How to Make Facebook Public

Making your Facebook profile public can feel like flipping a switch that opens your digital life to the world, perfect for creators, professionals, and small businesses looking to build a brand. This guide walks you through exactly how to control your public visibility, from adjusting settings for future posts and updating old ones to making your profile information accessible to a wider audience. We will cover the specific settings you need to change, why you might choose to go public, and how to find the right balance between visibility and privacy.

Why Make Your Facebook Profile Public?

For years, the standard advice was to lock down your Facebook profile. For personal use, that’s still sound advice. But if you're using Facebook for professional reasons - as an artist, a writer, a freelancer, a community leader, or a small business owner - a public profile becomes your digital storefront. It’s the easiest way for new people to find you, understand what you do, and decide if they want to connect.

Here are the primary benefits:

• Increased Reach and Discoverability: When your content is public, anyone on or off Facebook can see it. It can be shared more widely, show up in search results, and attract a much larger audience than a private profile ever could. This is essential for organic growth.
• Build a Following: A public profile allows people to "Follow" you without sending a friend request. This lets you build a community around your brand or an audience for your work without cluttering your personal life with friend requests from strangers. Followers see your public posts in their News Feed just like a friend would.
• Seamless Networking: A public profile acts as a living portfolio or business card. When potential clients, collaborators, or recruiters look you up, they can immediately see your professional activity, expertise, and personality, which can often lead to new opportunities.
• Authentic Brand Building: Unlike a formal Facebook Page, a public personal profile offers an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at the person behind the brand. This can create a stronger, more personal connection with your audience.

Understanding Your Public Settings: It's Not All or Nothing

Making your profile "public" isn't a single switch. It's a collection of individual settings you can control. You get to decide exactly what you share and with whom. Think of it as a control panel for your digital identity. The main areas you’ll be adjusting are:

• Follower Settings: This lets people who aren't your friends see your updates.
• Post Audience: This determines who sees each individual post you create - from now on and in the past.
• Profile Information: This allows you to choose which parts of your "About" section, like your work or links, are public.
• How People Find You: This controls whether people can look you up by your email or phone number.

Let's get into the step-by-step process for managing these settings.

Step 1: Allow People to Follow You

Enabling the "Follow" feature is the first and most important step to creating a public presence. This separates your personal connections (Friends) from your public audience (Followers). Anyone can follow you to see your public posts without you needing to accept a friend request.

On Desktop:

1. Click your profile picture in the top-right corner and go to Settings & Privacy >, Settings.
2. In the left sidebar, under Audience and Visibility, click on Followers and public content.
3. Next to Who can follow me, you'll see a dropdown menu. Change it from Friends to Public.

On Mobile (iOS and Android):

1. Tap the menu icon (☰) in the bottom-right (iOS) or top-right (Android).
2. Scroll down and tap Settings & Privacy >, Settings.
3. Under the Audience and visibility section, tap Followers and public content.
4. Under Who Can Follow Me, select Public.

While you're on this screen, you can also adjust who is allowed to comment on or like your public posts. For max engagement, it's best to set Public post comments and Public post notifications to Public or Everyone.

Step 2: Set Your Future Posts to Public by Default

Now that people can follow you, you need to make sure your new posts are actually visible to them. You can always change the audience for a single post as you're writing it, but setting the default to "Public" saves you a step each time.

On Desktop:

1. Go to Settings & Privacy >, Settings.
2. In the left sidebar, under Audience and Visibility, click on Posts.
3. Next to Who can see your future posts?, click Edit and select Public from the dropdown menu.

On Mobile:

1. Go to the menu (☰) >, Settings & Privacy >, Settings.
2. Under Audience and visibility, tap Posts.
3. Tap on Who can see your future posts? and select Public.

Now, whenever you start creating a new post, the audience selector will automatically be set to Public. Remember, you can still switch it to Friends or a custom list for any personal updates you don't want your public audience to see.

Step 3: Update Old Posts You Want to Make Public

Changing your default setting only affects future posts. Your old vacation photos and personal updates from years ago are still set to their original audience (likely Friends). Unfortunately, Facebook does not have a one-click button to make all past posts public. Its tool, "Limit Past Posts," only works in the other direction - to make them all more private.

So, you have to make a strategic choice:

1. Do nothing. Leave your old posts as they are and only focus on creating new public content. This is the simplest option.
2. Change them manually, post by post. This is tedious but gives you full control. It's best reserved for highlighting specific accomplishments or memories you want your new, public audience to see.

How to Manually Change the Audience of a Past Post:

1. Go to your profile and find the post you want to change.
2. Click the audience icon at the top of the post (it might look like three people for 'Friends' or a globe for 'Public').
3. Select Public from the dropdown menu.

Focus on making high-value past posts public - things like work achievements, links to your portfolio, or thoughts that are still relevant to the brand you are building today.

Step 4: Making Your Profile Information Public

Your profile’s "About" section is prime real estate. You get to decide which pieces of information - like your workplace, website, and social media links - are public. Optimizing this helps people quickly understand who you are and what you do.

To edit this, go to your profile page and click on the About section.

From there, you can navigate different categories on the left:

• Work and education: Make your current job public so potential clients or partners can find you.
• Contact and basic info: This is a great place to add public links to your website, blog, or other social profiles like your LinkedIn or Instagram.
• Places you've lived: Making your current city public can help with local networking.

For each piece of information, you'll see an icon to edit the audience. Simply click it and change the visibility to Public.

What to Keep Private (Even on a Public Profile)

Going public doesn’t mean sacrificing your safety or personal privacy. A smart public profile keeps a few key details private to protect your personal information.

Consider keeping these set to Friends or Only Me:

• Your full birthday (displaying the day and month is fine, but the year can be used for identity theft).
• Your phone number.
• Your personal email address (use a business one if you want a public point of contact).
• Tagged photos of family or friends who may not want to be on your public profile. It's always a good practice to ask for their permission.

Public Profile vs. Facebook Page: Which is Right for You?

This is a critical distinction that often trips people up. While a public profile is excellent for building a personal brand, a Facebook Page is designed specifically for businesses, public figures, and organizations.

Here’s a simple breakdown:

A Public Personal Profile is best for:

• Individuals like authors, artists, journalists, and consultants who are their brand.
• Fostering authentic, one-on-one connections.
• Networking and sharing personal insights alongside professional content.
• Limitations: Profiles are capped at 5,000 friends (though you can have unlimited followers) and offer no analytics or advertising tools.

A Facebook Page is best for:

• Businesses, brands, products, or public figures who want a separate professional presence.
• Anyone who needs access to detailed analytics on post performance and audience demographics.
• Brands that want to run Facebook Ads to reach new customers.
• Organizations that need multiple people to help manage the account (you can assign different roles like Admin or Editor).

The bottom line: If you're building a brand as an individual, a public profile can be a great starting point. If you plan to sell products, run ads, or build a presence that's larger than just yourself, you should create a Facebook Page. In fact, many successful entrepreneurs use both - a public profile for personal connection and a Page for business operations.

Final Thoughts

Making your Facebook profile public is a strategic move that turns your personal account into a powerful tool for building a brand, growing an audience, or advancing your career. By carefully adjusting your settings for followers, posts, and profile details, you can gain all the benefits of public visibility while protecting your personal privacy.

Once your profile is public and you are focused on building that brand, managing a consistent content calendar across multiple platforms can feel like a full-time job. That’s precisely why we built Postbase. We want to give creators and small businesses a simple, modern way to plan, schedule, and analyze their social media content without the headache. We specifically designed it for today's short-form video content, ensuring your accounts stay reliably connected and your posts publish exactly when they're supposed to, so you can focus on making great content, not fighting with your tools.