If you’re a Facebook user, do you use Pages Feed? If not, you’re missing out on a brilliant opportunity to clear out the clutter in your newsfeed and separate out the pages you do want to see from all the other posts in your newsfeed.

I’ve made it as clear as I can. It might seem confusing, but stick with it, you’ll like it!  Jump straight to the examples at the end, if that helps.

(Disclaimer – the following advice only applies to desktop Facebook feeds. Don’t get me started on how shoddy the Facebook mobile apps are, just don’t…)

What is your Pages Feed?

It’s just a list of the posts from pages that you like. Look on the left hand menu, under Explore. Frankly, it’s not that interesting if you access it via your personal profile, because all the same stuff appears in your newsfeed anyway. All it does it remove the personal posts from friends and family, which is not what you want (or if it is, just unfollow those annoying friends, they’ll never know)!

How to make it more useful

Did you know you can like pages as a business page? If you go to a page, click on the three dots and select ‘Like as your page’. Then select which page you want to like it as from the pulldown (if you have more than one page).

Now when you go to your business page and look at the Pages Feed (it’s on the right hand side, scroll down to See Pages Feed, or add /pages_feed to the end of the URL in the browser bar), you’ll see only posts from that business and any others that you’ve liked as your page. So, here, for example, I only get posts that are relevant to my business, and not see posts about say, gin, netball or colourful bags, that appear in my personal newsfeed.

(Instead of going to individual pages, you can shortcut this page acquisition step by clicking on the green ‘Like Other Pages’ button and typing the names of pages you want to follow.)

Now, how to make it REALLY useful

Did you know you can have as many business pages as you like? No-one checks if you actually are a business or not.

Did you know it takes about 60 seconds to set up a new business page? Just go to Create > Page (Google it if you need to).

And did you know that each business page can have its own Pages Feed?

Is the penny dropping?

Create a new dedicated business page, and follow pages from that page.

For example

I created a page called ‘Alison Read Community’. It has no followers, it’s purely a holding page for a pages feed which is comprised only of local business and community pages.

I could create a page called ‘Ali loves gin’ and only like businesses pandering to my craft gin addiction.

Or, I could create a page called ‘Spying On My Competitors’ although you’d probably want to call it something dull like ‘SOMC Solutions’ and in there you like all your competitors’ pages and keep an eye on them, they’ll never know because if they go to your page there’s nothing on it! Clever, huh?

Tomake it really quick, just add a shortcut to the /pages_feed link and check as regularly as you need to.

There are many ways you can use this tip to help you focus on a subset of newsfeeds. Of course, there are solutions like Hootsuite, but after three feeds you need to start paying for it, this workaround is unlimited.

I’d love to know how you get on, and if you set it up and how you use it. Enjoy!

How to keep your Facebook newsfeed free of clutter using Pages Feed
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