How to make a new or existing post on Facebook shareable

Facebook encourages us to share everything about our lives, but some things are best suited to particular audiences. For example, your mother or your boss doesn’t need to know about that amazing party you went to last night, where you were so drunk that you went home with a traffic cone. When posting something, ask yourself, “who needs to see this and who doesn’t?” Here’s a rundown on the various Facebook privacy settings and how to make a Facebook post public.

How to make a Facebook post shareable when posting

To make a Facebook post shareable when posting, begin by navigating to your Facebook feed and follow these simple steps:

• Click on the Create post box, located below Create story option and the stories from your friends.
• Select privacy setting box under your name.
• In the  Post Audience section, click on Public and select Done. Alternatively, you can change your future posts to Public by clicking on Set as default audience and hitting the Save button.

Follow these similar steps when you want to set your post public on mobile phone.

How to make an existing Facebook post shareable

If a post is already published, it’s very easy to go back in and change the privacy setting. There are some routes to the same destination here:

• Go to your existing post on Facebook.
• Click on the three-dot menu and select Edit audience.
• In the Select audience section, click on Public and click on Done button.

Facebook post privacy settings explained

When you post something on Facebook, you are given the opportunity of deciding the privacy level of that post. Facebook obviously prefers that you make the post public, but you can restrict the audience if need be. The various privacy settings are:

• Public — as the name implies, this makes the post visible to the whole world.
• Friends — this makes your post visible to only your approved Facebook friends.
• Friends except… — Your Facebook friends will see this post, but with the following exceptions…
• Specific friends — your post will only be shown to those you specify.
• Only me — only you will see the post. Kind of like talking to yourself or keeping a secret diary (except Mark Zuckerberg is reading it too, so maybe not that secret.)
• Custom — A bit like Specific friends and Friends except where you can specify who sees it and who doesn’t. One difference here, though, is that you can also name custom audience lists here, which we’ll cover in the next section.

Creating custom audience lists

If you click Custom, you will be presented with the word lists. This is where you can segregate your Facebook friends into various categories so you can share posts easily with pre-arranged groups of people. However, you have to make these lists before using them in a new post, as there is no link to create a new list in the Custom option.

• Go to Friends->Custom Lists.
• Cast your eye to the bottom of the page on the left and click the Create List.
• Give your list a descriptive title (I named mine Android Authority), and you will then be able to add people to the list. Click Save when you’re finished.

If I now want to make a Facebook post and restrict it only to the people in that list, I would choose Custom from the dropdown menu and click on Android Authority.

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