Facebook Lists – How to Set Them Up & Use Them

So the other day I did a post about using Facebook for both personal and business. I explained that most people are afraid to do this because they don’t want their family to have to listen to nothing but business stuff, and they don’t want their business “friends” to see all of their personal stuff.

I explained that you can avoid this issue by using lists and then making some minor changes to your security settings. In this post I want to go into a bit more detail on how exactly to accomplish setting up lists and what you can do with them once you have them set up.

To get started on your first list you will need to log into your Facebook account. Once you have logged in you can look to the left side of your profile news feed. Click on the word Friends. Then at the top of the list of your friends you will see a gray button that says “Create a List”. Click on it and enter the name you want for your list (Family, Business, A Networking Group You Attend, etc) and then select people from your friends to be on that list. Then save. It is really that easy.

Once you have lists set up you can even put people on them when you send friend requests or when you accept requests you receive. So they start out in the right place. When you are sending or receiving a friend request you will see a drop down that says “Add To List”. When you click it you will see the lists you have already created and you can choose one of them. You can also add a new list right from this screen.

You can always change, rename, add people or remove people from lists. I have found that I need to go through my friends every so often and adjust my lists accordingly since things change over time.

Once you have lists created you can go into your privacy settings and select the Custom settings option. From the drop down list (everyone, friends of friends, friends only, custom) you will choose custom again. Then you can enter the name of your list in either the “These people only” or “Hide from these people” areas.

Now depending on which place you entered the list they will either be the only group to see that information or they will be the only group NOT able to see that information. So this way you can have your “friends” see your email address, but your “business friends” will not see it at all.

Another way you can use lists is to invite people to an event you are having. For example let’s say you live in Phoenix Arizona and you are having a networking event. Once you create an event page for the event you can then click the link to invite friends.

Now, anyone who has done this without lists knows that you have to click on each person you want to invite one at a time. (If you have a large friends list this can become very annoying). But if you create a list called say…Phoenix Metro and add everyone of your friends who are located in the Phoenix Metro area (and therefore might attend your event…) you can select them all at once.

When you click the link to invite friends there will be a little link that says “filter Friends”. If you click on it you will see your Lists you have created. When you select a list only those people will show up in the choose area. BUT…now there is a new option to the right of the box. See it over there…? It says “Select All”!

Cool huh? If you click it, it will automatically select everyone on that list.

Then you can even click the filter friends list again and select a different list you have created and select all of them. You can then click the little x next to the lists name and be back to the main list that shows all of your friends and select any stragglers. But…the entire time it leaves the people you have already selected, selected. So when you are ready you just click the invite button and wala…all those people are invited and you only clicked a couple of buttons!

Talk about a time saver!

So..do you use lists yet? If not, will you now? Share some of the ways that you are using lists in the comments below so that we can all benefit from your genius…

About The Author:
Cindy Clemens is a mom, author, speaker, marketing consultant and Co-Founder of Your Marketing University. Her goal is to teach marketing in a simple easy to understand format that businesses can use to help gain marketing ideas & market their businesses to boost sales.

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