by Keridwyn Deller
Are you aware of the option to add a “follow” button to your personal facebook page?
(If you want to know what it looks like, you can view/click the one on my personal page at
fb.com/keridwyn.)I’m going to share the WHY first and then follow that with instructions on HOW after that. If you know you already want one, feel free to skip down to the part that says “So you want to have a “Follow” button too? Great. It’s easy.”
Reasons WHY you may want to add a follow button:
Having a follow button on your personal facebook page (the one that you add and request friends from) allows people to follow your public posts without having friend status with you. In other words, when you share a post publicly, both your friends AND your followers will see it.
Maybe you get a lot of friend requests from people who admire you but who you don’t know well enough to “facebook friend.” Maybe you own a school or run an online course. Or work with clients. Or are an expert in your area and like to educate others. Or maybe you just don’t want to be facebook friends with everyone. Maybe you like to limit friends to people you have a certain level of intimacy with but still want to allow others to see what you have to say.
Some additional benefits of adding a follow button:
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. 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! Thanks, Amanda!
Having a follow button is helpful for me as I’m in the wellness industry as a Hypnotherapist and because I run a Seattle entertainment blog. I work with clients in-person and online and am gearing up to take my group workshops online too and reach hundreds of additional clients. 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.
You get the point.
So you want to have a “Follow” button too?
Great. It’s easy. Here’s how:
1) 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.)
2) 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.
3) Select “Settings” from the drop down menu. This will pull up a new screen.
4) On the left, click “Public Posts.”
5) On the next screen, in the center near the top it says “Who Can Follow Me” – select “Public” in the grey box.
Facebook explains this (and a bit more about checking who is following you)
here.
After you set up your follow button, give yourself a gold star!
– Keridwyn
instagram.com/keridwyn
As a social media marketer for 8+ years, I’ve had this question a lot. So I finally wrote a post about it. G Hope it helps. Drop me a line in the blog comments or via FB if it did (or if you have questions or need clarification on anything. If you have a question, it’s likely others do too.)
Photo by Max Anderson (thanks for sharing, Max!) 
