A New Year Checkup – Facebook: Step 3 - Friend Lists

It’s a new year and it’s time for social media types to be more conscientious about their social outposts. As part of a focus on social media strategy this is the third in a series about Facebook.

Consider Using the Lists Function

Do you really want to share everything with everyone you’re connected to on Facebook? Probably not.

You can start your control of who sees what in two ways.

First you can go to Lists (on the left side of your home page – where you may have to click on the “More” to see it). Facebook automatically adds some of your friends to lists and suggests dozens of others.

Next, look at "Close Friends." Again, Facebook adds some friends and suggests others.

Then there is a "Family" list where you can choose the people you’d want to share more with. In this case, those you’re adding will be told, so if you don’t want that known, create a new list rather use the one Facebook set up. To do that, click Lists and then Create List.

The thing with Lists: Some people are in multiple groups, others in none. The lists make it easier to share posts with only a subset of Facebook friends or see only posts from specific groups.

Facebook also has a "Restricted" list where you dump those you don’t want to share much with. Facebook promises not to reveal who gets added.

The second way to manage lists is more time-intensive, but can be done any time you’re on Facebook.

When viewing your feed you simply have your cursor hover over a name. This causes a popup mini-profile of that person including a Friends button. Hover over that button and a drop-down menu will give you the option of adding the person to a list or unfriending them.

How to
• Work With Facebook’s Improved Friend Lists
• How To Use The New Facebook Lists (And Why You Should)

Was this post helpful? Will you take the time to organize friends into lists?

Related links:
• Facebook Checkup Step 1 - The Timeline
• Facebook Checkup Step 2 - Privacy-Friends 
• Facebook Checkup Step 4 - Final Checkup