Facebook Privacy For Professionals

If you’re a professional and you’re on Facebook, chances are you’ve thought about creating a second Facebook account so that your clients will have the option to “friend” you, but still allow you to maintain some privacy.  I thought about this too, but who wants to juggle two accounts?  I already have enough to juggle between my social media accounts!  But, there is a simple way to control everything you share so that your family photos and videos of your pequeñitos in their diapers don’t make it to the screens of your professional acquaintances.  Here’s how…

Make a custom “Friends” list:

The first thing you’ll want to do is make a custom friends list.

After logging into your Facebook account, access your settings by clicking “Account” and from the drop down menu, select “Edit Friends“.

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 In the right hand corner, you’ll see a button that says “Create a List“.  Click it.

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Once you create a name for your safe list, you can select which friends you’d like to add and click “Create List” to save your list for later use in your privacy settings.

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You’ll be taken to the page where you can view your list and edit the name or add and remove friends.  You can click “Account“, “Edit Friends” and then select the name of your list from the sidebar anytime you want to edit your list.

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To activate your list in your privacy settings, go to the “Account” menu again and select “Privacy Settings“.

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On the next page, you’ll want to select “Customize Settings” to change your privacy settings.

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Select the option that you want to customize…posts, interests, political views or in this case photos and videos.  To change the privacy settings for your photo albums, select “Edit Privacy Settings” (circled in RED).

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Click on the drop down menu to select “Custom“.

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Now, this is where you put your custom friends list to work.  From the drop down list, select “Specific People” and then type the name of your list in the entry box below.  You’ll also notice you have the option to “Hide this” from specific friends.  You can add individuals or lists (recommended) to this box in order to exclude certain friends from seeing your images or other posts.  When you’re finished adding your list to either entry box, select your list and click “Save Setting“.  NOTE: I personally prefer a safe list, rather than an exclusion list because that way new friends won’t automatically be given privilege to your private posts…instead you’ll have to add them to your safe list before they can view protected posts.  With exclusions (in the “Hide this…” box), you’ll have to add new friends to the list right away in order to ensure they won’t see your private materials when they join you online.

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And that’s it!  You can use the same steps to customize any of the options in your privacy settings with these same steps and also create several different lists for other privacy options like protecting your posts, relationships or videos.  Last, but not least, check to see if your settings are active by going to the “Customize Settings” page.  (“Account”, “Privacy Settings”, “Customize Settings”).  One of the greatest things about making a custom list for your privacy settings, is that you can update it by adding and removing friends on your list and all of your albums (or other) privacy settings will be automatically updated.  That means you won’t have to edit albums individually each time you make a change.  What a time saver!

One more great tip (that I discovered via @MariSmith) is that you can also customize the privacy for each of your wall posts (see below) and also use your custom lists in this option too!  This feature is also great for targeting your updates towards a specific audience.  Let’s say you want to send an update only to fellow bloggers or California residents.  Create a custom list of those group members and add it to your update by selecting “Customize“, “Specific People” and entering the list name (shown below). 

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