Ease your social life online: A few Facebook tips you won't find anywhere else

The Facebook Logo

This post will help you know some basic stuff on how you should manage your Facebook profile, your friends,your content, how to keep it clean, and still get the relevant stuff out of it that matters to you. Everything mentioned below is based on my personal experience. So, let's get started with the little points that you never pondered over before which hopefully will help you manage your online social life in a better way. Happy reading.

Select with whom you want to share your post

Smart Lists is one feature I would like to thank Zuckerberg for. For those unaware of it, smart lists help you to sort your friends on the basis of certain filters like your school, family, work and the city you live in. All this sorting thing is handled automatically. If this wasn't the best part, you can also edit those smart lists as per your convenience. That means, the next time you share your school farewell pic, your boss doesn't get to see it (of course, you will have to set the photo's "share with" setting to "xyz school" as shown in the pic attached on the right.

How to get to the lists

Two more lists I find most useful are the "Close Friends" and "Restricted" lists. As the respective name suggests, you add those friends to your close friends list, whose status, posts and every other notifications you wish to receive in your news feed. Restricted List is specially dedicated to the annoying aunties and spying elder brothers. Those people are meant to be kept here, whom you're forced to add to your friends list, but don't want to share anything with them.
Note: You can reach Restricted and Close Friends by typing the respective names in the search bar, and clicking on the result saying List below the title. Other smart lists can be reached through the left side bar.


If you are promoting any brand, website or blog with your personal profile (like me), besides with the page you've created, you can also use your personal profile for that purpose. Accept every friend request that comes down your way. Don't add them to any lists. You can share anything related to your brand using the share with feature below every post you post on Facebook. Don't worry about getting irrelevant notifications in your news feed, because most of the stuff in your news feed will be related to the people in the "close friends" list. Only disadvantage I see in adding everyone to your friends will lead you to getting tagged in strange posts (which I certainly hate).


Don't send Friend requests to people you don't know, if you do, have a chat with them via messages so that the chances of your friend request being rejected goes down. If he/she doesn't reply, it's better not to send him/ her the friend request because if they report you, you are at the risk of getting your id blocked off of some features for some days, which might include your ability to send messages. Repeated reports against you might cause Facebook to shut your account down, which you surely won't want.

Advanced Chat Settings popup box in facebook

Be online only to people you want to have a chat with. A new feature in the facebook chat allows you to hide yourself from specific people including those who annoy you with their silly wassup questions, another option is to get online to a specific list or to the people whose names you enter, no one other than those you specify will see if you're online or not. You just have to click at the gear button on the right of the little search bar attached below your sidebar. Then you are supposed to click on the advanced settings. The third option helps you to avoid everyone when you're not feeling chatty.



When you want extra screen estate, hide the sidebar by clicking the button on the extreme right at the bottom, next to the gear button.

Don't use swear words, especially to strangers. It won't take them hours to report you for harassing. Don't forget to return the favor for anyone who swears at you.

Getting your name on the top in search results

If you want your profile to appear in search results, then you must set your privacy settings to public, otherwise search engines will never find you on the web. Don't expect to get your profile in the search results if your name matches with some celebrity :P

Unfollowing a content

If you commented on some post, and are flooded with notifications regarding further comments, hover over the top right of that comment and click the cross button and finally select unfollow to avoid receiving further notifications regarding that post or whatever content it is.

Don't hesitate in blocking a person if he/she is annoying/harassing/bullying you. Remember, you can always remove the block later on.

Breaking the ice. Have a look at his/ her profile/timeline before asking stupid questions like where are you from. That's what the profile is meant for: to let people know basic things about the person. Concentrate on the likes of the person and start your conversation based on that. Talking about the movies that you have watched can be a good start. And so is chatting about any common activity both of you are involved in.

Subscribe to the updates of people who don't accept your friend request, but you still wan to receive updates from. Subscribing might even allow you to interact with the person via comments, if he/she has enabled comments by subscribers.

That's all the tricks that breezed through my mind since the past few days. I shall surely update this post when I find another interesting and helpful trick to make your online social life tad easier. Leave your feedback regarding this post, and share some of your own fundas you apply online to handle your Facebook life in a better way.