Although many companies have a Business page on Facebook, most business owners still like to mix business with pleasure on their personal Facebook pages. This makes sense because if you own a business, especially a service business, many of your clients become your Facebook friends. It’s natural that many of us would want to take advantage of the social aspect of Facebook in order to interact on a more personal level and keep people aware of who we are and what we are doing in our daily lives as well as our business lives. Occassionally, however, you may want to share something with your personal friends that you’d rather not share with your clients.
So, what do you do if you want to post something on your personal page that you would rather not have your clients (or another type of group) see? Use the Facebook Lists feature.
You can set up any type of list you want, but I’ll use “Clients” as an example. Facebook doesn’t make it immediately apparent about how to build a list, so let’s do a walk-through:
One way to get to the Lists feature is to click on the “Friends” tab. Click the “Edit Friends” button on the top right. You’ll then see a “Create a List” button on the top right. A “Create New List” box will appear with all of your friends. You’ll need to type in the name of your new list and then start selecting all of the people (click on their pictures) who belong on this list. If you have a lot of friends to wade through, this may take a while. Once you’re done, click on “Create List” at the bottom, and there’s your new list. You’ll see it on the left side of this page.
When you’re ready to share something with everyone EXCEPT those on this Clients list, you’ll need to take the following steps:
Type your message, and then click on the little lock picture to the left of the “Share” button. Scroll down to “Customize”. In the “Custom Privacy” box that appears, choose the drop-down menu that appears under “Hide this from”. You’ll need to start typing “Clients” to get your list to appear. Click on the Clients list and save the setting for this post.
Now you’re ready to post a message that you want everyone but your clients to see.