The Complete Guide to Facebook Lists

This article discusses the whys and hows of Facebook Lists for marketing your small business online.

You have tons of friends on Facebook, right? How are you going to keep track of all these people? Yikes! It can get scary, especially when your friend list goes up over 1000. Time to get organized by using Facebook Lists! The more organized you are, the better you will be able to get your message across to your network. A small, well-organized network is more beneficial to you than a large network that’s disorganized and unrelated. While a bit tedious to set-up, Facebook Lists are vital, as they can save you precious time later, and they give you control over who sees what on your Facebook account.

Why Facebook Lists?

Facebook lists have undergone changes each time the Facebook interface changes, so it can get confusing if you don’t keep up with the details of the system. The two main benefits of Facebook Lists are:

• Saving Time
• Granular Privacy Control

Saving Time

Facebook Friend Lists save you time in a number of ways:

Organize Your Network. Facebook Lists allow you to group people according to variables such as geo-location, relationships (ie: family, high school friends, clients, prospects, vendors).

Keep Track of Network. When all your people are organized into Facebook Lists, you can filter view the Facebook status updates of a particular group (i.e. when you are logged into Facebook and are focusing on business or personal, you can select that particular list and see those status updates only.)

Communicate with List Members. Facebook does not allow you to send a bulk email to everyone on your Friend list, but you can email all the members of a particular list. This is very convenient and saves tons of time as opposed to finding all the people you want to find individually.

Invite List Members to an Event. You cannot invite all your friends to an event with one click. No. You must click on each individual person’s face in a long-drawn out, arduous process. When you have your network divided into lists, however, Facebook gives you the ability to invite the entire list to your event in bulk. Woo Hoo! This process can save you (or your staff) hours of time for each event.

Granular Privacy Control with Facebook Lists

Facebook Lists allow you to use the granular privacy tools of Facebook when posting status updates. (ie: you can choose which lists will receive which posts).

Custom Privacy Settings.
Customize your privacy settings based on lists (You can limit based on list what aspects of your profile your friends can see). Customize your photo album privacy settings so only a particular list can view them

How to Use Facebook Lists

First things first. there is no longer a direct link to access the Facebook Friends. In order to control your Facebook Lists, go to your Facebook Friends page here:

http://www.facebook.com/friends/

The page you reach looks something like this:

Click to See Larger Image

How to Create a Facebook List

Some lists are already created for you by Facebook. You have the ability to create up to 100 lists of your own.

1. Log into your Facebook account.
2. Click on Account on the right hand side of your screen.
3. Click Edit Friends.
4. Click “Create New List
5. Type in your List Name.
6. Select the Friends you would like assigned to that list.
7. Click “Create List.”

Recommendations: Think about the various ways you want to organize your network. List titles may include: Friends, Family, Church, High School, Peers, Prospects, Clients, Vendors, Dallas, USA, Real Estate, Legal, etc…

Adding Friends to a List

There are only two (2) ways to add friends to a list on Facebook. This is a huge problem, and in many ways makes the List feature less usable, simply because of the time it takes to organize your friends. You can add up to 1000 friends to each Facebook List.

Adding Existing Friends to a List

Sorry to say, there is no more convenient way to put existing friends into a list than this:

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/friends
2. Add each friend to the list individually.

Here is a photo of the Friends page, and the List drop down box.

Click Pic for Larger Image

Adding New Friends to a List.

When you are making the Friend Request yourself, you can put the potential friend into a list like this:

Click for Larger Image

Since it’s so much trouble to add existing Friends to a list, it’s better to add people to the right list as soon as you add them to your Friend List. BUT! Here is the tricky part!!! You can’t accept friends the usual way if you want to add them to a list!!! If you want to get the option to add new Friend Requests to a List, you must accept them from the NOTIFICATIONS Link only–NOT the Friend Request link. (Crazy! Hey, nobody asked our opinion!!!)

DON’T ADD FRIENDS THIS WAY!!! (If you want to add them to a list.)

Click pic for larger image

ADD FRIENDS THIS WAY… (If you want to add them to a list)
[insert pic]

Want to target a status update to a particular list?
Once your lists are created and your friends are added to

1. Type your Status Update in the box.
2. Click the Padlock image next to the Share button.
3. Select on the drop down Customize.
4. Under Make this Visible select Specific People on the drop down.
5. Type in your List Name in the box.
6. Click Save Setting.
7. Click Share.

Your status will only be visible to the list you assigned to see it.

FAQS about Facebook Friend Lists

How many friends can I add to the Facebook List? You may add up to 1000 friends to each Facebook List.

How many Facebook Lists may I create?
There is a limit of 100 Facebook Friend Lists.

I need to manage my lists. Is there a page (other than the home page) where I can see all my lists? You can view and manage your lists from the Friends page: http://www.facebook.com/friends.

How do I delete a Friend List?
To delete a Facebook Friend List, 1. Select the list from the Friends page. 2. Click “Delete List.”

Contributed by Lissa Duty of http://lissaduty.com, a social media marketing strategist that specializes in helping her clients leverage Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to grow their brand awareness either by teaching them or performing social media maintenance on their behalf. Lissa invites you to connect with her on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn .