Okay, I'm a complete newbie, and am finding it difficult to get started. I have a personal account, but am an author, so also started an account for my writing and understand how to flip between the two accounts. But that's about it. I've read various beginners' guides and they tend to use terms that don't appear on my home page. For example, Timeline. How do I access my Timeline? Where is the button to click? Same with NewsFeed. I have a feeling that this is the default view, but the word NewsFeed is not on the screen. If I post something, and I can see my post on my homepage, how do I know what it looks like when other people view it? I can see posts that other people have made, but don't know who half these people are or why they've posted. And lastly, is there a way to attach a PDF to a post, or can I only attach text by taking a photo of it (which seems odd) Really sorry if these questions seem hopelessly stupid, but I'm very frustrated from going round in circles.
First up, accounts are for people and your professional profile should be a "page" that anyone can follow without being a friend. It's creepy to be friends with people you don't know. The newsfeed is unimportant, that's for you to view but people will be able to see what you like so do be careful. You should be able to see what your posts look like. Lets take my page for example - because of my husband's old job he has people who aren't friends interested in our trips so we created https://www.facebook.com/AKingSizedAdventure/ When I log in and change my profile to my page (using the dropdown behind my profile picture) I can see a menu of options on the left and how the page is viewed by visitors on the right. We have used the meta business suite to post and schedule posts but the facebook regular posting method lets us post images and video at the same time. We can also do captions. Meta business suite only allows photos & captions need to be added after posting. I've never tried to attach a pdf - can you explain a bit more what you're trying to do? Are you just trying to share excerpts of your books?
Thank you. This is very helpful. I was beginning to suspect that I should have created a "page" rather than a separate account. I'll now see if I can do that and delete the second account. Yes, you guessed correctly. I wanted to share excerpts from my writing or reviews on other people's. I suppose I could always cut and paste text - I wonder if there's a word limit in a post. Perhaps I should be thinking of a blog rather than facebook.
I think you're right to be doing a facebook page - even if it's only to share from a blog, many authors do still have them but they're less popular than they were 20 years ago. Take some time to google successful authors in your genre and see what they're doing with personal websites and social media and how they cross post.
You're definitely not alone in feeling this way. It's totally understandable! The News Feed is just the main page you see when you log in, packed with posts from the people and pages you follow, even if the term "News Feed" isn’t always shown. As for attaching PDFs, while you can’t upload them directly to a post, you can always upload them to a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox and share the link. You're doing awesome!
Hey, don't worry, you're definitely not alone in feeling this way when you’re starting out. I remember having similar questions when I first got into Facebook, so it’s all good. So about the "Timeline" – it's basically just your profile page. Facebook used to call it your "Timeline," but now it's mostly just referred to as your "profile" or "home." When you go to your page, that’s where you’ll see all your posts, your updates, and your interactions. As for the "News Feed," that's what you see when you're on your homepage – it's just the feed of updates from people you're connected to or pages you follow. They don’t really label it as “News Feed” anymore, so it can be a little confusing, but that’s the page with all the posts from others. If you want to see what your post looks like to others, you can click on the three dots on your post and choose "View as." That will show you what the post looks like from someone else’s perspective – like if they’re your friend or not connected to you at all. And for the posts from people you don’t know, those are probably coming from friends of friends or public pages/groups. You can hide or unfollow stuff you don’t want to see if it's getting overwhelming. Finally, about uploading PDFs – unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t let you upload a PDF directly to a post. But what you can do is upload your PDF to a service like Google Drive or Dropbox and then just post the link. That way, people can access it by clicking on the link.