Friday 20 October 2017

Deadwood

Recently, I’ve not been enjoying the comps. Sure, I’ll always love winning, but the process of entering has been leaving me cold. I’m bored by forms, muddling my closing dates and drawing a blank with ideas for effort comps: in short, the mojo has taken a sabbatical.

And yet I can't get comping out of my head!

Some of that, of course, is compulsion (another good reason to ease back), but another part is the desire to get my head in the right place for the season of comping bedlam commonly known as December.

As I’ve said before, the advents can take a lot out of you, so it’s important to prepare as best you can - and to look after yourself as you go.

My last week has therefore focused on deadwooding my social media feeds to ensure I receive a better stream of interesting content once the season - and my mood - pick up.
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Deadwooding Twitter is probably the easiest. With an app like ManageFlitter it’s a doodle to review your follows and remove any that are no longer of interest (for more details, check out Di Coke’s post). That said, unless you’re approaching your 5,000 follow limit, there’s no urgency here, as the average Twitter feed is such a barrage of jibber jabber that the likelihood of a decent, low-odds comp falling in your lap are marginal. Indeed, most seasoned compers will tell you that the best way to enter Twitter giveaways is to take the bull by the horns and go find them yourself. In this regard, Nikki Hunter-Pike’s Tweetdeck tips are essential reading.

Onto Facebook then. Personally, I have little love for Facebook. I’ve no desire to spam my entire family with comps, but since Mark Zuckerberg now shares my every last like, reaction or comment with my entire social circle, I seem to have no choice in the matter. Furthermore, while Facebook is happy to unlike pages off its own bat, it appears less keen for users to do so under their own steam. Sure, you can unfollow pages as and when they come into your newsfeed, or go to your likes page and unlike to your heart’s content, but either way, the process is plodding and painful. To this end, I prefer UnlikeIt - a really simple app for removing like clutter. Yes, it can be a little slow, but given that Facebook refuses to support it, we’re somewhat over a barrel.

Finally, Instagram. Until the middle of 2016, follows were listed in chronological order, making it relatively easy to thin out old, redundant profiles. All that changed when Instagram introduced the present pointlessly opaque system. Now, the profiles at the very top of the list are the ones with which you have most interaction. The rest? Well, they’re just tossed in with no regard for order whatsoever. Thankfully, however, this update islimited to the app only. The desktop version of the site still shows follows in chronological order. In other words, if you’re logged in on your desktop, just pull up the list of who you are following, scroll to the bottom, and deadwood your way up.

BUT HOLD YOUR HORSES!

Before rushing off on a mad orgy of unliking, know this: massive unfollow binges put your account at risk of temporary suspension. This is because such behaviour is often associated with automated tools that can contravene the various social media platforms’ terms of use.

Furthermore, unliking promoters simply because their giveaway has closed and you didn’t win is a bit, well, mercenary. Give these guys a chance! That said, if it’s six months down the line and not one of their photos, memes or messages has had the remotest impact on you, then they're wasting their time marketing to you, and it's probably best for both parties for you to be honest about that.

Good luck getting those newsfeeds back in hand!

If you'd recommend any apps for managing your social media profiles, let me know in the comments below!

6 comments:

  1. Definitely time for me to have a clean up on Facebook especially! You’re very right to warn against mass unliking. I’ll be looking to unfollow maybe 5 accounts a day on Facebook at a time I think!

    Thanks for the link to my site too Neill!

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    1. For me, Instagram is the main one to clean. It's impossible to stalk other compers when you follow too many other accounts as the log of other people's activity is chock full of BlahBlah liked YaddaYadda's comment. If I only I could screen out that I would be much happier.

      I spent ages looking for a way to sort the follows into chronological order - I can't believe the answer was staring me in the face!

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  2. I really need to get rid of some of the naff Facebook pages I follow! Good tip to do it before December rather than waiting to clear out in January 👍

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    1. Oh, I'd definitely recommend autumn cleaning over spring cleaning!

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  3. These are great tips and a great idea to get sorted before advents start, thank you. I'm going to follow your advice! I am gearing up for advents too. It's my favourite comping time of the year. But, like you, I think about comping a lot at the moment while not actually doing it.

    I recommend Hootsuite for managing your social media profiles, by the way. I used to use it to view my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter streams all at once. I don't really like Facebook comping either and try to avoid it where possible (the comments are unbearable) but I guess it's a good place to find and enter comps.

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    1. Hootsuite is a brilliant idea! I did start trying to learn it once but got distracted and failed to pick it up again. Can you use it to schedule your RTs as well as regular messages?

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