Jaimie Dobson Internet Consultant

If you use Facebook for a mixture of business and pleasure; then you’re best controlling who sees what on your profile if you don’t want to embarrass yourself or lose credibility with your clients and business associates. But how do you go about it?

I’ve been on Facebook, the omnipotent social networking site for about two and a half years now and most people who like me, use it for work and domestic purposes; have accumulated an eclectic mix of old school buddies, business clients, networking associates and historical work colleagues not to mention a small pool of virtual friends with various family members seeking me out along the way.

The danger of maintaining this type of ‘relationship soup’ on something like Facebook is that one’s Wall can easily become a mosaic of business orientated blog posts, embarrassing pictures of yourself naked in some compromising situation through to family day-outs with your kids. Then there’s the banter between you and your mates in public message threads. Does everyone you know really need to learn what you think about so-and-so football team, that girl on X-Factor or in the case of one of my FB friends (who is also a business associate of mine) their somewhat bigoted religious views? Gulp!

Work Around

However there is a way around this, a method that allows you to post merrily away without offending anyone, embarrassing yourself or alienating some of your Facebook friends. A way to ensure that all friends from the various threads of you life, can mingle together simultaneously on your Facebook profile, without one “type” of friend seeing what is happening with the other “types” of friends you may have.

The answer is “Friends Lists” and “Privacy Settings”

Here’s The Idea:

• You create a Friend List for each type of ‘Friend’ you may have. For example you could have one for “Business Associates”, one for “Networking Associates” and one for “Family”.
• You segment or group your friends together by deciding what type of “Friend” they are i.e. a family member, business associate or networking associate etc and by adding them to the appropriate list.
• Under your Facebook account’s Privacy Settings, you then assign different viewing access levels to each list. In other words, you specify what “Friends” within a particular list can and cannot see, when it comes to activity on your Facebook Profile.

Here’s How…

1. Go to your Friends Page when logged into Facebook. On the left hand side you will see the default Lists already set-up in your account. Click on the All Connections filter in the top-left of the page. This will bring up a “Create New List” button at the top of the page.

Creating a new Friend List on Facebook

Start creating lists that you feel are appropriate by clicking this button. You can see the lists I have created below as an example.

Facebook Friend Lists

2. When you’ve created all the lists you want (more can be added later if required), it’s time to start adding your Friends to your lists. This is done by simply editing the List or by choosing a List name from the “Add to List” drop-down option next to a Friends name in the list under the All Connections filter. Any particular Friend may be added to more than one list at a time, however I would recommend keeping one Friend to one list for simplicity.

Add your friends to a list

3. Once you’ve assigned all your Friends to a particular list go to the Privacy Settings page on your account. Click into the first item you see which is called “Profile Information”. On each element of your profile you can choose what aspects different list members can see.Choose the “Customise” option and then type in the name of a Friend List that you want to add as an exception.

4. Click the Save Setting button and you’re done.

Top Tip: Click on the Preview Profile button (top right) to see how your profile looks to different types of people.

Post comments as to how useful you find this technique.

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Tags: Social Networking