How to Make a Facebook Account Public

Making your Facebook account fully public isn't a single switch you flip, but a series of adjustments to your privacy settings. Whether you're a creator, an aspiring public figure, or simply want to broaden your network, this guide will walk you through exactly which settings to change to open up your profile. We'll cover everything from your future and past posts to how people can find and follow you, breaking it all down into simple, actionable steps.

Why Make Your Facebook Profile Public? The Pros and Cons

Before you dive into your settings, it's worth taking a moment to understand what a public profile really means. Going public can be a great move for some, but it's not the right fit for everyone. Let's weigh the benefits against the drawbacks.

The Upside: Visibility and Brand Building

For content creators, journalists, activists, artists, and community leaders, a public profile can be a powerful tool. Here’s why:

• Maximizes Reach: When you post publicly, anyone on or off Facebook can see it. If your content is sharable, it has the potential to reach an unlimited audience, unlike posts limited to "Friends" or "Friends of Friends." This is essential for building an audience organically.
• Builds Authority and Trust: Operating with an open, public profile can help you build credibility in your niche. It signals transparency and makes you more approachable to potential collaborators, clients, or followers.
• Activates the "Follow" Feature: Making your posts public automatically allows people who aren't your friends to follow you. They'll see your public updates in their news feed, allowing you to grow a following much like you would on Instagram or X without having to approve thousands of friend requests.
• Improves Searchability: A public profile makes it easier for people to find you through Facebook's search function. If someone is looking for you by name, they'll be able to find and verify your profile easily.

The Downside: Privacy and Security Risks

Of course, opening up your profile means sacrificing a significant amount of privacy. It's important to be aware of the risks:

• Personal Information is Exposed: Everything you set to "Public" is visible to everyone. This can include your photos, status updates, check-ins, and personal details in your "About" section. This information can be misused by bad actors for scams, identity theft, or harassment.
• Attracts Unwanted Attention: Spammers, trolls, and critics have easy access to your profile and can leave unwanted comments on your posts. You'll need to be more proactive in managing your comments and moderating your space.
• Past Content Resurfaces: If you don't carefully review your past posts, you might be making content public that was intended for a much smaller audience years ago. Old photos, jokes, or personal reflections can be taken out of context.
• Blurring Professional and Personal Lines: Using a personal profile for public DMs and interactions can sometimes feel overwhelming and blur the boundaries between your personal and public life.

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Facebook Profile Public

Ready to move forward? Let's walk through the settings you need to adjust. These instructions are for the desktop version of Facebook, but the steps are very similar on the mobile app.

Part 1: Adjusting Your Default Post Privacy

This is the most critical setting. It controls the default audience for all your future posts. When you change this, everything you post from this point forward will be public unless you manually change the audience for a specific post.

1. Navigate to your Settings & Privacy menu by clicking your profile picture in the top-right corner.
2. Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
3. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy.
4. Look for the section called Your Activity.
5. You'll see a setting that says, "Who can see your future posts?" Click the Edit button next to it.
6. Click the drop-down menu (it likely says "Friends") and select Public.
7. Click Close to save your changes.

Now, everything you post by default will have the globe icon next to it, indicating it’s a public post.

Part 2: Making All Your Past Posts Public

So, you've made your future posts public, but what about the hundreds or thousands of photos and updates you've shared over the years? Facebook has a tool to manage this, but it’s primarily designed to restrict old posts. There's no "Make All Past Posts Public" button, so this often needs to be done manually for important posts or by reviewing your timeline month by month.

If you've previously used the "Limit Past Posts" feature, you'll need to go back and manually change the audience for posts you want to be public. The best way to manage this is to go straight to your profile.

1. Go to your own Facebook profile page.
2. Scroll down your timeline. For each post you want to make public, click the three-dot menu (...) in the top right of the post.
3. Select Edit Audience.
4. Choose Public from the list.

This is tedious, so focus on key posts or photos you want a wider audience to see. Otherwise, just be aware that your old content may still be limited to friends.

Part 3: Managing Who Can Follow You

A public profile's biggest advantage is accumulating followers. You need to make sure this setting is enabled.

1. Go back to Settings.
2. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Public Posts. (Note: This used to be called "Followers and Public Content.")
3. The very first option is Who Can Follow Me. Click the dropdown menu on the right and make sure it’s set to Public, not "Friends."
4. While you’re here, you can also decide who can comment on your public posts (Public Post Comments) and who can like or comment on your public profile information (Public Profile Info). For maximum engagement, setting these to Public is generally the best choice for a public figure. For better moderation, you might choose "Friends of Friends."

Part 4: Controlling How People Find and Contact You

The final pillar of a public profile is searchability and accessibility. You want people to be able to find you and connect with you.

1. Navigate to Settings and then to the Privacy tab again.
2. Scroll down to the section titled How People Find and Contact You.
3. Review these three important settings:
   • Who can send you friend requests? To avoid being spammed, you might want to leave this set to Friends of Friends. If you enable public followers, you don't need to accept everyone's friend request for them to see your content. But if your goal is to accept connections from anyone, you can change this to Everyone.
   • Who can look you up using the email address you provided? Setting this to Everyone makes you easier to find.
   • Who can look you up using the phone number you provided? For security reasons, it's often wise to set this to Only me, even if you're public.
4. The last, and arguably most important, setting in this section is Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your Profile? For a truly public profile that can be discovered on Google, make sure you click Edit and check the box that says Allow search engines outside of Facebook to link to your Profile.

Fine-Tuning Your Public Profile

Once the main settings are adjusted, it’s a good idea to tidy up your profile to make sure you’re presenting the right information.

• Review Your "About" Section: Go to the "About" tab on your profile and edit each section. What work experience, contact info, and personal details do you want the entire world to see? Set the audience for each specific entry to Public or tighten it to Friends or Only Me.
• Control Friend List Visibility: In your Settings >, Privacy >, How People Find and Contact You, there's an option "Who can see your friends list?" You might want to set this to Friends or Only Me to protect the privacy of your connections.
• Organize Photo Albums: Your photo albums have their own privacy settings. Go through your albums and check the audience setting for each one. You may want your "Profile Pictures" and "Cover Photos" albums to be public but keep personal vacation albums private.

Personal Profile vs. Facebook Page: A Quick Note

While a public personal profile is great for individuals, remember that it is not a substitute for a Facebook Page if you are running a business, brand, or large-scale organization.

Facebook Pages offer access to powerful tools that personal profiles don't, such as Facebook Ads, detailed analytics (Insights), and the ability to have multiple people manage the account. Pages are designed for professional use and are the recommended path for any commercial entity. Using a public personal profile works best for individuals like writers, creators, journalists, and public speakers who are building a personal brand.

Final Thoughts

Making your Facebook profile public is a strategic decision that involves more than pushing a single button. By working through your settings - from post visibility and follower options to how people can find you - you can intentionally build an open profile that expands your reach while still protecting sensitive information.

Once you make your profile public, managing your content calendar and responding to all the new comments and messages across your platforms can get overwhelming. We built Postbase to solve this exact problem. With our unified content calendar, you can plan and schedule all your social posts in one place. And our all-in-one engagement inbox pulls your comments and DMs from all your accounts into a single stream, so you can manage your community without the chaos.