How do I suspend my facebook account

Facebook doesn't make it easy to find the link to deactivate your Facebook account, but deactivating Facebook can be accomplished fairly easily once you know where to look.
First, though, be clear about whether you want to suspend or delete your Facebook account. Facebook calls a temporary account suspension deactivating and permanent cancellation deleting. There's a world of difference between deactivating and deleting.

Deactivating just suspends your account until you sign back in. Your profile and data will be invisible to others until you reactivate your account, but Facebook saves it all in case you want to return. Deleting, by contrast, permanently erases your account (though it takes two weeks to make that happen).
Before you start either process, be sure to remove any linked accounts you may have to other websites or accounts that use Facebook Connect. That's so you don't get logged into Facebook automatically and accidentally undo your Facebook deactivation.
Okay, let's get started deactivating your Facebook account.

01

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Go to Account Settings, Find Deactivate My Account

Facebook

To find the link to deactivate your Facebook, sign in and go to the menu at the top of every page. Click Settings and scroll down to the bottom. (Yes, Facebook likes to hide its deactivation link.)
Click Deactivate to the far right at the bottom.
It will ask, "Are you sure you want to deactivate your account? Deactivating your account will disable your profile and remove your name and picture from anything you've shared on Facebook."
Then it may pick a friend of yours and say "So-and-So will miss you." Facebook will even display his or her photo, in an attempt to make you feel warm and fuzzy about the service you are trying to leave. It may even tell you how many friends you stand to lose.
You must answer two more questions before you can click the button to deactivate.

02

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Choose Your Reason for Deactivating Facebook

Facebook

Next, it will require you to check a reason for leaving Facebook before the network will allow you to deactivate your Facebook account.
Your options include worries about privacy, having your account hacked, not finding Facebook useful, not understanding how to use Facebook and "I spend too much time using Facebook."
There are so many reasons people leave Facebook, you may have trouble deciding which matters most to you. But check one and move on.

03

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Opt Out of Emails From Facebook

Facebook

Finally, it will present a box you must check if you want to Opt out of receiving future emails from Facebook.
Be sure to check this if you want to stop getting invites from your Facebook friends. If you don't check this, your friends can continue tagging you in photos even after you've deactivated your Facebook.

Click to Deactivate Facebook

Finally, click the Confirm button to deactivate your account.
But remember, you haven't deleted your account. It is merely suspended from viewing, so to speak.
Facebook's FAQ pages explain that your profile and the info linked to it disappear from viewing, so your profile is no longer searchable and your friends no longer see your Wall.
However, all that information gets saved by Facebook, including your friends, photo albums, and any groups you joined. Facebook says it does this in case you change your mind and want to use Facebook again in the future.
"A lot of people deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and expect their profiles to be there when they return to the service," says the Facebook help page on deactivation.

Reactivate Your Facebook Account

If you change your mind later, you can easily retrieve your account. This article explains how to reactivate your Facebook account.

How to Permanently Delete Your Facebook

If you really want to quit Facebook, there is a way of making a permanent exit.
This method permanently wipes out your profile information and Facebook history, so you can't reactivate your Facebook account later.
It takes about 14 days to permanently delete your Facebook account,but it's not hard to do.

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How to do privacy settings on facebook friends list

Privacy concerns and privacy controls on Facebook are ever changing. When you post a picture of your kids at a family gathering, which one of your Facebook friends can share it? What private information are those Facebook game apps collecting on you for "third-party uses"? How do you make sure that live video stream is seen only by people you choose? Every action you take on Facebook has privacy and sharing implications that need to be considered before you upload that next selfie.

Fortunately, thanks to vocal demands for transparency from both Facebook users and government regulators around the world, Facebook has been making the process of managing your privacy easier. Below is our step-by-step guide to taking full control of your Facebook privacy settings.

The basic privacy options

If you’re not ready to dive into Facebook’s substantial settings menu, there’s a more user-friendly guide through the more vital privacy settings. Click on the question mark symbol in the top right of any Facebook page when you’re logged in, and select Privacy Check-up, an easy-to-follow walkthrough of your current settings as they pertain to "Posts", "Apps" and "Profile".

(Alternately, for an even quicker speed-tuneup, you can adjust who can see your posts, send you friend requests, or block users by hitting the question mark symbol and selecting Privacy shortcuts.)

Posts

Starting with Posts, you can check your default sharing setting. We recommend the Friends setting over the Public one. When set to Public all your posts can be seen by anyone on or off Facebook. Unless you're a celebrity or running a page that is used to generate interest in a business you run, you will likely want to keep your activity restricted to those you have Friended.

The Friend setting has a few tweaks you should be aware of as well. By clicking on the sharing setting button, then the More Options button, you will see the Custom option. Click on that and you will see that you can include all your Friends while excluding the names of certain Facebook friends you don't want to see your updates. It is also important to note that the Friends of anyone tagged in your post or photos will be able to see that post unless you uncheck the option in this window.

If you have joined any Facebook groups or made lists of Facebook friends, you can restrict the posts that way or hide your posts from those groups and lists as well. Want just your college friends to see your late night party pictures? Want to make sure your work friends don't see your selfie at the beach when you called in sick? This is where these restrictions could come in handy both on a per post basis or as an overall option.

Finally, remember that you can change the sharing settings of any individual Facebook update by clicking on the sharing button to the left of the Post button. You can even go back to change settings of previous posts by clicking on the people icon at the top of the post, to the right of the date stamp.

Apps

Remember the Candy Crush Facebook game you played too much last year? How about that Instagram Facebook app you forgot you installed? Each app on the site you agreed to install has permission to post to your Friends list unless you told it otherwise at the time you installed it. Can't remember? This part of the tool shows you each app attached to your account and what sharing permissions it has. These settings also control who can see that you have the app installed.

If you don't use the app anymore, just delete it by clicking on the x. While checking my own app list while writing this guide, I found many apps I no longer use that had sharing rights on my account. I deleted all that I'm not actively using and set the sharing permissions of the remaining ones to Only Me.

Profile

Here you can see the privacy setting on your email addresses, birthday, hometown, relationship status and other personal details about your life. Under emails it will show the one you registered with when you first signed up for Facebook as well as one Facebook has assigned to you (which you likely will never use). I discovered that I left my Gmail account public, which I hadn't meant to.

For your birthday, the sharing settings are split between the day/month and the year. That way your Friends can wish you happy birthday on Facebook on your special day without necessarily knowing your exact age.

For hometown, this setting only affects what your Friends can see. Advertisers and others may still access this information, especially if you are using the Facebook app which tracks your location automatically.

Finally, if you have set a relationship with another Facebook user, it will be shared unless you set otherwise.

It's important to note that this is only a partial list of the information you're sharing. To see the full list, click the My About Page button, which will take you to your profile page. On there, you can review the various sections—Work and Education, Places You've Lived, Contact and Basic Info, Family and Relationships, Details About You, and Life Events —and make changes hovering over each and clicking the link that appears.

The advanced privacy options

Here you can exert more control of what is being shared with whom. Which is never a bad idea. You've likely gone through this at least once in the past, but it's a great idea to review your settings at least once a year.

To get to the advanced privacy settings, click the drop down arrow in the top right on any Facebook page, click "Settings," and then "Privacy" in the left navigation column. 

Who can see my stuff?

Who can see your future posts? This is the same as the Your Posts section above. 

Review all your posts and things you're tagged in Ever been tagged in an embarrassing photo uploaded by that distant college classmate? You can use the Activity Log page and select the Posts You're Tagged In (in the left column) and the Photos > Photos of You (also in the left column) to check out what you've been tagged in. You can then remove the tag (click the dropdown arrow on the left of the post or photo and then click on the the Remove Tag button at the top of the page) or simply click Hide so they don’t appear on your Timeline.

Review your other activity on Facebook. Hitting “More” after Photos, Likes and Comments reveals other items that may have been automatically posted to your Timeline and your friends’ news feeds, including friends made, events attended, and videos watched (these are embedded video posts that are separate from video apps, and isn’t controlled from the Apps menu above).

Some of these, such as friends made, can only be tweaked to be allowed or hidden on your Timeline. For “videos watched”, you can hover over the padlock to view who can see that you’ve watched it, or choose to delete the post. You can also Clear Video Watch History at the top of the page, and manually update privacy settings by individual posts from music, news and games apps. Click on each section to make sure that the audiences for every category of activity is ok with you.

Limit the audience for your old posts for your Timeline This will revert all your previous posts from "Public" or "Friends of Friends" to just "Friends". But if you've tagged a Friend in one of your posts, their Friends can see that since that is the default setting when tagging someone.

Facebook Live – private, friends or public? For live video stream posts from your smartphone, the default setting for each video stream will be the privacy level you set for regular posts and photos.

You may want to be a little less selective for live-stream video if you’re shooting something news-worthy (or if your plan is to go viral), or more selective when you’re just testing something out.

Either way, fire up the usual status update and select Live Video or the little red person icon. If it’s your first time, you’ll also want to grant Facebook permission to access your camera and microphone. You’ll see your name and profile pic and underneath, the permission level for the video. Tap to edit and select an audience from options of Friends, friends minus a couple no-no’s for reasons of your own, or public to be viewable by anyone on or off Facebook.

If you run a Facebook Page and have professional video software or hardware (more informationhere) you can also stream from your computer, but as you’re assumed to want to reach your usual audience, there’s no option to tweak post visibility separate to your regular posts.

Who can contact me?

Who can send you friend requests? The default is Everybody, but the only other choice is Friends of Friends.

Who can look me up?

Who can you look you up with the email address you provided? If someone types in the email address you registered with, they can send you a message which will likely land in the Other tab on the Messages page. You can restrict it to Friends of Friends or just Friends (who can message you anyway), if you don't want to be bothered.

Who can look you up using the phone number you provided? Same as the email address.

Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline? Your first impulse may be to turn this off, but Facebook only allows information you've marked as Public to be shown to other search engines. They see it as a way for friends not on Facebook to find you. They do this with your basic information they always make public which is, according to Facebook, "...your name, gender, username and user ID (account number), profile picture, cover photo and networks." Whatever you choose for all three of the above settings, anyone will still be able to find your profile simply by looking up your name in Facebook search.

Timeline and tagging options

Now that you've mastered the basics, go down to the next section, Timeline and Tagging. From there, you can control exactly who sees what on your timeline, who can post to your timeline, and who can tag you in photos and posts.

To customize your timeline settings, click on the down arrow in the far upper right corner to reveal a drop-down menu and select Settings.

Who can add things to my timeline?

Who can post on your timeline? It's set by default to Friends and the only other option is to allow only yourself to post on your timeline.

Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline? If you are concerned about getting tagged in a photo that you don't want all your friends on Facebook to see, this is the setting for you. Once enabled, you'll have to manually approve any photo or posts you are tagged in before they appear on your timeline. Note that this only affects your timeline; those updates will still appear in searches, the news feed and other places unless you un-tag yourself. (Alternately, you can extricate yourself from incriminating posts by clicking on the offending post, then the arrow in the top right to “Remove Tag”.)

Who can see things on my Timeline?

Review what other people see on your Timeline. Click “View As” for the perfect way to check that your mother or boss won't see what you don't want them to.

Who can see posts you've been tagged in on your Timeline? These areas give you a great deal of flexibility, with options ranging from Everyone to Friends of Friends to custom lists. Using this and the below setting in conjunction with manually approving what photos and updates you've been tagged in goes a long way to keep prying eyes away from more sensitive Facebook updates.

Who can see what others post on your timeline? As above, you have flexibility with options ranging from Everyone to Friends of Friends to custom lists. Using this in conjunction with manually approving what photos and updates you've been tagged in goes a long way to keep prying eyes away from more sensitive Facebook updates.

How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?

Review tags people add to your own posts before the tags appear on Facebook? This is an important option if you are concerned about a photo appearing on your profile. This applies only to photo tagging by your Facebook friends. You'll always be notified if someone who's not your friend tags you in a photo.

When you're tagged in a post, who do you want to add to the audience if they aren't already in it? This one sounds more complicated than it is. Often a Facebook friend of yours will make a post and tag you in it. The option here allows all of your Facebook friends to see an update or photo you've been tagged in by someone they aren't friends with themselves (the Friends of Friends function). You can choose to remain tagged but have none of your other Facebook friends see that update, limit who sees that update to certain groups of friends, or you can outright block certain Facebook friends altogether by using the Custom option.

Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?Facebook uses face-matching technology to suggest who you should tag in photos. It will only suggest people that are on the user's friends list. If you don't want to show up as an option when your friends are tagging photos, set this to No One.

Manage blocking

If you want to take steps to keep people away from your profile, this is the section for you.

Restricted list

If you don't want to un-friend somebody but also don't want them to see all of your information, you can add them to the Restricted List. This means they can see your public information, but they have no way of knowing you’ve limited their view (unless they happen to see someone browsing your profile who isn't restricted).

Block users

You can also just straight up block somebody. This means this person cannot be your friend. This is an excellent setting if you have stalkers or other people consistently bothering you. Note that this does not stop them from interacting with you in apps, games or groups you're both a part of.

Block messages

Block messages If you’re receiving unwelcome messages and video calls from someone, you can put a stop to that here – and it carries over to the Messenger app too. However, the pest in question will still be able to post to your Timeline unless you block them as a user (above). 

Block app invites

In addition to blocking and restricting people from your profile, you can also block app invitations on a user-by-user basis. So if your Aunt Jackie keeps bombarding you with FarmVille apps, you know what to do.

Block event invites

Tired of your nephew inviting you to his New York City raves every weekend? Typing the name of the Facebook user into this section will stop you from seeing any future event invites from that person.

Block apps

Some apps and Facebook games are great fun at first, but after a while, you want to drop them. You can remove the app or game (see the Apps you use section, below) or block the app, which means it can no longer contact you or get non-public information about you through Facebook. If you are getting emails from the app, you will have to use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

Block pages

Is that discount fashion site you liked bombarding you with updates from its Facebook Page? Block ‘em here, where you’ll also automatically unlike and unfollow the Page. You can also block other Pages (i.e., public pages for businesses and celebrities) from commenting on or liking your posts.

Customize app privacy

You handled a lot of this with the Privacy Checkup, but in the Settings section there are additional controls for the apps where you’ve logged in with Facebook. 

App settings

Click on each app to view the information that it is collecting from your Facebook profile – your public profile, as well as things like your friends list, date of birth, pages you like, and more. Here you can tweak which of these pieces of data can be collected (except public profile, which is required by all apps). You can also remove the app entirely from the main screen by clicking the ‘X’, however, that doesn’t delete the information the app already has about you.

For future app logins with Facebook, it’s wise to set what info the app can collect – when signing up for the first time, click “Edit This” to choose which data you want to share. 

Apps, websites and Platforms

Facebook Platform provides third parties access to personal data you share with Facebook. It's how Cambridge Analytica, the company was recently suspended by Facebook while under investigation for election interference, was able to access the data of more than 50 million users in 2014. Facebook Platform also enables third parties you engage with to collect information on your Facebook friends.

Disabling Facebook Platform means you’ll no longer be able to login to websites, mobile games or applications using Facebook or see app requests from friends, but you’ll still be able to use apps and play games on Facebook and elsewhere. If you choose to keep Facebook Platform enabled, you can limit your exposure by selecting the data that apps that your Facebook Friends use can access. 

Apps others use

When your Facebook friends use certain apps, those apps access your public information and more. See the full list in the image to the right. There's quite a bit you may not be comfortable sharing without your knowledge. Most of it is enabled by default. Be sure to go through the list and check off what you don't want shared. Note that your public profile info, friend list and gender is not on this list - but these are shared with your friends’ apps (unless you turn off Platform, above). 

Follower Settings

If you’re lucky enough to have people hanging off your every post, you can decide to widen your net of followers here. Friends follow by default, but you can change it to the only other option - let Everyone view your public posts (you can set public-ness each time you post). 

Ads

targeted advertising. Here you can see what information is influencing the ads you see, on Facebook and around the web.

Your information

Under About you, you can turn off whether details such as your relationship status, education level or job title can be used to target advertising to you. However, this does not stop Facebook from using this information to categorize your profile for advertisers, or from ads being shown.

Your categories

Want to know who exactly Facebook’s advertisers think you are? Click here to see what descriptors that your activity on Facebook and outside has revealed about you. Most of my fields were related to factual items such as “Gmail Users”, though there were a couple interesting deductions too, such as “Early technology adopters”.

You can delete them all to start afresh, or if you want no interest-based ads on or off Facebook. Just click the X on the right of each item.  

Ad Settings

Ads based on myour use of websites and apps Thanks to the Facebook “Like” buttons littered around the internet, and snippets of code that mean non-Like-enabled sites are still reporting movement back to Facebook, nearly anywhere you click online is used to build a profile of you that Facebook can then sell to advertisers so they can show targeted ads to you while you’re browsing Facebook.

If that makes you uncomfortable, you can turn it off here. You’ll still see advertising on Facebook, it just won’t be based on all those steam mops you were looking up.    

Ads on apps and websites off of the Facebook Companies Since Facebook operates its own ad network of sites, it can also target you with ads even when you’re not browsing Facebook – essentially, at any site that uses its ad technology. But the permission is trickily worded – it asks if it can use your Facebook ad preferences, so choose Yes and make sure you review the section below entitled Ad Preferences. Even if you’ve always turned off targeted ads based on browsing (above), Facebook can use information on your profile, such as Likes, to create ad preferences.

Regardless, you’ll most likely still receive targeted ads outside Facebook that are based on your age, gender and location, as well as browsing activity on sites that are part of other ad networks. If you want to stop seeing-based ads in general, you can opt out at the Digital Advertising Alliance - though it notes that the opt-out can only apply to participating companies.

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How to make my friends list public on facebook

By Default, Your Friend list are already set to display to the public. If you want to make this private then you can continue reading this post.

Source: Facebook.com

We share a lot of things on Facebook: what we’re doing, where we’re going, how we’re feeling, and what we’re listening to or reading. We post photos, share videos and links, and comment on posts on our own and others’ profiles. With everything we post, it’s (relatively) straightforward to figure out who we’re sharing with, but when it comes to things like your Friends list, not all of us know who can see our information. If you’re trying to figure out how to keep your friends, acquaintances, and other Facebook users from snooping through your Facebook Friends list, you’re in luck. It turns out that it’s pretty simple to change the privacy settings that control who can view your Facebook friends.

Your Facebook account defaults to making the “Friends” section of your profile visible to everyone. To adjust the privacy of your Friends list, go to your profile, and click “Friends” below your cover photo. Then, click the pencil icon at the top of the page and select “Edit Privacy” from the dropdown menu. Then you can select an audience. This is what the menu will look like by default:

Source: Facebook.com

Facebook offers a variety of options for the audience you share your friends list with, ranging from making it public to keeping it visible to your eyes alone. You can choose to make your friends list “Public” so that everyone can see it; set it visible to “Friends” so that anyone who’s friends with you can see it; or set it to “Only Me” so that you’re the only one who can see it. (You can choose the same options for any of the people or lists that you follow on Facebook.)

Source: Facebook.com

Using lists to organize who can see your Friends list

Alternately, you can choose to share your Friends list with the members of any of the smart lists that organize your Friends, or you can choose to set it to a “Custom” privacy setting, which adds the option of sharing your Friends list with specific people or lists of Friends. With custom privacy settings, you can also choose users whom you specifically don’t want to share your Friends list with — which is an especially useful setting if you want to hide it from a nosy acquaintance or ex.

Source: Facebook.com

You can both create your own lists of Friends and take advantage of smart lists that Facebook creates for you. Smart lists create themselves and automatically stay up-to-date based on the profile information that you and your Friends have in common, such as work, school, family, or city. As Facebook explains, if you list Stanford as a school that you’ve attended, and your friends Eric and Jane also list Stanford, then you might see a smart list called “Stanford University” with Eric and Jane on it.

Facebook enables you to create lists for “Close Friends” and “Acquaintances,” as well as a “Restricted” list of friends who will only be able to see the information that you make Public or the posts that you tag them in. You can add Friends to these lists and create your own custom lists, which can help you to manage the privacy of your information, such as who can see your Friends list.

Making your friends list private from Facebook’s app

To make your friends list private from Facebook’s iOS app, go to your profile, tap “Friends” below your profile picture, and tap the audience next to “Friends” to adjust who can see the Friends section of your profile.

To adjust who can see your Friends list from Facebook’s Android app, go to your profile, tap “Friends” below your profile picture, and tap the audience next to “Friends” to change who can see your list of friends.

Even if you set your Facebook Friends list to “Only Me,” it won’t ever be totally private. Facebook notes that since other people have the same choices available to them when they decide whether they want to share their Friends list or make it private, people may be able to see mutual friends when they go to your profile. Your Friends control who sees their friendships on their profiles, so if people can see your friendship on another profile, they’ll also be able to see it in the News Feed, search, and other places on Facebook.

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How to retrieve Facebook account name and password

If you've lost the login information for your business's Facebook account, you can retrieve it using one of Facebook's several security features. While retrieving and changing a lost password can be completed in a matter of minutes, retrieving a lost username can take up to 24 hours to recover if you no longer have access to the email account associated with your Facebook login.

Identifying Login Email and Resetting Your Password

Step 1

Navigate to Facebook and click "Forgot Password."

Step 2

Enter your email address, phone number, username or name into the appropriate fields and click "Search."

Step 3

Verify that the email address displayed with your account is one that you have access to. If this is your email address, it can be used to log in to Facebook. If you have access to the email address or phone number on file, click "Reset Password" to regain access to your account.
If you no longer have access to the email address or phone numbers listed on your account in the password reset window, proceed to Section 2.

Accessing Your Account Without Access to Login Information

Step 1

Click "No longer have access to these."

Step 2

Enter an email address where Facebook may contact you. If you have a security question linked to your account, you will be asked to answer that question.

Step 3

Click "Submit" to enter your request. You will be able to access your account using your new email address and password after a 24-hour verification process.

Tip

• If you are unable to answer your security question, Facebook will allow you to select three of your friends, each of whom will receive a security code in their email. You may deliver these security codes to Facebook to regain access to your account.

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How to download facebook photos to phone

Facebook isn’t the best place for keeping your photos, but its convenience makes it a decent space for sharing them. If you want to download a photo you’ve uploaded (or even one your friend has uploaded), here’s how.

Download Individual Photos

Find the photo you want to download on Facebook. This can be any photo you can view on Facebook, no matter whether yours, a friend’s, or a complete stranger’s that has made their photos public. Just remember, unless you took the photo yourself, it doesn’t belong to you and you can’t do whatever you want with it.

Hover over the image until the photo’s (and the Like, Comment, and Share buttons at the bottom) appear.

Click the “Options” link in the bottom right corner, and then select the “Download” command.

The photo should now download in the highest resolution Facebook has on their servers.

On mobile apps, the process is similar. Open the photo you want to save, tap the three little dots in the top right corner, and then tap the “Save Photo” command.

 

Download All Your Photos At Once

Facebook also has a tool that lets you download all your data—including wall posts, chat messages, About You information, and, of course, photos. On the Facebook site, click the downward facing arrow in the top right corner, and then select the “Settings” option. You can also go directly to Facebook.com/Settings.

Click “Download a Copy of Your Facebook Data” at the bottom of the “General Account Settings” page.

Next, click the “Start My Archive” button.

You need to enter your password to verify. You’re then told that it will take Facebook a few moments to gather your data, and that they’ll email you when the archive is ready.

When the email arrives, click the link it provides.

On the resulting page, click the “Download” button, type your password again, and your archive will start downloading. If you’ve used Facebook a lot, the download could be quite large. Mine was 1.58 GB!

RELATED: Everything You Need to Know About Zip Files

The archive downloads as a .ZIP file. Extract it, and then navigate to the “Photos” folder.

Here, you’ll find subfolders with every album and photo you’ve ever posted to Facebook. There are also HTML files you can open to show a rough, offline version of Facebook in your browser that might make the photos easier to scan.

It might take a while to dig through and find the right photos, but they will all be there.

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How to change profile picture on facebook mobile

Facebook: How to Change Profile Picture

Is your Facebook profile picture getting a little old and stale? Change it up a bit with these steps.

From a Desktop Browser

1. Login to Facebook.
2. Select “Photos” in the “Explore” section on the left pane.
3. Navigate to and select the photo you wish to use for your profile.
4. Select “Options” at the bottom of the screen, then choose “Make Profile Picture“.
   
   
5. Crop the photo to your liking. Select “Save“, and the photo is set as your profile pic.

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From a Mobile Browser

1. Login to the Facebook mobile site.
2. Tap the “Menu”  button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
3. Select “Photos“. (You may have to select “See more” first.)
4. Select the photo you wish to set as your profile picture.
5. Select the “Make Profile Picture” link, then select “Confirm“.

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 From the iPhone & iPad App

1. Open the Facebook app.
2. Select yourself at the top of the screen to access your profile page.
3. Select the “Edit” option in your existing profile photo.

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From the Android App

1. Open the Facebook app.
2. Tap the icon that looks like a person.
3. Select the “Edit” option in your existing profile photo.
   
4. Choose “Select Profile Picture“.
5. Navigate to and select the photo you wish to use for your profile.

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How to create followers in facebook

Follower count is often considered one of the vainest of vanity metrics. I can relate. I’ve had my fair share of ego tied to that golden number on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn—pointing out my follower growth to a friend one day and archiving emails just as fast as I could when growth doesn’t come.

Still, despite the vanity, there is value in follower count. While it seems like a smug number to chase, followers have a proportional impact on how far and wide your message spreads and the volume of how you convert.

I think the best bit of advice on followers I’ve read is from our co-founder Leo:

Quality is key. Quantity can’t be forgotten.

Follower count is one of the metrics we keep a close eye on with our social media reports andaudits. There is a lot of great advice on how to grow your followers on social media (much of which I’ll relay below), and at Buffer we’ve always been interested in the research behind the advice. How, specifically, can you increase your followers? Which actionable tactics can you take today to grow your follower numbers?

I went looking for data—and I think I found a few good answers.

10 tried-and-true bits of advice on follower growth

Before we get into the research-backed methods for growing your followers, I wanted to start off with some best practices for follower growth. You’re likely to come across these ideas when you’re searching for social media tips or reading up on how someone got the followers they did.

Here are the Big 10:

1. Post great content
2. Write a professional bio
3. Use hashtags
4. Place a widget on your blog
5. Engage with others
6. Make sure your content is shareable
7. Reshare other people’s content
8. Reach out to influencers
9. Stay active
10. Follow other users

There’s lots of really good advice here on what works and what doesn’t in terms of adding followers. These strategies are really good for consistent growth of your followers, and most of the advice you’ll read—How I Went From Zero to 380,000 Followers and Twitter Tips From a Marketer with 200K Followers—will be variations on many of these bullet points.

You may have noticed that there is no single, simple hack to get more followers. I’m afraid there’s no switch to flip to get the followers flowing. I’ve seen firsthand that the above tactics do work for building your follower count, so long as you can remain patient, determined, and consistent.

But while there’s no magic bullet for getting more followers, there is at least a good deal of research that can take you down the right path and ensure that your efforts are not in vain.Looking for a surefire way to gain more followers? There’s a good blueprint in this data.

Informers vs. Meformers: The key to getting 2x more followers

Are you an informer or a meformer?

Researchers at Rutgers University found that only 20 percent of us are informers on social media, while the other 80 percent are meformers. What exactly is a meformer?

• Meformers — Users who post social media updates mostly relating to themselves
• Informers — Users who post updates that are mostly information-sharing

The Rutgers team ended up creating the term “meformer” after analyzing data from a sampling of Twitter accounts. Their analysis, based on patterns of usage along with tweet and follower data, found a clear divide between those who share information and those who share about themselves.

And how does this relate to followers?

Informers had more than two times the followers of meformers.

It would seem that sharing information on social media is better for your follower count than sharing about yourself.

How can you tell which cluster you fall into—informer or meformer? The research study included an interesting breakdown of the classification of tweets. Researchers rated a sample of tweets and assigned a category to each. Overall, there were nine major categories that were used for classification. Do you recognize some of your tweets in the following examples?

According to the study, 53 percent of the tweets from informers fell into the Information Sharing category, whereas 48 percent of the meformers’ tweets were Me Now.

Takeaway

Aim to boost your information sharing on social media so that you more closely align with the informer cluster rather than the meformer cluster.

Be an authority: 100+ more followers for gurus, authors, and experts

Roy Povarchik has an interesting idea about follower growth. It’s called Twitter Greatness, and it goes something like this:

The real quick way to get a bunch of people following you: Be Barack Obama. Or Katy Perry. Or Joel Gasciogne.

What do folks like these have in common? Fame, yes. But they are also creators and doers and leaders. The act of creating is what sets them apart. Povarchik went so far as to create a helpful pyramid to display the heirarchy of greatness on Twitter. You can apply this pyramid to most other social networks, too, with a few tweaks (e.g., reporting is greater on Twitter than other networks).

Do you see yourself somewhere on this pyramid?

Of course, this interesting idea of greatness is made all the more powerful with some stats to back it up. Hubspot data scientist Dan Zarella researched the effect of authority in a Twitter bio. Have you heard variations on the theme of “don’t call yourself a guru”? Zarella found this to be false. Self-professed gurus have an average of 100 more followers than a typical Twitter user.

And it’s not just “guru.” Many different types of authoritative titles can help boost your follower count.

Takeaway

Create amazing things and be a leader in your industry. Then don’t forget to mention it in your bio. Terms like author, expert, founder, and official can be powerful assets to growing your followers.

Avoid bursts, and keep the followers you have

You could also approach the question of getting more followers from the other side: Part of having lots of followers is knowing how to keep them.

There was an interesting study by a group of Korean researchers into the how and why of unfollowing. They looked at 1.2 million Twitter accounts and analyzed 51 days’ worth of tweets and interactions. Through analysis and interviews, they found that the following factors came into play with unfollowing:

• Leaving too many updates within a short time
• Posting about uninteresting topics
• Sharing the mundane details of one’s life

The interview portion of the research study revealed the concept of “Bursts”—too many updates all at once. More than half of unfollows come as a result of bursts.

There are other factors at play here, too, and many of them are areas that could ring true for marketers or brands. Do any of these types of tweets hit home for you?

Takeaway

To get a lot of followers, minimize the number of those who unfollow you. Avoid bursts by sending your updates with a scheduler like Buffer. And keep in mind other types of updates to avoid—politics, mundane topics, lack of personality, etc.

Give the people what they want: 52% of followers want special offers

If you are a brand looking for more followers on social media, it’ll help to know what your followers are after. Nielsen research conducted a study for Twitter UK back in March, revealing the top ten reasons why people follow brands.

• 55% follow because they like the brand.
• 52% follow for special offers or promotions.
• 51% follow to stay up to date with news from the brand.

Among the top 10 reasons, one of the biggest themes was discounts. Reasons for following included special offers or promotions, freebies, and exclusive content. Interesting, the fact that a brand posts entertaining and useful content the seventh-most popular reason for following a brand. This would seem to indicate that there’s more to being followed than good content marketing.

Takeaway

Give things away. Twitter users love discounts and freebies, and they are likely to follow a brand to get some goods. If you can add value in this way—along with your content strategy and branding—you might see your followers grow.

The more you post, the more followers you’ll have

This one might fall under the title of “common sense” for many of you, so it’s great to see that there’s data to back up the claim. Social media analytics company Beevolve analyzed 36 million Twitter profiles and 28 billion tweets to find the correlation between tweet frequency and twitter followers.

The results (as you might have guessed): Those who tweet more have the most followers.

Specifically:

• A Twitter user who has sent 1 to 1,000 tweets has an average of 51 to 100 followers
• Users who have tweeted more than 10,000 times are followed on average by 1,000 to 5000 users
• It’s estimated that a person with more than 15,000 tweets has between 100,001 to 1 million followers.

The big question with data like this is whether the correlation equals causation. In other words, why do people with a lot of tweets have a lot of followers? Could it really be true that tweeting 10,000 times next week will be a free pass to gaining 5,000 new followers?

I think it’s important to keep a few things in mind with this data:

Lots of tweets equals lots of activity. And the more active you are on social media (see the tried-and-true tips at the top of this article), the more likely you are to gain followers, make connections, and build relationships.

Lots of tweets equals lots of experience. As you tweet more, you get better at tweeting. This could play into your becoming a better Informer or simply iterating on tweeting formulas that work.

Lots of tweets equals longevity. It makes sense to think that that the longer you’re around on social media, the more time and opportunity you’ll have to grow your followers. Posting 10,000 updates would mean a years’ worth of 27 posts daily. You’d deserve all the followers you get at that awesome pace!

Takeaway

Post to social media often, as part of a consistent, dependable strategy.You’re bound to get better as you go, and people are going to notice and appreciate that you’re sticking around to stay connected.

(Note: One of my favorite nuggets from the Beevolve study was that the average Twitter user is an English-speaking, 28-year-old woman with about 208 followers. So if you happen to have more than 208 followers, you can feel good about being above average!)

Share positively: Happy updates correlate to more followers

The tone and voice you have on social media really does make a difference. Dan Zarrella’s research into followers—how factors like conversations, self-reference, and avatars affect follow count—touched on the topic of tone. He found that negative remarks are tied to lower follower counts.

Takeaway

Share happily. Take care to avoid coming across as sad, aggressive, angry, cynical, or morbid with your social media updates. Users notice. They’re more likely to follow a positive account than a Debbie Downer.

What strategies do you have for growing your followers?

We’ve touched on a lot of tips here for growing followers: Informers vs. Meformers, authority, bursts, freebies, frequency, and happiness. Hopefully one (or more) will be key to getting your follower count growing!

I’d love to hear from you about what has worked in the past for growing your follower base. Any tips you’d like to share? Any tactics you’re itching to try out?

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