Mastering the Facebook Flip: When to Follow, When Not to Unfollow

Have you ever wondered what it means to follow someone on Facebook? How can you see who is following you? And how can you unfollow someone?

Here’s everything you need to know about Facebook followers, and following and unfollowing people on Facebook.

What Does Following Mean on Facebook?

The follow feature is one of Facebook’s most underused tools. Many people don’t realize that you can use it to communicate with almost anyone on the network, even if you’re not friends.

Facebook’s follow feature works in two ways:

• You can see content from other users such as celebrities, sports stars, and local journalists.
• You can share some of your thoughts with the wider public, even if most of your Facebook profile remains private.

We’ve explained the differences between Facebook friends and Facebook followers in more detail elsewhere on the site if you would like to learn more.

Interested? Keep reading. We’re going to take a closer look at the follow feature and how to make it work for you.

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Why Is the Follow Feature Necessary?

There are two reasons to use the follow feature.

First, in the social network’s early days, your news feed was a chronological list of status updates and photos from people you cared about.

Today, it’s a mess. We’ve all liked too many pages and got too many friends. Nothing about your news feed feels personal anymore. The Follow feature is one of the ways to make Facebook relevant again.

Secondly, it lets you interact with people you’re not connected with. In many ways, it’s Facebook’s answer to Twitter.

How to Follow and Unfollow on Facebook

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You automatically follow all your friends. Anyone else, you need to follow manually.

To follow someone, go to their profile page and click on the three dots below the lower right-hand corner of the person’s cover photo, then hitFollow .

If you find that one of your friends posts too frequently (or just bores you with their content), but you don’t want to offend them by unfriending them, you can unfollow them instead. Unfollowing someone will prevent their posts from appearing in your news feed, but they will still see your posts in their news feed.

(NB: If you get unfriended by someone else, don’t stress. There are lots of ways to deal with being unfollowed or unfriended .)

To unfollow a person, navigate to their profile page and locate theFriends button (again, below the bottom-right corner of the person’s cover photo).

Expand the dropdown menu, and you’ll see four options:Favorites (if you want to add the person to your favorites list to their posts get priority in your news feed),Edit Friend List ,Unfollow , andUnfriend . You need to click onUnfollow .

How Do You See Who You’re Following?

You can see who you’re following on your friends list. Go to your profile page and select theFriends tab.

On the next screen, you’ll see a new set of tabs. ChooseFollowing . If you don’t see the option, it means you’re not following anyone who isn’t also a friend.

How Do You Let People Follow You?

So, following other people is straightforward enough, but how do you let other people follow your profile and posts?

You need to turn on the feature in Facebook’s settings. Go to Settings and Privacy > Settings > Public Posts > Who Can Follow Me and selectPublic from the dropdown menu.

This same page contains three other settings you need to be aware of:

• Public Post Comments: Decide whether you want to let random people comment on your public posts.
• Public Post Notifications: Do you wish to receive notifications for actions taken by individuals who aren’t your friend?
• Public Profile Info: Some of your profile—such as your profile picture, cover image, and short bio—is always public. This setting restricts who can comment on it.

What Do Your Facebook Followers See?

Followers can see any of your public content. Remember, this doesn’t only refer to text-based posts, you can also choose to make pictures, albums, videos, and even your likes public knowledge.

You can make a post public by clicking on the dropdown menu below the text box when you’re writing a message. You can adjust the visibility of pictures and videos in a similar way.

To make your likes and follows public, go to your profile thenMore > Likes . Next, click on the three dots icon and chooseEdit the Privacy of Your Likes . For each category, you can set the desired visibility.

To make the people you’re following public knowledge, go back to Settings and Privacy > Settings > Privacy , then change the Who can see the people, Pages, and lists you follow setting toPublic .

How to See Who Follows You on Facebook

Seeing who is following you is much the same as seeing who you’re following.

Again, make your way to your list of friends. You can access it from your profile page. This time, locate the tab labeledFollowers . If you don’t have any followers, or you haven’t allowed followers in your Facebook settings, you won’t see the option.

When a new person follows you who is not already one of your friends, you will receive a notification.

How Can You Remove Facebook Followers?

So far, so good? Great. Next, how do you get rid of people who you don’t want to follow you anymore?

Of course, the draconian approach is just to turn off followers completely. It will remove any followers who aren’t already friends with you. For a more nuanced approach, you need to block people on a case-by-case basis.

Navigate to the profile page of the person you want to remove. In the lower right-hand corner of the person’s cover photo, click the three horizontal dots.

You now have two choices:Report orBlock .

If you just want to prevent someone from seeing your public content, chooseBlock . The person will not be able to see your timeline, tag you in posts or photos, invite you to groups, start a chat conversation with you, or add you as a friend. If the person has been abusive, chooseReport . You can either report the person’s whole profile or one individual post/comment.

Should You Use the Follow Feature on Facebook?

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of the Facebook follow feature. Whether you decide to use the follow feature should depend on how you use Facebook.

If you’re the type of person who has a large Facebook friends list while simultaneously liking endless brands and pages, you might find it useful. However, if you’ve decided to start deleting lots of Facebook friends and avoid liking too much content, you probably won’t see any benefit to it.