Every once in a while we like to take a few minutes to cover something everyone should know. This time, we want to talk about the website everyone loves to hate… Facebook!

If you are honest with yourself, you are probably on Facebook because it is kind of unavoidable, but you don’t love it. A lot of time it’s just full of stuff you don’t care about, like that friend-of-a-friend who posts a dozen posts a day about her dog, or your high school friend who is always starting political arguments.

But the fact is that you have more control over what you see on your Facebook feed then you think you do. There are things you can do to greatly improve that. And there are some ways that you can make sure that when you post something, it gets noticed.

Before we dive in, let’s explain what we mean when we say “Facebook feed”. Basically, we are just talking about the homepage of Facebook, where you see all the updates from friends and from pages you?ve liked. That is referred to as the “news feed” or just the “feed” for short.

The Facebook feed doesn’t show you EVERYTHING your friends post, however. Most people on Facebook have 300 or more friends, and if you saw everything every single one of them liked or posted you would be swamped with information. So Facebook employs an algorithm to decide what to show you.

The real question is how this algorithm works. The actual algorithm is top secret, but just from experimenting around with Facebook we know a lot about it. The Facebook algorithm is more likely to show you stuff from people it thinks you care about and from pages it thinks you really like.

Every time you like a post or comment on something someone wrote or visit someone’s profile, Facebook notices that, and it will start to move that person higher up in your feed. So if you’re always checking out someone?s profile, Facebook will show you more posts by that person.

Some people have said that Facebook knows that two people will start dating several days before it actually happens, supposedly because those people will start liking and commenting on each other’s posts much more frequently. Now, we don’t know if the secret algorithm really knows, that, but it feels like this would be the case . The more you interact with someone, the more Facebook knows that you like that person and want to see more posts by them.

Okay, but what if there?s someone who you really don?t want to see in your feed that much? Is there anything you can do?

Absolutely. A lot of people don’t realize this, but you can explicitly tell Facebook that you don’t want to see a post. You can try this out yourself by bringing up the Facebook home page on your web browser. Pick a post in your feed. At the top right of that post there should be a faint gray down arrow. You might have to hover over the post to see it if you?re on a computer. Click it.

You will get a pop-up with some options like ?I don?t want to see this,? and ?Report this.? Click ?I don?t want to see this.? Don?t worry if you actually do want to see it, on a computer you can undo your choices.

Now it should say that the post is hidden, and there should be a link asking you why you don?t want to see it. Click the link. You will see the options, ?It?s annoying or not interesting,? ?I?m in this photo and I don?t like it,? ?This shouldn?t be on Facebook? and ?This is spam.? Clicking any of those will give Facebook some useful information about what you want to see in your feed – and what you don’t want to see. Now if you click out of that box and then click “undo” in the gray box that tells you the post is hidden you will get that post back.

There’s another trick you can try also. Do you feel like many of your Facebook “friends” are more like “acquaintances”? You can tell Facebook that. Just over to a friend’s profile on Facebook. Up at the top you will see the “Friends” button – click that. In the drop down that pops up you should see the word “acquaintances”. If you click it, it will add this profile to a special friends list called “acquaintances”.

Acquaintances are still friends in Facebook?s world, but Facebook won?t show you very many posts by acquaintances. In fact, it will only show you posts by them that either have a lot of comments or that are about major life events. So if you made someone an acquaintance then you’d see if they got engaged or got a new job, but you wouldn’t see the three posts they made about what they had for lunch yesterday.

Before we go any further we should mention one important thing about your feed. You may have noticed that your feed isn’t strictly chronological. Stuff your partner or best friends post stays at the top of the feed for a day or two sometimes.

If you want to see a more chronological view of your feed, you can click the down arrow next to “news feed” in the bar on the left of the page, and then select “most recent”. That will make your news feed more or less ordered by date rather than how much the algorithm thinks you like stuff.

We should mention that if you are in the Facebook app on a tablet or smartphone, you won’t have this option. Actually, the app has a lot fewer options in general. So if something we’re talking about here isn’t working for you on the app, you may need to log in to Facebook on your home PC to change it.

Alright, time to get down to brass tacks. How do you make “the algorithm” show your friends YOUR posts? How can you be Facebook cool?

Well there’s no sure-fire way to be the most popular kid on the news feed, but we know that there are some things that Facebook likes and that it will factor in when deciding whether or not to show your posts to your friends. Facebook likes posts with pictures and links more than posts that are just updates. So if you link to a website or post a pic, you’re more likely to get noticed. The exception, of course, is if you post a link or a picture that people don’t like. Remember we talked about how you can hide posts? If a lot of people are hiding something you posted, Facebook is likely to downgrade that post. So you want to steer away from controversial topics if your main concern is Facebook popularity.

For instance, cute animals are always a big hit. Facebook also loves “positive” posts. It probably searches posts for keywords like “happy”, “engaged”, “married”, “pregnant”, “kitty”, “love” and so on. Facebook likes happy posts because they are more likely to be shared. Happy links are more likely to be clicked on. And when people click links, Facebook is usually making money.

So if you’re happy and you know it, tell Facebook!

Following these tips will give you much more control over your Facebook feed. More control, but not complete control. At the end of the day, the secret Facebook algorithm is still deciding what it thinks you should see. You may be wondering, is there a way tiycan have total control over my news feed?

There is only one we know of: switch to Twitter.