Like, comment, share–what’s the difference? You are scrolling through your Facebook feed, you see a recipe, you like, you may even comment and if you really love it, you share it with mom who will in turn make said recipe when you come over. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong! Random, willy nilly liking will get your Facebook feed jammed up with the strangest array of posts you’ve ever seen. I want to encourage you to be discerning with your likes.
You may like something, but seriously, don’t like everything you see or you are never going to see the things that are most important to you. It’s your feed and while Facebook has its algorithm thing going on, your discretion still has some sway over what you actually get to see.
If you are seeing too much of what you don’t want to see there are ways to clean up your feed so you can get back to be social again.
- You may have liked a page way back when but your interests have changed–unlike it. The Facebook police won’t slap cuffs on you and honestly, chances are that page won’t even notice you are gone.
- Adjust your page notifications. Look at your favorite page. Once you have “Liked” the page you can select “Get notifications” if you want to be notified when the page makes an update. If you do not select get notification, you will periodically see things posted by the page but you won’t receive notification when it is posted.
- Create an “Interest List” for your favorite pages, friends, family or whatever your main interest may be. Once you create the Interest List, it will be listed on the left hand side of your home page. When you select a specific Interest List you have created, you will see the posts of those pages or people only in the feed created by the Interest List.
If you see a post on Facebook that really trips your trigger, comment. In doing so you will begin to engage with the poster and the conversation thread will read more like a conversation thus building your online relationship with those who comment there or the original poster. For instance, if you someone post a status stating they have to attend a funeral, you don’t like it! You may be able to relate, you may have recently been in the same situation, you get it, BUT you don’t like it! If you feel compelled to acknowledge the post, a comment would be more appropriate than a like.
To share a post is fun and it lets the original poster see that you liked their post enough to share with your audience. When sharing directly from the original posters page, Facebook automatically shows where it was shared from. If you decide to download an image from a post to share in the future, be sure to make note when you post, where the image originated from. Also, respect the boundaries of the original poster, if they have their privacy settings specified to friends only, you will want to ask them if you can share with others.
I challenge you to comment and share more over the next two days and see for yourself how your Facebook feed changes. Don’t like–just comment and share. Can’t wait to hear your feedback, comment here or on Facebook.
