Facebook and Twitter have quickly become a great source of competitions, especially as Facebook rules say they have to be free to enter, so no stamps have to bought or premium rate calls made.

But I’ve just hear from Sandy Port, our Facebook and Social Media expert, that many compers are experiencing real difficulty with their Facebook accounts today, please read the e-mail from Sandy below:

“Facebook seems to be really tightening down on compers.

Since Friday there have been 100+ compers (just that I’m aware of - so the number is probably even higher than this) that have been logged out of Facebook and on logging back in they've been confronted with a message along the lines of:

'We have reason to believe this account does not represent a real person'

They are then asked to either:
1) validate their Facebook account by naming their friends from photos
OR
2) enter a code that will be texted to the number on their Facebook account

The problem is many compers have 100's of friends and it can be difficult, even impossible to name friends by photos - I know I personally would really struggle with this.

Here are some bits of advice to offer compers should they get it touch about this.

Why are compers being targeted?

Basically a compers normal Facebook activity involves a lot of repetitive actions, liking and sharing photos, writing the same thing 'liked and shared' tagging ourselves in competition photos. A lot of compers also do not have a genuine photo of themselves on their profile and do not interact much or post status updates that aren't to do with comping.

Compers are also normally friends with a lot of other compers that have the same repetitive actions. This means that to Facebook spam bots and even Facebook staff - compers can look like spammers because of the actions we carry out. If we are mistaken as spammers it can mean bans, accounts being terminated and other Facebook problems.

Add/change your mobile phone number

Add a mobile phone number or check it's up to date and make it visible to only you and Facebook security.

Go to your homepage - click your name in the top right of the Facebook header bar.

Click on 'update info' which is just underneath and to the right of the large profile photo.

Scroll down to 'contact info' which is on the right and click 'edit' add/change the mobile photo number and ensure the symbol showing next to it is a closed lock symbol - hover your curser over it and it should say 'only me' if not change it to the correct symbol by clicking on it and picking a different symbol.

Now if you need to validate your account you should hopefully get the option to be texted a code to input rather than trying to identify friends from their photos.

Have a tagged photot clear out

Go through your photos and untag yourself from competition photos.

 Go to your homepage and click on the photos section just under the large profile photo.

Click on a photo you'd like to untag and press the options button at the bottom of the photo.

Press the report/remove tag option and then follow the on screen prompts to remove the photo. This is slow and will take time - so perhaps look at untagging a few a day if you have lots.

Add sone normal non-comping content such as family/pet photots, updated etc...

 Interact and chat more with others.

Try not to enter too many 'like and share' type competitions at once.

I would personally advise you to aim for only 4-5 of these types of competitions in a row and then add a status update or leave it for a period of 1+ hours before entering more like and share type competitions.

The aim is to have it so that if you were to spend 30 seconds looking at your timeline and scrolling through it that it's not all like and share competitions with no status updates

Enter competittions being run on Apps

App competitions are fine and for most you can untick or cancel the option to 'share to wall' and will still be entered - so you can carry on entering these to your hearts content

Does your profile look real?

Help prevent Facebook spambots thinking you are a spammer by making sure you have a genuine photo of yourself as your profile photo, have some information on your profile (even if you change the security settings to 'me only').

Add lots of regular updates and statuses and mix things up a bit with what you write when entering competitions - try not to write 'liked and shared' every time."

If you haven’t tried comping on Facebook and Twitter then try out Sandy’s page on Facebook www.facebook.com/pages/Competition-Club its total free and a great way of seeing what you can win.

I’ve also got Sandy to let us have a couple of competitions from her premium level service that offers the best way to enter and track Facebook competitions in the UK, click here for your 28 day free trial

Just follow the Kitchen Think on Twitter to win an Organ-line box worth £320 www.thekitchenthink.co.uk/win-an-orga-line-box-worth-320

Like Baylis & Harding’s page for a £2,000 holiday www.facebook.com/baylisandharding

Get away for Easter with two free return train tickets to anywhere in the UK www.facebook.com/Railcard

Once again many thanks to Sandy for her advice and competitions, if you would like Sandy to find you over 450 new Facebook and Twitter competitions every week, just click here to find out more.

Speak soon,

Dave Gibson 
JustComps