Some tips on THAT Coral competition!

If you are on  Facebook, you can't have missed the current competition being run by Coral. The task is "simply" to pass  a football to your friends, for a chance to instantly win mini footballs, England shirts, stadium tours and the grand prize of a 50" TV.  But oh, what a lot of questions it has thrown up! So I'm going to try to answer some of them.

You can join in at www.facebook.com/coral using the "Pass it on" button at the top. When you share the competition on Facebook and Twitter, your friends can see it and click on your link, and if you see a post   that somebody else has made to Facebook or Twitter, you can click on it and accept the ball from them. This gives the person clicking on the link one entry into the competition. If it is a losing entry, a "Sorry you did not win" box pops up. Close this box and a second box pops up, asking you if you want to pass the ball back to them. Doing this returns  the ball to them which gives them chance to enter again, and counts as a pass towards moving up through the prize levels. You can only return a ball to each person once.

Until you have received 4 passes, you can win  a mini football.
Between 4 and 7 passes, a mini football or a football shirt
Between 7 and 10 passes, you could also win a stadium tour
over 10 passes and you could win the TV
You can win each type of prize once, and the comp continues until 5th July. The full terms and conditions are at http://www.coral.co.uk/pass/

So, say Mary has played the game and posted it on her timeline. Fred sees it, clicks on her link, doesn't win and passes it back to her. So they have both entered once, and Mary has one pass towards moving up the prize scale.
Now, Fred needs to share the competition because the only way Mary can pass the ball back to him, giving them both another entry, is to find where he shared it on his own timeline and click on that. They each get another entry, and now Fred too has a pass to add to his total.
Mary is under no obligation to return the ball to Fred, but if she does so it gets them each another go so it's worth doing. I'm trying to keep track of who has passed to me by going to their timelines straight away after I've received a pass. Unfortunately not everyone has shared the competition, so in some cases I haven't been able to return it.

By now, Fred and Mary have passed the ball to each other and can't do it again, so they each need to find new people to play with. They can do this by going to the timelines of all their friends and seeing if they have played yet.  If they have, they can click on their post to enter and return their pass as above. If they haven't played yet, they can go back to the app and share their own entry again, using the box at the top to tag friends who they think might like to join in.

You can share the game on your timeline as often as you like, and it's a good idea to do it at different times of day so that people will spot it when they drop in , but don't do it every few minutes or your friends will get fed up with you!

If you really want to have lots and lots of entries, you can search on Twitter for people to play against.  Use the hashtag #CoralPassItOn and you will see all the tweets from people who have used the Twitter share button. You can click on the links of people who are complete strangers to you, but remember they won't be able to find you and pass the ball back to you unless your Facebook profile is completely public, so you may only get one play rather then the two you would with a friend.

When you win, you will  receive a confirmation email - this won't necessarily arrive straight away. One of mine took 24 hours to arrive. But you must respond to it within 72 hours and you will need to include a scan of one of the following

• the photo page of your passport
• your birth certificate (note- if you have changed your name since birth, by marriage or for any other reason, you will also need to include a copy of your marriage license)
• a photo driving license
• your identity card, if you have one

While this security seems strict, it is necessary because Coral are a gambling company and could get into serious trouble if it was proved that somebody under age had won one of their competitiosn. But it has a bonus to protect us compers - anyone trying to cheat by having multiple Facebook accounts and passing the ball between them may appear to win, but won't be able to claim their prize, as a fake account will have no documentation to match the name on it.

Nice one, Coral! I wonder if it is a direction more promoters will take before awarding prizes?

I've had two wins so far, a football and a shirt, so I think my understanding of how the game works must be pretty close to the mark! So here's a summary of my tips

• share frequently without overdoing it
• tag people when sharing if you really want that person to return your pass
• remember to close the "Sorry" box if you've entered from somebody's link, so you can return their ball
• use Twitter to find more people to play with
• if you get passes from complete strangers, don't be alarmed - they've used Twitter to find YOU!
• you don't have to have a certain number of passes to win - it is completely random. But you do need at least 10 to have a chance of winning the TV.

Good luck and have fun!

Win a 3 month Love Film subscription

Here's a new competition from Hey U Guys - this time you can win a 3 month subscription to Love Film, which gives you 4 rentals  and 4 hours of online streaming every month. And let's face it, if you aren't a sports fan, there's going to be precious little to watch on television over the next few months!

To enter, pop over to their website and tell them the name of a film with a weather related title, for instance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I'm sure you can think of lots more (I wonder if they will allow Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?)

The competition closes on June 15th.

Did you enter the competition for the Batman movies last week?

On Friday, I posted about some new competitions for you to enter - one of which was with Hey U Guys and Music Room, for a boxed set of Batman movies.

However the promoter has just contacted me and said that there has been a technical hitch and they have had to re-run the competition. If you have already entered, your entry may not have been counted, so you will need to enter again. The competition will now close on June 13th, and you can enter (or re-enter) here

http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/2012/06/06/win-batman-motion-picture-anthology-1989-2008/

Win with the chocolate log blog

At present there is a lovely competition on the Chocolate Log Blog giving you a chance to win a gorgeous box of chocolates or one of three tasting boxes. The competition closes on June 17th and you enter using the Rafflecopter widget on the page.

I will soon be writing a post about entering competitions with Rafflecopter - it's a great way for bloggers to run competitions, as they can collect your contact details securely and do the draw completely randomly, but here are a couple of tips if it is new to you.

• If you are new to Rafflecopter, you can sign in with your name and email address or your Facebook ID. I advise always using the name and email address method, as then if you win the blogger can email you directly. If you give your Facebook details, and you are not friends with them on Facebook, a winning message will go into your "other" messages folder. You don't get notifications of messages there. so might miss out on a win.
• If you enter by tweeting, but don't know how to give the URL when asked to, you will find instructions for this on my "How to give the URL of a tweet" post.
• Don't just say that you have commented, tweeted, liked or followed without actually doing it - Rafflecopter KNOWS what you have done and  your entry doesn't count if you tell porkies!

If you have any more questions about entering via Rafflecopter - or using it to run competitions of your own, let me know here or through Twitter and I'll do my best to incorporate the answers into the post I am writing.

Decluttering your Facebook feed

If you are a comper who uses Facebook, you probably have dozens - maybe hundreds - of comping friends and Like hundreds of pages. And it can be overwhelming, can't it? I found I had over 3,000 pages liked, and my news feed moved so fast I couldn't keep up with it. In fact I was almost ready to give up entering competitions on Facebook, unless I unliked a whole lot of pages.

But until the latest changes to Facebook there wasn't a quick way to unlike lots of pages at once. The good news is that now there is. The changes to Facebook have been generally pretty unpopular with most of us, but this one is very helpful.

To start unliking pages, go to your profile page and click on the "Likes" box, at the top right under your cover photo. You will find a section called "Favourites" at the top, with the pages you like at the bottom.  Click on "Edit"  beside the favourites, then scroll down to below the different sections, just above your list of pages, and click on where it says "Other pages you like" and a pop up box will appear - you can simply click "Unlike" next to all the pages you no longer want to follow,scrolling through the list until (if you follow as many as I did) you start to feel RSI coming on and need a rest! When you have finished, click on "finished editing" to save your hard work.

How do you decide which pages to unlike? Well, it's easy enough to like them again later on, so you can afford to be pretty ruthless. Ones you interact with regularly, you will probably recognise the names of, so keep them. If it seems completely unfamiliar, you probably liked it once and never went back, so you might as well unlike it, at least for now. You may see pages connected to things you are no longer interested in - for instance, now both my daughters are married I unliked all the pages connected with wedding accessories and venues, and now I no longer eat sweets or chocolate I unliked a rather  embarrassing number of pages selling those!

I managed to get the number of pages I like down to around a third of what it had been. But I noticed there were still lots of pages I visit regularly but seldom read their posts when they appear in my own news feed. So rather than unliking them, I waited until a post from one of them appeared in my news feed. Then hovered the mouse pointer over the name of the business to get the pop up box with their details in it, and then over the "Liked" button in the bottom right of the box. That brings up a drop down menu, with the line "show in news feed" ticked. Click on that to untick it and you won't see posts from them but can still visit their page, chat to them, enter their competitions and tag their photos.

If some of your friends are a bit too talkative, yet you don't want to unfriend them and hurt their feelings, you can do the same with them, except that this time instead of a "Liked" button, the menu will appear under the "Friends" button. 

On the other hand, there may be some friends and pages that you really don't want to miss a single post from. Once again, if you follow lots of people and pages, their messages can get lost in the background noise, so why not add them to a list? Use the drop down menus as above, but this time instead of hiding them from your news feed, select the "add to list" option. Facebook provides you with some ready-made lists, such as family and work colleagues, or gives you the option to create lists of your own. You will find your lists under "More" then "Interests" on the lower left of your news feed, and by clicking on one of them you can keep up to date with everything on  it.

My own spring clean has  streamlined my Facebook feed and made it much easier to keep up do date - I hope you will find that it does the same for you.

MORE new competitions!

Today I have more new competitions for you!

First of all, a chance to win a special Jubilee themed Healthy Back Bag

It's worth £49 and fits in well with the current fashion for all things patriotic. Simply enter your details at http://www.thehealthybackbag.co.uk/comp/win-a-jubilee-healthy-back-bag by the closing date of June 30th.

Now an opportunity for anyone who lives in the North West of England. I'll let the promoter tell you all about it

Enter the North West's biggest photo competition!
Win a £1,000 family holiday or £500 ballooning experience.
Upload your best picture to our website at http://photos.yearofhealthandwellbeing.org.uk
We're celebrating the North West Year of Health and Wellbeing, part of an NHS North West initiative to help us all live well and feel better!
Show us what 'Wellbeing' means to you.
Entry is open to residents in the North West of England.
Closes 30th September 2012.

Although this year the competition is only for those living in the North West, if it is a success they may be able to open it up to more of us next time. I don't live in the North West now, although that's where I'm from, and as many of you know I've been up to Golborne (that's just outside Wigan, for those of you who don't know it) to look after my Mum, so here is a photo of her garden

You can see more photos from her overgrown but still beautiful garden on my husband's blog over at Mark's Veg Plot

some new competitions for you

First of all, you'll need to be quick with this one as it closes on the 4th of June. Hey U Guys, in association with Music Room,  have a boxed set of the complete Batman movies - six films - to be won. To enter, visit their website  and tell them Which comic book superhero or villain you would be and why in no more than 100 words.  I'd love to hear who you would be - I'd rather like to be Wonder Woman but I really don't have the waist for it!


Here's another creative competition, closing on June 5th.  Thanks to Economy Car Hire, The Movie Blog is giving away two £25 Amazon vouchers. The task this time, again in no more than 100 words,  is to tell them What's your favourite car chase and why. Fill in the entry form here. My own favourite is from the original version if "The Italian Job" - in fact I'm humming "This is the self preservation society....." as I write this.

After all that thinking, you might need to rest your brain for a while, so here is a competition that is much easier to enter. Best Mobile Contracts are giving away an iPhone 4S. The entry form is on their home page  and you can get extra entries for liking and sharing on Facebook and following and tweeting on Twitter, so depending on whether you already like/follow them you can enter up to 5 times. This competition closes on June 30th.

Finally, the new monthly competition is live on the Grape Vine website. The prize, as usual, is a 6 months subscription to my monthly magazine and the very popular mid-month update. This too closes on June 30th.