At some point in your Facebook lifetime, you have probably experienced confusion involving friend requests. Perhaps you received a request from a complete stranger, and didn’t know whether to accept or decline. Maybe you sent out a large number of friend requests at once, only to receive a notification that Facebook has decided to block your account because you are “spamming.” Whatever the case, we have put together a few key points to help you brush up on your “friend requests” etiquette.
1. Evaluate the Strangers. Did you receive a friend request from someone you don’t know? Do some snooping. Take a look at their page and see who their mutual friends are, where they live, work, etc. You could have met this person at a networking event or party and it slipped your mind. If you share close mutual friends, ask your friend about them. You might just look like an interesting person! However, strange friend requests can also be in the form of people you have blocked from your page setting up a fake account, people looking to bombard you with spam, or people with a hidden agenda looking for your personal information. Use your intuition.
2. Limit Your Requests. Are you going through your business’ e-mail contact list and adding everyone you see at once? Stop. This behavior raises a red flag for Facebook, who will limit your ability to send requests and even block your account from being used for days at a time. Facebook sees this behavior as spam, which is a big no-no on the social media giant. Limit sending your friend requests to ten people a day.
3. Non-Friends Can Still Subscribe. Perhaps you denied a friend request to avoid this person from seeing your posts. Not so fast. Thanks to the “Subscribe” button, anyone can subscribe to your statuses and activity, whether they are your “friend” or not. Always keep this in mind and monitor your subscribers. If you really do not want someone to see your updates, block them.
4. Some Requests are Hidden. If you receive a friend request and don’t respond right away, the request will be hidden. You can clean up this list by selecting “See All” from your Friend Requests button. People can sometimes get lost in the shuffle, so it’s a good idea to regularly monitor this section.
Handling Facebook friend requests can sometimes seem like a tricky endeavor, and we hope these tips will get you started to being a friend request pro! Do you have any tips of your own? Let us know!
