Don't let comping ruin your Facebook friendships!

Comping on Facebook can be a very anti-social hobby for your friends that aren't interested – in fact some friends get so annoyed that lots of compers are driven to setting up a second account just for comping! This is against Facebook terms of use though, and you could get both your accounts shut down so it's not worth the risk. Instead, there are several ways you can be organised and use a single account for everything - it makes life much easier.

Here are a few tips on how to make the Facebook experience more enjoyable for your non-comping friends.

Advise your friends to hide your activity
On a friend's page you can click 'Friends' to access a drop down menu where you can adjust settings for that friend's activity. You may want to advise your friends to:

Option 1: hide ALL your activity from their news feed - to do this, they can untick 'Show in News Feed'

Option 2: hide all activity EXCEPT important updates - to do this, they can click 'Settings'...

and then tick 'Only Important'

Option 3: customise what they see - they may want to see most of your updates, but untick 'Comments and Likes', which are the most annoying ones!

If you want to help your friends change their settings, you could send them a link to this blog post - or post a status on your own timeline similar to this one:

Friends, I know I'm annoying some of you with my competition posts. If it's driving you mad, go to my Profile page and click the 'Friends' button, on the drop down menu you can untick 'Show in News Feed' to hide all my updates. Or click 'Settings', where you can specify which of my updates you see - you might want to set it to 'Important Updates', or at least turn off my 'Comments and Likes'!

Note: Unfortunately, you CANNOT stop your activity appearing in friend's tickers (the ticker is the moving newsfeed to the right of your browser window).

Use Facebook friends lists
Facebook lists can be useful for compers to separate friends, family, workmates and compers - when you share a status or photo, you select which list(s) to make it visible to. To create a list, go to www.facebook.com/bookmarks/lists – or click on 'More' next to Friends on the left of your Home page.

Then click '+Create List' and search for friends to add. If you do create a 'compers' list, try to get into the habit of adding new friends to it as soon as you accept their requests. Then you can choose to share App comps and comping-related status updates with your 'compers' list rather than to 'Public' or all your 'Friends'.

Note: If you enter Like & Share comps, restricted shares to a 'compers' list will NOT be visible to the promoter - the share MUST be public

Cut down on the Shares
Facebook promotion guidelines state promoters CANNOT ask an entrant to share a photo or status as an entry to a prize draw - you may have noticed that recently more promoters ask you to Like and Comment, but the sharing is optional. If this is the case DON'T share it - it's just adding spam to your own timeline. It's very hard to choose a winner from the Shares, so most of the time promoters will choose from Likes and Comments anyway!

Also, when you enter an App competition on Facebook and the sharing box pops up afterwards, choose to share to 'Only Me' or with your 'Compers' list. With apps, the share does NOT need to be public as the app will register that you've shared, even if you only shared it on your own timeline to 'Only Me'. Of course, if the app is a competition where you get bonus entries for referrals, then don't use the 'Only Me' option - share it with your 'compers' list instead.

Hopefully these suggestions might help you keep those Facebook friends for a little while longer - and if you need more advice on Facebook, read our free PDF guide.