For the past couple of days I’ve been taking a hard look at all the posts I’ve left up on my Facebook pages, and I’ve been giving my Activity Log a workout. If you’ve never looked at your Activity Log, it’s a handy tool that makes it easy to review and remove posts on your pages that may not be relevant anymore. You can get there by clicking the upside down triangle on the FB toolbar, then select Activity Log, or in the lower right corner of your page’s banner click View Activity Log.

I post a lot of new release and sale price books for author friends, and that’s one of the things I weed out periodically anyway. But there’s a lot more that the Activity Log can do when a more major overhaul is necessary. While it may seem a little overwhelming at first–the Activity Log does list EVERYTHING you’ve posted and people have tagged on your posts/photos and so on–there are some handy tricks to make these weeding-out tasks easier.

In the left hand-column of the Activity Log page is a nice list of filters. Take a look and maybe select the Your Posts link, or click on Photos. You can even check out just the things you’ve Liked or the Comments you’ve made. Find the link that looks like what you want to check out and give it a click. Then you can decide which of these to keep, and which to delete.

Back on the left toolbar again, see where it gives the list of Photos, Likes, Comments? Below that is a “more” link that opens up additional viewing options. You can check out the things you’ve followed in the past, your groups, and even do searches. Click Search and you’ll see all the search histories you’ve made on Facebook. If you want to delete some of them, you can systematically click the delete icon (the circle with the slash through it) or you can clear your whole history by clicking Clear Searches at the top of the screen to wipe out everything.

One of the options FB offers is to post the location of where you are when you’re posting or commenting. I don’t personally use this option because I’ve heard about people tracked in this manner, and stories about people getting burgled when it’s known they’re out of town. If you want to get rid of this historical information, click the Location History link and remove any references you don’t want the public to know about.

The last thing I’ve been considering–but haven’t pulled the trigger on yet since I won’t be deleting anything–is the option to Limit Past Posts. I pretty much keep my online posts public-friendly and limit personal information, but there are some things I let post to Friends of Friends and Public. If I ever want to limit that info to just my Friends, I wouldn’t want to have to go wading through all my posts and change the past settings on each post individually. Instead, FB gives the option in Privacy Settings and Tools, in the top section marked Who Can See My Stuff, and the last option in that section is for a quick click on Limit Past Posts. If that link is clicked, everything in your past posts will automatically be set so only Friends can see. While that’s a good security measure if you don’t want to take the time to go post to post, if you have any Custom Audience settings, where you only let certain groups see certain posts, those specialized postings will now be accessible to all your friends too. Since I use Custom Audiences, as well as Friends of Friends and Public, I’m holding off on limiting for now.

I’m about finished up with my de-cluttering FB project. I’ve deleted a bunch of Happy-Whatever-Holiday posts & pic I’ve posted, sale books and specials that are no longer valid, and photos that simply aren’t important anymore. I still have way more on my FB pages than I expected, but things I do look for are a bit easier to find. Until I started this project I didn’t actually realize all the handy tools FB offers for this kind of spring cleaning. Makes me wish I’d thought about doing it sooner.

How about you? Do you have any spring cleaning or de-cluttering projects you’ve been putting off because the task seems a little overwhelming?