6 tips on regaining more control over your Facebook newsfeed

Facebook has started the process of prioritising content from people and hiding content from Facebook pages, meaning you’re less likely to see as many of our posts on Facebook going forward.

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg said this month –

The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.
As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media.

Zuckerberg also announced that users can expect to see more local news, as opposed to national news, feature more prominently in their newsfeeds.

As a response to the news, here are a few tips on making sure you have a better chance of seeing our posts (and posts of other brands you want to follow) in your newsfeed in the future.

1. See First:

Facebook has a “See First” option where you can choose to see either people or pages appear at the top of your newsfeed when they publish new content. Simply navigate to the profile or page, hover over the Following box and select the “See First” option.

This option can be temperamental, and many users, including us, have noticed that is doesn’t always seem to work. And of course there is only a limited number of people you can “see first” before the feature becomes a little redundant.

2. Turn notifications on:

From the same menu you can also turn notifications on, but you need to make sure that the option says “All On” including posts. See below. Enabling this option means each time that page publishes a new post, you’ll get a notification in your notifications area. Of course, we only recommend enabling this option for pages where you really don’t want to miss a post.

This option works but notifications may be a tad delayed. In our tests, notifications of new content ranged from one minute to two hours after the content was posted.

3. Interest lists:

Facebook custom interest lists allow you to group people and pages into lists – sort of like alternative newsfeeds – to help you organise what you see on Facebook.

Update: At the end of 2016, Facebook began the retirement of custom interest lists, to the frustration of many users. You can still create lists for friends, however, by clicking “Friends Lists” under the Explore option on the left hand side of your newsfeed (on desktop.) This doesn’t work for pages, though.

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4. Switch newsfeed to “Most Recent”

If you’re after a chronological timeline starting with the most recent posts, you can try switching the newsfeed to Most Recent by clicking the dots by the Newsfeed icon on the left hand side of the newsfeed (again for Desktop users.)

The only problem? It doesn’t work. At least not really. Scroll down a few posts and most users report that they’re still seeing posts made several hours ago instead of newer posts.

Also, Facebook doesn’t like you doing it, clearly! As soon as you return back to the newsfeed from another page, the newsfeed has returned back to “top stories”.

5. Get accustomed to Pages Feed

Since Facebook announced that pages will feature less often in a user’s newsfeed, you may want to get more accustomed to “Pages Feed” in the Explore section on the left hand side of your desktop newsfeed or in the settings on the mobile app. This displays a newsfeed containing posts only from pages you have followed.

Frustratingly, this option doesn’t appear on some versions of the Facebook mobile app.

6. Make sure you interact with people and pages you want to see!

Perhaps the greatest influence you have on your newsfeed is how you interact on the site. Facebook’s algorithms favour those pages and people you interact with the most, as they always have done. So if you want to see posts from a certain page, make sure you interact with their content in a meaningful way (e.g. comments and shares.)

Other social networks

Of course, if you want to keep connected to a brand, you don’t need to rely on Facebook. Most other brands utilise other social media. For example, we tend to focus on Twitter, and you can follow us at @thatsnonsense.

Perhaps the strongest way to organise your newsfeed were Facebook custom interest lists, but sadly Facebook retired this option, and many of the alternatives aren’t particularly reliable. Hopefully Facebook will re-introduce another more high profile and intuitive version of custom lists as some point – but until then, the above are your options!