Facebook Tips & Tricks

Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook!  I love seeing the new baby pictures from friends from college. I love hearing funny stories about work and sharing the misery of a Rangers loss with my Facebook friends.  But sometimes Facebook can be annoying!

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?  You get tons of notifications you don’t want, invited to games you don’t want to play and miss the stuff you really want to see.  And don’t even get me started on Facebook for pages! {It’s amazing how difficult it is to get people who’ve liked your page to see your stuff in their news feed.}

So what do you do?  Deactivate your account?  Throw things at your computer screen?  No!  Because remember you do love Facebook (or at least I do).  So do you just accept all those annoyances?  Nope! You don’t have to do that either.  I have a few Facebook Tips that will let you gain some control over those little annoyances.  

6 Facebook Tips & Tricks

1) Unfollowing a post – This might be my absolutely favorite tip.  Have you ever commented on a picture of a brand new baby only to have notification after notification about others commenting on the same post?  You don’t really care about how cute someone you’ve never met thinks your friends baby is.   You just wanted to give your congrats and well wishing.  This solves that problem.  Simply unfollow the post.

Here’s How:

When you get a notification that someone else also commented on a post you did, click it.  Then you should see something like this:

Simply Click “Unfollow Post”

2) Blocking an application – What about those zillion requests from that game you don’t play. You know “please water my crops,” and “send me life so I can crush candy.”  You probably have your games you like and play and don’t mind notifications from those but sometimes the notifications from the ones you don’t play can be really annoying.  Best way to get rid of the ones you get all the time is to block the game app (you can do this for any other app too).

Here’s How:

Click the gear in the upper right hand corner of any Facebook page.  Then select Account Setting for the drop down menu.  Select blocking from the menu on the left hand side.  When the next page open, scroll down to blocking apps and type the name of the app into the box.  The app will appear under the block with an “unblock” next to it in case you change your mind.  

Blocking an App

3) Getting everything from those you want to see – What shows up in your news feed is based on some sort of complicated algorithm that Facebook has in place that’s supposed to be showing you more of what you want, less of what you don’t.  But sometimes this system doesn’t get it right.  You can help them out and make sure you get everything from those you want. 

Here’s How:

For a Page – Hover over the name in your news feed until box pops up.  Then hover over liked.  When the menu appears clicks settings.  You will then have your choice of what posts you will see: all updates, most updates, or only important.  

Get All Updates from Pages

For a Friend – Hover over their name until the box pops up. Then hover over friends. Then follow the rest of the directions above.  

Get All Updates from Friends

4) Hiding your stuff – Why would you want to hide your stuff?  Well sometimes, we have those friends that just don’t leave nice comments on our posts.  Maybe they find a way to consistently put you down and for some reason or other you just can’t un-friend them.  You can hide all of your posts from them.  That means your stuff won’t show up in their news feed.

Here’s How:

Go to your friends profile. Hover over “Friends.”  Then click on add to another list.  Then select restricted.  Those in your restricted list will not see any of your post unless you make them public.  

You can also do this same thing by hovering over their name in your news feed and waiting for the box to pop up.  Then hover over friends and following the rest of the directions as stated above. 

5)  The Truth about Sharing – You know all those posts floating around (mostly food pictures with recipes) saying “share this to save it to your profile forever.”  Well they are LYING, whether intentionally or not.  Sharing does not save it to your profile.  I found this out when I shared a really cute picture of my son from his school’s Facebook page.  I went to my profile a couple weeks later to get the picture and it was gone.  {If you actually want to save a picture to your profile, tag yourself in it or download it to your computer and then you can upload it or do whatever you want with it.}

Sharing is meant for well, sharing.  Not saving.  Sharing it meant for things you find awesome or important and want to pass on to your friends.  And most of those food pictures with the whole recipe written out are actually pictures and recipes stolen from other sites and passed off as their own so that Facebook page can gain followers and attention.  {Basically it’s spam!}

Sharing done right {Ignore my typo, please!}:

The recipe is only visible if you click on the link 

6) Hiding ads or other stuff – I don’t mind ads, well normally.  I don’t mind them at all in the sidebar but they seem to be cropping up in the news feed more and more.  And sometimes after I’ve seen the same ad over and over again, I’ve had enough and I hide them.  

Here’s How: Click the drop down arrow in the left cover of the ad.  The click “Hide all ads from (name of place)”  This works with apps, pages, and people too. 

Hide All

But remember more ads will pop up in it’s place.  So I usually only hide ads, I really don’t want to see.

 A couple notes:

• All of the pictures were just examples, I wasn’t really restricting my sister.
• Setting don’t always save permanently on Facebook, you might need to check them occasional and you know, not post mean things about the people you hide your stuff from. {Not posting mean things, should be a given anyways!}
• If Facebook is still driving you crazy, it might be time to take a break and enjoy the real world!

Do you have any other Facebook tips or tricks to share? And of course you can always like us on Facebook!

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