5 Awesome Facebook Automatic Features You Must Try

Facebook is the most popular social media network in the world. The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg is proud of their over 1.6 billion monthly active users, making of them too big to be ignored. We are talking about 1 billion people logging on it daily, a figure 16% higher compared to 2015.

And yet, with the amount of information being posted on it on a daily basis (some will say that around 300,000 statuses are updated, 510 comments are posted, and 136,000 photos are uploaded per second there) being able to make some of Facebook’s tasks automatic is a blessing. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot you can do on this matter, but you still can make the most of the automatic features that Facebook has made available (free of charge!) for us. And here are five of them.

#1 – Follow instead of befriending

You might come across someone on Facebook that you really would like to know more about, but to whom you don’t think you should befriend. Or it might be a competitor whose social activities you want to analyse. Your first move would then be looking for their Facebook Page and like it, but what if they don’t have one, or if they offer a very different content there?

If this is the case, you can go to their profile and find the cover photo an option named “Follow”. After doing it, you will automatically start getting their public posts on your News Feed – just be aware that you won’t see the posts that they will set as “Friends only” or else, just the public ones. The plus here is that they don’t need to approve your request: as long as the option is available, you will be instantaneously approved.

PS.: if you want to allow other people to follow you on Facebook, go to your Facebook Settings and click on “Followers” >> “Who can Follow Me” and change it to “Everybody”. On the other way around, if you don’t want strangers following you, and you see the option already available on your profile, just go to the same menu and change it to “Friends”.

#2 – Save it for later

We are all very busy and ready to forget small things that you would like to read but which aren’t a breakthrough to our lives, such as what people are posting on Facebook. So it makes sense that we smile when we realise that we can save any post so to archive it and read it later at our most convenient time.

To get it done, all you need to do is to click on your right-hand side drop-down menu and find the option “Save” right there. Then you will notice that, on your main left sidebar of your Facebook homepage, there will be an option called “Saved” where you will find a list of all posts and pages you have saved so far. After doing it, you will be able to add Facebook to your favorite educational technologies, as you will get plenty of valuable information from there.

#3 – Set your News Feed Preferences

Your News Feed Preferences must be crowded no matter how many friends you have nowadays. On the top of everything that comes from them, you are getting posts from people you follow, pages you liked, and all the ads and sponsored links that Facebook is allowing to let you see. And under so much competition, you might never get a chance to see what you really want.

To fix it to its best (yes, it will never be perfect, I am afraid), Facebook has created a comprehensive setting dedicated only to your News Feed. To find it, click on the arrow on your top right-side menu, and your will see the option “News Feed Preferences”. There, you can decide what you want to see more often, pick 30 of your friends to see their news first, unfollow others and hide their posts, and (yes!) hide games and apps from your social life.

#4 – Add a Legacy Contact

It is understandable that nobody wants to think about their own death, but this is the only certain thing in life along with the taxes, as they say. Considering this, Facebook has added a feature called Legacy Contact which allows you to choose someone to take over your Facebook account in case you pass away.

This person will be allowed to changed your profile photo and cover photo, respond to new friend’s request and write one single pinned post on your profile (so they can share a message or inform people about memorial services, etc.) and that is all.

To add it to your profile, you need to go to Settings >> Security >> Legacy Contact and then click on “Add”. Then you will click on “Send” so to inform your friend that they have been chosen. But don’t worry if you change your mind in the future: you can change or remove it later if you want to.

#5 – Publish your post later

Even though there are several apps ready to schedule and post on Facebook pages on your behalf, if this is the online social media network that you are dealing with it might become unnecessary. And this is because Facebook has its own feature that allows you to create your posts and schedule them for later.

All you have to do is to create your post and then click on the arrow beside the “Publish” button. There you will be able to choose the date and the time you want it to be published. And if there is a time when you don’t want this post to be published on someone’s News Feed anymore – let’s say that it is a Christmas post and you only want to see it published on Christmas day – you can also choose a date when the News Feed distribution should be stopped.

The posts you have scheduled can be seen on Publishing Tools >> Scheduled Posts. There you can also make changes to it later if you need.

Wrapping it up

Facebook knows that among their worst enemy is the fear that, one day, we will think that we are too busy to use it. So you can be sure that they are always trying to improve their features so to make them automatic and customized to the best.

As a consequence, keep one eye on their news by following Facebook page itself, and start trying those suggestions above: they will save you plenty of time and make your timeline and News Feed much neater.