Interesting Lists!

Submitted by SuperluckyDi on Fri, 2012-07-20 13:58

Ever get the feeling you're liking a few too many Facebook pages? Your Newsfeed is a jumble of updates from friends, compers and Facebook pages, and you're missing out on lots of competitions because it's just TOO busy? A really neat way of organising and focusing your comping on Facebook is to use Interest lists. You can access and add to your Interest Lists at www.facebook.com/bookmarks/interests – or at the bottom left of your Facebook Homepage. When you view your Interest List, it appears like a Newsfeed, but it's limited to updates from a certain group of pages or people that you choose. To add to your Interest List, when you're on a Page click on the Cog icon and choose 'Add to Interest Lists...' (see the photo at the top of this blog post) - you can then choose an existing list or create a new one. You can also Subscribe to other people's public Interest Lists.

To show you how they work, I've set up several Interest Lists using my personal Facebook Account:

  • As a Mum (and with lots of pregnant friends!) I like to enter and share a lot of baby-related competitions, so I've set up a Public Interest List of Mum & Baby type pages at http://bit.ly/BabyList.
  • As a blogger, I love to catch up with the latest posts from other bloggers and I find Facebook a more appealing way to access the latest links, rather than an RSS Reader. You can access my public list of favourite blogs at http://bit.ly/BlogrollList – lots of these will have competitions running.
  • As a comper, I have a private list set up called 'Comps' - I have The PrizeFinder and SuperLucky added, and I've also added a lot of the busiest and most successful Facebook compers to it! If I don't have much time for comping, I know that a visit to this list will give me links to LOADS of Facebook comps, rather than scrolling through my normal Newsfeed to find them amongst everything else...
  • I also have two private Interest Lists called 'Food & Drink' and 'Homes & Interiors'. I add to these whilst browsing magazines, and have found several new pages - and low entry competitions - in this way.

Using Interest Lists:

  • You can focus your comping on certain prizes - for example, you might set up a list for local attractions and venues – then keep an eye out for ticket giveaways!
  • You can add pages to your list rather than 'Liking' them - you may have noticed that as soon as you LIKE a page all your comping friends will hurry over there to see what's happening! By viewing page updates in a private Interest list, you can have your own little secret – and possibly even find comps that other compers don't know about!
  • Once you have your lists set up, Facebook offers you 'List suggestions' (on the right of your list) for pages/people to add – again, you can find some great new pages by adding these!

If you've got other suggestions or ways of using Interest Lists for comping on Facebook, let me know!

Comments

Submitted by mbw33 on Fri, 2012-07-20 16:59

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Any chance we can have a section with competitions that don't need facebook to enter?? I no longer use it myself and I am finding myself being excluded from competitions because of it, not everyone thinks facebook is cool and it would be a great help to people like me, i never trust facebook competitions as they never inform people who the winners are and it seems to me that all they want is your details so that they can spam you with unrelated items

I'm sure this is something that has been mentioned before - let me investigate if there's some way we can add an 'Opt out' check box for Facebook/Twitter on the Customise Listings page...

I find your point about Facebook competitions interesting though, as they ALWAYS announce the winners - if they don't, then their fans always badger them on their pages until they have to announce the names! Whereas with normal web draws you very rarely find out who - if anyone! - won. If you're worried about spam, don't LIKE the pages unless you absolutely have to - then when their updates appear on your Newsfeed, hover to the right of them and choose 'Hide all from...' - then you won't be bothered by any of their updates!

Unfortunately the viral aspect of Facebook means that lot of companies are running their big promotions there now. The advantage is that lots of people - like you - won't use it and so the entry numbers are much lower than web draws...

Submitted by treezman on Wed, 2012-07-25 16:24

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Have to say that the reason I do not enter facebook comps is that you have to like all the pages you enter, doing this causes facebook to display stuff on my friends newsfeeds that they do not want to see.
I would rather keep my facebook friends than have them block my feeds because they are fed up with seeing that type of stuff.
Also I done a little experiment by opening up a new (fake) facebook account and entered a few comps that way, that newsfeed was immediately swamped with spam from the competition pages.
sorry but I will stick to non-facebook competitions.

Submitted by mbw33 on Thu, 2012-07-26 12:14

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Thank you for your comments I do agree with both of them, I have not been on facebook for a long time as I was receiving a lot of spam in my hotmail account and since deleting the account they have all stopped I do not mind receiving emails from the competition sponsors but it never is just from them and it is becoming a big problem on a social network site when all these companies bombard your wall with stuff that is not even from them, you end up having to wade through all the adverts to see your family and friends comments, I love the site by the way and have won lots in the past but now I am excluded because I do not want to give them all that access to my account on facebook, it is a shame that they do not give you the option of an email entry or web site entry as well, it seems lazy on their behalf as we still have to do all the typing and sending to enter.

Submitted by ryeman on Mon, 2013-01-14 16:38

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any idea when i annswer face book comps iam able to share but when i press like9so i can entre the comp )it comes up with

You've been blocked from using this feature because you may have violated Facebook's Terms. Please review the Community Standards to learn what's acceptable to share on Facebook.

i have tried contacting facebook and they ignore me this has put a limit on the ammount of comps i can enter

Submitted by SuperluckyDi on Tue, 2013-01-15 17:01

In reply to by ryeman

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This happens regularly to compers and it's usually because Facebook thinks you're spamming if you Like/Share/Comment too much. Occasionally it can be because promoters/pages have flagged you up as spam - and sometimes even because your (non-comping) friends have flagged your posts as spam too! The best thing to do is to stick to the Facebook comps that are run via an 'App' and avoid Liking/Sharing/Commenting if it's not compulsory!