Did you know you can add a “Follow” button to your PERSONAL Facebook page?
Here’s why you likely will want one, plus HOW to add one.
Why to add a follow button to your Personal Facebook Page
If you already know WHY, scroll down to “HOW to add a Follow Button” below.
Your personal Facebook page is the one you use to connect with friends. Adding a Follow button allows people who aren’t your friends to see your public posts without having to be friends with you. In other words, when you share a post that is set to Public, both your friends and your followers can see it.
Reasons you may benefit from a Follow button:
- You get friend requests from people who admire you but who you don’t know or consider a friend (maybe you run an online course or business or are an influencer, activist, educator, or expert in your field)
- Maybe you want to limit “Facebook friends” to people you have a certain level of intimacy with, but sometimes you want to be heard by as many people as possible
- You can get the word out more by sharing public posts. When friends or followers see these posts, THEY can share them too and everyone they share it with will see it and be able to share. If you share something privately and a friend shares that post, only your mutual friends will see it.
- Follow buttons = less awkwardness. Let’s say you get a friend request from someone who doesn’t fit your definition of facebook friend. If you delete the request, they become a follower automatically and will see your public posts (and they won’t be notified you didn’t friend them).
- You may want to expand your reach as an influencer or knowledgeable source. Here’s an example: Say I take a workshop from a yoga instructor named Amanda. Amanda doesn’t know me, she only taught me some moves! But I am a fan of Amanda and want to learn more about her. Plus, she seems pretty cool and I want to hear more about what she’s interested in. Now, if Amanda has a “Follow” button, I don’t have the awkward choice of deciding if I should send a friend request to her to stay in touch. I can just follow her!
- Having a follow button is helpful for me as I’m in the wellness industry as a Hypnotherapist. I also run an entertainment blog for fun. I work with hundreds of clients online (one-on-one, in groups, and with watch-when-you-want video experiences). I get followers for these reasons. I choose to post some content publicly, some to “Friends-only” and some to select group of friends. It’s pretty great to have this feature.
HOW to add a Follow Button
It’s easy. Here’s how to do it from your laptop or computer:
- Go to facebook.com and be sure you are logged in to your personal account (you’ll see your current personal profile pic at the top to the right of center.)
- Click on the down arrow on the bar at the top of the page. It’s a tiny down-pointing triangle at the top near the far right side. This pulls up a drop down menu.
- Select “Settings” from the drop down menu. This will pull up a new screen.
- On the left, click “Public Posts.”
- On the next screen, in the center near the top it says “Who Can Follow Me” – select “Public” in the grey box.
This blog post was written in September of 2019. If you have trouble with the directions, let me know so I can update it or help you (Facebook is always changing things, it seems.)
Facebook explains this (and a bit more about checking who is following you) here.
Any questions? Just ask. You can post in the comments or message me directly via my form at keridwyn.com/contact. Oh, and of course you can also follow me on facebook at fb.com/keridwyn. 🙂 After you set up your follow button, give yourself a gold star!
– Keridwyn
My links and more about me: linktr.ee/keridwyn
Seattle Pockets 
Hi when was ‘follow and unfollow’ button started in facebook?
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I don’t know offhand!
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This was great and easy to follow the instructions. So now I have a follow button but want to ask some of my friends to move to “follow” instead of “friends.” I am running a non-profit from my personal page but (hopefully) may be moving to 5,000. As of now, it is self-perpetuating as friends of friends of friends are on board so I don’t want to switch them to a business page. I was hoping that this would happen!!! Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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Hi Linden, if you remove people as friends they will become followers and will not be notified of this change. This is then deducted from your total friend count.
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Wow this is a great article I really like
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Hello. I was able to get my follow button, but it is grey out when I view my profile.
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Hi Sharla, I’m guesing that’s because you’re viewing your own profile and can’t follow yourself. You’ll want someone who isn’t your FB friend but IS logged in to Facebook to look at your profile to confirm the follow button works. If you’d like me to check that out for you, feel free to contact me at https://seattlepockets.com/contact/ and share your FB url with me and I’ll reply back! 🙂 -Keridwyn. (All my links: linktr.ee/keridwyn)
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Yes. Can you please check for me? My email for FB is sharlawhite2009@gmail.com and my name is Sharla White. Thank you!!!!
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Hello thanks for your shared information, I recently added a follow button and followed instructions online to do this and have verified the button is on my profile page; however also in all the instructions I saw, they indicated the the word “follow” in blue would show up in comments, when I comment on posts, others see the button and ma ybe inclined to follow, however the word follow in blue doesnt show up when I comment. Is this because I dont have enough followers? I have looked a other peoples profiles and with limited friends and folowers yet they have that word when they comment on anything, Thoughts?
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It looks like it’s in beta version on the app only. When I searched for “follow button on facebook comments” there are some videos from 2021 that popped up. It looks like you have to opt in to the beta testing settings and then follow the directions to turn on that feature. I am not certain if anyone who wants to can be part of the beta program, or if there’s a bit of a delay between signing up on the app and having the beta features available. Wishing you all the best as you find your way there! – Keridwyn. fb.com/keridwyn
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I got curious about this, so went into my phone to follow directions to see if I could add it. I wasn’t given the right options to set this up. So I’m either in a beta version waiting period or they aren’t offering it to me. I don’t recall seeing this follow hyperlink next to a name in a comment section, so I’m curious if they are also only showing that to some users as well. It’s common for FB to give some but not all users a feature to test it out, or do A/B testing, etc, from what I hear. Good luck finding out how to make it happen for your profile! Take care.
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