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Facebook is still a highly personal network in the minds of many. I see it when I speak at conferences about how to connect with different people on different networks.
Should I connect with a business connection on LinkedIn? Oh yes probably. Should I connect with them on Twitter? For sure. Twitter is wide open. Should I connect with them on Facebook? NO!!!!!! ⬅️⬅️⬅️ That’s usually the answer I get from people. The whole room usually shakes its head.
Related: Should I friend a coworker on social media?
➡️ Send me an email here to book me to speak at your conference. ? ?
The NO is really resounding. While opinions on the other networks, which also includes Instagram, vary, on Facebook it’s meant to be for friends and family. I hear little to no disagreement on that!
And of course, Facebook really was built to stay in touch with people we already know. Twitter on the other hand is built around connecting around ideas and topics and not necessarily so much around offline connections. I also use Twitter to get news and participate in Twitter chats.
But one thing I’ve noticed on Facebook is that I see fewer and fewer posts from actual people I’m connected with. I’m connected to about 1,400 people. I think I know them all personally. I’m also followed by about 400 on my personal profile and then of course I have my actual “professional” page.
And I do realize that I follow a lot of news organizations, brands and other organizations on Facebook. So I do appreciate when Facebook actually shows me those updates when I care about them. <Insert complaint about declining organic reach on Facebook.>
But the updates from brands and organizations have really taken over updates from friends – at least in my own feed.
Related: How to ensure not to miss specific people’s posts on social media
I’ve noticed this for a while and finally ended up counting how many updates from organizations I would see before seeing a friend post. The answer: 26 posts before seeing a friend’s picture from a wine event in Iowa.
Now, many of the 26 posts were informational and interesting. I liked many of them-which might be the reason why Facebook is showing me more brand page posts over friends’ posts. Some were sponsored posts. Some were page ads. And some were just regular organic page posts.
But I thought there has to be a better way to get a better mix of content served to me on Facebook.
After a little break from Facebook I refreshed the app and had over 50 new posts to look at that were also from pages. I say over 50 because I got tired of counting quite frankly and I still did not get to an actual person’s post.
There are some pages I follow and I read their content-at least the content I see on Facebook-close to 100 percent of the time. I click over to their websites and read more and I like and sometimes even share it. So of course Facebook continues to serve me those pages’ content.
So from that perspective, that’s good to know for brand publishers. The more relevant your content the more likely I am to see it, click on it and engage with it. It also seems to translate into seeing it more often.
But, it would be nice to see some friends post here and there.
So at first I thought it had something to do with the Facebook algorithm and it likely does have something to do with it. But I’m also at fault myself to a degree as I have unfollowed a huge amount of people that I’m connected to.
With that, please accept my apologies. I didn’t realize the large amount of unfollows that I’ve initiated over the decade or so on Facebook. Sometimes I meant it and sometimes I was just seeing too much from specific people. And sometimes I unfollowed because people kept talking about politics. And other times I unfollowed because I kept seeing all the post that they were liking. What’s the point in that anyway? Why are likes treated like shares?
There are many reasons and you probably have your own reasons to unfollow people. But after you’ve done that for a while maybe you want to reconsider and re-follow some of them. Because depending on how many friends you have that pool of people unfollowed could be rather large. I know mine was.
Here’s how you refollow people that you’ve unfollowed on Facebook:
Go to your FRIENDS section on your profile. And start clicking through friends until you find somebody that you have unfollowed.
Here’s how their profile looks when you are friends but don’t follow them. The follow button is grayed out:
Click FOLLOW. You’re now refollowing them and then you also get this option:
Keep in mind that you can only see a handful of friends under the SEE FIRST option.
If you want to check in one place who else you have unfollowed click on LET’S DO IT.
That gets you to this screen:
Below this introductory paragraph you see photos of people you unfollowed and by clicking on them you can scroll through all the people you unfollowed and quickly refollow them. Unfortunately (or fortunately) there’s no way to follow everybody again at once. You do have to click on each picture individually.
So there we have it. If you’re seeing predominately brand updates in your Facebook feed and unfollow friends every once in a while you may have taken the unfollowing too far. I certainly have and I’m currently refollowing people.
I’m certain there are people who have unfollowed me and even blocked me. It’s all part of learning social media together.
Sorry, if I’ve been absent. ?? So now we know what might cause few friends posts and more brand posts.
Related: When should you block somebody?