Like Instagram stories, Facebook stories are another way individual users and business pages can connect with their friends and followers. Stories are short pieces of content that are visible for just 24 hours. After 24 hours, the stories disappear from the newsfeed.
Notification
Represented by the bell icon in the third circle below, a notification informs you when a friend engages with your posts, photos, videos, or timeline, you’ll receive a notification that explains what they engaged with and when. Friend requests will also appear here.
Now that you have an idea of what Facebook is and how it works, here’s a handy guide to using Facebook.
How does Facebook Work?
Facebook is powered by an algorithm that is able to learn each user’s preferences and interests. Then, the algorithm displays content like images, status updates, and videos posted by friends and businesses that the user might be interested in. The goal for Facebook is to get users to engage with, consume, and share content.
Along with this, Facebook runs advertisements for businesses and these ads are sprinkled in between organic content shared by your friends on the news feed. The ads are tailored to your interests so you see what the algorithm thinks you might be interested in based on content you’ve interacted with in the past. This is called behavioral targeting.
How the Facebook Algorithm Works
In the past, Facebook used a chronological timeline. This means that the posts on your newsfeed were listed in the order in which they were most recently shared by your friends on the platform. If your mom posted three hours ago and your best friend posted five minutes ago, you’d see your best friend’s post first, then your mom’s. However, that all changed in September 2011 when Facebook officially announced that it was doing away with the chronological newsfeed and replacing it with a more personalized experience. Rather than seeing your friends’ posts in the order they were shared, you now see the content Facebook’s algorithm thinks you’ll enjoy the most. This newsfeed is still around today.
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How to Use Facebook
Set up your privacy settings. Personalize your profile. Like and follow public pages. Review your timeline. Add friends on Facebook. Post on Facebook. Add photos and videos. Connect with friends. Review your newsfeed. Discover additional Facebook features.
1. Sign up for a Facebook account.
To sign up for a Facebook account, follow these three easy steps.
2. Set up your privacy settings.
After you’ve signed up for a Facebook account, you can adjust your privacy settings to control who can see your profile and information. Follow these four simple steps to change your privacy settings.
Odds are, there’s probably someone on Facebook who has the same name as you. To differentiate yourself from these people and help your friends and family find you on Facebook, personalize your profile by adding a profile picture, cover photo, and some personal information.
3. Personalize your profile.
Picking a Profile Picture
Choosing a Cover Photo
Updating Your Profile
4. Like and follow public pages.
On Facebook, you can follow and get updates from your favorite brands, celebrities, sports teams, and publications. The best way to do this is by searching for them on Facebook and liking or following their public page, which will have a blue verified check mark next to their name. After you like or follow their page, you’ll start to see their updates in your news feed.
5. Review your timeline.
Your timeline is a digital log of your Facebook activity in reverse-chronological order. Your status updates, uploaded photos and videos, and the photos you’re tagged in will appear on your timeline.
6. Add friends on Facebook.
There are three ways you can add friends on Facebook. You can either search for them, find them in the Find Friends tab, or import a list of contacts from your email, iCloud, or phone.
To find friends on Facebook, go to your profile, select the Friends tab, and tap the Find Friends button. You’ll see a list of friend requests from other people and a list of people you may know that you can add as a friend on Facebook.
If you upload a list of contacts onto Facebook, you can add your friends as you sort through each of your contacts.
7. Post on Facebook.
The main purpose of Facebook is to help friends and family connect with each other. And the best way to connect with your friends and family is by updating them about your life with status updates. To share a Facebook status, go to the text box at the top of your news feed page or on your profile page.
With status updates, you can share text with 15 different colored backgrounds, photos, videos, GIFs, stickers, and links.
You can also share other types of posts, like:
8. Add photos and videos.
On Facebook, you can add photos, videos, albums, and live video broadcasts to your profile for all your friends to see.
Uploading photos or videos
To upload photos or videos to your profile, follow these four simple steps:
Creating photo or video albums
To create a photo or video album, follow these four simple steps:
Facebook Live
To do a live broadcast on your Facebook account, follow these three simple steps.
9. Connect with friends.
On your news feed, you’ll see updates from your friends, family, or public pages you follow. To interact with them, you can like and react to their posts, share content on their timelines, and communicate with them through text or video chat.
Like, Comment, Or Share
If you like someone’s post, give them a thumbs up, comment on their post, or share it.
Other Reactions
If your Facebook friend’s post evokes a stronger reaction in you than a like, you can also express that you love, laughed, are amazed, sad, or angry at their post by holding down the Like button.
Sharing Content on Your Friends’ Timelines
Anything you can post on your status, you can also post on your friend’s timeline.
Facebook Messenger
To chat with your friends or public pages on Facebook, use Facebook Messenger. You can access it by tapping the Messages button at the top right corner of any Facebook page or selecting the Messages button on the left sidebar of the home page.
Next, select New Message and type in your friend or brand’s name that you want to connect with. Facebook Messenger also lets you create group chats by clicking on New Group. After that, all you have to do is name your group and add the friends you want to include in the group.
When you message your friends or group on Facebook Messenger, you can upload pictures, videos, and files from your computer, as well as stickers, GIFs, emojis, and take pictures and videos from your computer’s or phone’s camera.
You can also view Messenger on its own page, where you can search for past conversations and manage your settings. To view Messenger on its own page tap the Messages button in the top right corner of any Facebook page and then tap the See All in Messenger button.
To instant message your friends’ who are logged onto Facebook at the same time as you, tap the Chat button on the bottom of any Facebook page and strike up a conversation with your friends who are online.
Phone and Video Calling
When you have Messenger open on its own page, you can search for any of your friends or groups, click on their name, and tap the phone or video chat button to call them.
10. Review your newsfeed.
Your news feed is a curated feed of posts from your friends, family, and public pages you follow that Facebook’s algorithm thinks you’ll be interested in. You’ll also see ads from brands who think you’ll enjoy consuming their content or products.
To customize your news feed, tap the downward pointing arrow in the upper right corner of any Facebook page and tap News Feed Preference.
From there, you can prioritize whose posts you’ll see first, unfollow people and groups to hide their posts, reconnect with people and groups you unfollowed, discover public pages that match your interests, and hide apps from your news feed.
11. Discover additional Facebook features.
Facebook isn’t just a platform for viral content and connection. It’s also a hub for community communications, video streaming, marketplaces, and games.
Events
The Events page on Facebook will show you any upcoming events that are popular with your Facebook friends or have been set up by the groups you belong to. You can also find events based on their date, location, and category.
To find the Events page, select the Home button. Then, on the left sidebar, you’ll see the Explore section, where you can select Events
Groups
The Groups page on Facebook will show you which groups you manage and belong to. You can also discover groups to join based on Facebook’s suggestions and a ton of other categories.
To access the Groups page, tap the Home button and then on the left sidebar, you’ll see the Explore section, where you can click Groups.
Facebook Watch
On the Facebook Watch platform, you can watch videos from the shows you’re following and search for other shows and videos.
To access Facebook Watch, select the Home button. Then, on the left sidebar, you’ll see the Watch button right under the Marketplace button.
Marketplace
Not only does Facebook compete with Netflix in the streaming industry, but they also compete with eBay in the marketplace industry. With Facebook Marketplace, you can browse for all kinds of products, join groups to buy and sell products with people in your area or who share similar interests, shop for products sold from different shops, shop by category, and sell your own products.
To access Facebook Marketplace, select the Home button. Then on the left sidebar, you’ll see the Marketplace button right under the Watch button.
Games
Facebook Games is one of Facebook’s best features. They host a huge collection of massively popular games, and you can browse the most popular games on the platform by top charts and categories. You can even play most of the games with your friends, too.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Originally published Apr 14, 2021 7:00:00 AM, updated August 27 2021