Twitter and facebook competitions

Everyone has different things that they enjoy, whether that is an energetic hobby like cycling or a slightly more easy-going habit of reading everything in sight. Most people will know by now that I am disabled due to chronic pain conditions, which feels a lot worse than it sounds, meaning that I am unable to participate in any of the more physical hobbies that I used to love; weight training, hiking and swimming have gone the way of the Dodo for me. So instead I have been annoying the hell out of all my friends by comping.

Many of the competitions that I enter are online via social media such as facebook or twitter. One of the things that I have noticed is that when people first begin entering competitions via these sites they don't always enter correctly. This, of course, means that it is impossible for them to win. So I thought I would post a quick guide to entering social media competitions.

For facebook competitions you must enter using the original post that has been put online by the competition sponsor or the site providing the prize. Many people make the easy-to-do mistake of simply sharing the post that appears on their friends timeline. Unfortunately as this is simply your friends shared post, this means that you aren't entered into the competition or giveaway. What you need to do is:

• Click on your friend's shared post to bring up the original - or go to the sponsor's facebook page and look for the original competition post.
• Make sure that you read the instructions carefully - most will simply ask you to like their facebook page, the post and to share. Technically facebook doesn't allow sharing to be part of competition requirements, but many sites put it anyway. I err on the side of caution and share.
• If the instructions say to comment with a particular phrase or ask you a question - make sure that you do so. Check carefully, because I've messed up more than once with this!

For twitter competitions, once again you must make sure that you re-tweet the original post and not the your friend's re-tweet or you will not be entered.

• Again, your options are to either click on the re-tweet until it flicks up a pop-up of the original post, or simply go to the sponsor's twitter profile page and find the original.
• Make sure that you read the instructions carefully - I can't emphasise this enough.
• If it asks you to re-tweet, simply click on the button on the post that looks like two arrows forming a square.
• You may be asked to reply with a message/answer to a question as well as the re-tweet. Make sure that you do so with any hashtag key words or correct answers that they sponsor asks for - and make sure that you use their @address!

And that is pretty much it. The biggest problem that I have seen is people inadvertently replying on a shared post rather than the original. You will find that a lot of the time people do go out of their way to explain this, so if you are unsure about anything to do with entering competitions - just ask a comper!