A lot of church leaders and church tech people not only have a personal Facebook profile, but also run a Facebook page for their ministry or church.
If that’s you, did you know you have not one, not two, but three Facebook inboxes?
Are you checking all three of them?
Inbox 1: Personal
The first inbox is your personal inbox where private messages from your friends appear. Most of us will have notifications set up for when someone sends us a message. I’m betting everyone knows about this one.
Inbox 2: Page
This is the messages inbox on our Facebook Page where personal messages from members show up. Again, most of us will have notifications set up so we know when someone has send us a message. This inbox becomes visible on the right upper side of our admin panel.
Inbox 3: Other Messages
And here’s the kicker: There’s a third inbox and this one doesn’t send notifications.
You can only see it when you click on ‘messages’ in your left sidebar. Then a previously hidden icon named ‘other’ appears and that’s where quite a few messages can be hiding.
Here’s where the messages end up from people with whom you’re not friends.
Because most of us access our personal inbox via the blue icons in the left top corner instead of clicking on ‘messages’ in the left sidebar, we never get to see these hidden messages.
Chances are if you didn’t know about this, there will be a lot of messages waiting for you there!
Did you know about this third inbox? If not, did you have any hidden messages there?
Brian Alexander says
I don’t see the point of the hidden inbox. I have messages from years ago, but I have never read. I think that all page/group related messages should go away! I don’t get the point of them.
Rachel Blom says
I think that’s a bit too easily said Brian. I agree that’s it’s cumbersome, to have your messages in different inboxes. But if you have ‘followers’ for instant on Facebook, people who have subscribed to your page without actually befriending you, their messages will end up in this third inbox as well. I;m sure that’s relevant to people who have multiple pages, groups and subscribers, don’t you think? And I think if you have a Facebook group or page or are open to subscriptions, you should at least try to answer your messages…unless you are really famous and get thousands every day. Otherwise, why bother with a page or group in the first place?
Eric Dye says
Classic Facebook design.
andi says
actually, when there’s pages involved, there’s a FOURTH “in-box” – the “Spam” folder – I’m always amazed as to how certain posts by others to the Facebook page for my other blog get lost because they end up in the Spam “folder”….. 😀
Rachel Blom says
Yup, you’re right about that 😉
Eric Dye says
WOW! A 4th!!!! Craziness.
Darryl Schoeman says
HA!!! Because of this post, I checked my third box today and low-and-behold, there were messages there. It seemed to be a spam type box. I’ve seen the ‘other’ box before but just assumed it was a sub-folder for if I wanted to drop stuff into it, so never paid it much attention. Am going to keep an eye on it now. Thanks.
Rachel Blom says
Cool, glad to be of service 🙂
Lindsey Whitney says
Wow! I had like 20 messages in there — from people I know!!!