Friend or Follow on Facebook Explained

July, 2022

We all know that Facebook is kinda the worst. It influences elections, corrupts our minds, and creates division and diversion. But it’s here to stay, at least for now, so let’s get your most prominent Facebook question answered: What’s the difference between friending someone and following someone?

Facebook Gray Accounts
All Facebook business accounts must be connected to a personal account. Long time ago, this wasn’t the case and business owners were allowed to create business pages without having a personal account. If those business pages are still active, Facebook labels them as gray accounts, and the business owners must fix the issue before they can make setting and optimization, and enhancement changes.

Gray accounts are extraordinarily difficult to remedy and are one of the more difficult aspects of working within Meta’s archaic policies. If you are dealing with a gray account you’ll find a lot of suggestions on the internet, and hopefully one of them works for you. We aren’t touching the gray account issue here, but if you find something that does work, we’d love to hear how you did it. Send us a note about it and we’ll post it on social.

Personal Facebook Account Settings
Since every business page requires a personal account, we’re going to walk you through a personal Facebook setting that often confuses folks - Friend or Follow. As you know, privacy is a big deal on social media and in response Facebook allows personal accounts to select engagement levels by allowing people to friend you or follow you.

Facebook Friend
When you have the Friend setting activated, this means that a person can friend you on Facebook. Once you accept the friend invite, the two of you will be able to send Facebook messages without requesting permission (those are often hidden or difficult to find) and view both public and private posts. The friend setting allows for a 2-way relationship on Facebook. It is the true use of social on social media and is enabled by default on Facebook.

Facebook Follow
When you have the follow option picked instead of the friend option, this means that people may click the Follow button without your permission. This means you don’t have to ignore or reject a friend request. They can see all your public posts, just like friends. The main difference is that you don’t see their posts.

The follow option is a one-sided social media connection, which isn’t a relationship and doesn’t go very far in building connection. Only if you decide to friend or follow them, will you see their posts and be able to engage in a true social connection which is often the least valuable type of social media relationship.

Working With Facebook
Meta is constantly changing how Facebook operates and it can often feel like there it is operating in a constant state of change. That’s probably actually true. If you’re looking for help managing your Facebook marketing, Yancey Red can help.