Have you ever entered a contest that asked you to like a page on Facebook? If you didn’t win, it could be because your settings are set to private. I recently came across an issue that I previously didn’t realize could disqualify me from winning giveaways. I wanted to make sure this never happens to you.

If you, like me, love entering giveaways, then you want to be sure that your Facebook and Twitter are not set to private. Why? Because as bloggers we verify each entry that you submit on a giveaway. No matter which entry won you the prize, we check them all. This is listed in most giveaway details and disclosures, definitely on mine.

Before I detail the instructions for Facebook, let me quickly discuss Twitter. When you complete an entry for following a Twitter account, if your Twitter profile is set to private we can’t see your tweets or who you follow. As a result, we can’t verify your entries and you will be disqualified. Also, make sure you are providing the correct URL linking to your tweet. We simply cannot sit and search your feed for a tweet from 2 weeks ago.

Back to Facebook: I was talking to a fan today who told me she likes my page. I searched and search and found nothing. She sent me some screenshots to show me. Still on my end I couldn’t verify it. As it turns out, her Facebook “Likes” had a privacy setting on to only show her Likes to friends. As soon as she removed that setting and made it public, she magically appeared on the searches. Had she entered and won one of my giveaways, she would have been disqualified. Don’t let this happen to you! Here are some steps you can take to avoid this (click on the images to enlarge them if you need to):

The instructions for making your likes public are listed here but I will walk you through it below.

Step 1: Go to your timeline. Click on the ABOUT section.

Step 2. Scroll down to your Likes section. Click on the little pencil and select EDIT PRIVACY.

Step 3. Change all of your Likes, or at very least the Website and Others category, to PUBLIC with the little image of the Planet.

Step 4. Ensure all of your likes or those you want all have the image of the Planet displayed to the right of them. Then click close at the bottom to exit the screen.

Now you are ready to continue entering those contests 🙂 Good luck! Be sure to share this with your friends so they can be WINNERS too!