Check the listings in SweepsU.com for twitter sweepstakes to enter.  Follow the links to those sweepstakes.

On twitter search for the words winner, win, sweepstakes and giveaway.  You will find many using that method.  But silly people also use win and winning when talking about sports.  I do not care about the score of the game- I want to enter to win for giveaways.  This is a very time consuming way to find giveaways.

The best way I have found is to follow fellow sweepers who follow other sweepers who follow the giveaways.   Start by following me on twitter.  My twitter name is rose7am   Click on find people at the top of the page, type in the name and it will take you to my page.  After you become a follower of me or anyone else, you will be able to see the postings by me and everyone I am following on my page.

Short version on entering now, more details in the next blog. You want to start entering to win. Pick one of the tweets.  It will show the twitter name of who posted it on my page.  This is the first word that will show in blue, and then it will show a http: link again in blue, what giveaway this tweet is about and following @ again in blue the name of the sponsor.  Clear as mud right?

Click on the http: link this will take you to the information on the giveaway.  Read it all very carefully.  Every giveaway has a certain way they want you to enter.  RETWEETING will not always do it for you.  Some want you to follow them on twitter, some want you to sign up for their blog, some want you to tweet certain words and then post a comment on their blog that you tweeted and REQUIRE it to be done in a certain order.

Read the rules, understand the order to enter, check to make sure the giveaway is not expired, that it is a giveaway for your state or country.  Lots of Canadian and UK giveaways too, do not assume that it is for your area.

Check the prize, is it something you want or could use?  Tweeting is like sweeping only enter for something that appeals to you.  No kids, skip the diaper giveaways, no dog forget the dog food giveaways

The @ followed by a name in blue is who is sponsoring this giveaway.   This is where your sweeper smarts are really useful.  Click on that name.  It will open the Twitter, Web, or Blog for the sponsor.  Poke around a bit.  Does this look like a person or company you would associate with or tell you friends about?   Think about this- I do not care if they are giving away a computer or whatever.  If they do not appear trustworthy, or feel creepy, or sleazy, chances are they are not really giving away that wonderful item.    Do they have rules posted? Some places do not have many rules.  But there should be at least an ending date.     IF they are a big name retailer, fast foods chain no worries.  There are many great prizes given away by the smaller sites also.  Check them out and win something big.

You can tweet till your little twitter fingers fall off- but if you do not follow the rules you have wasted your time.

Go out there and practice entering for twitter giveaways.

More details on my brilliant and duh moments learning twitter in the next blog posting.

Roseann

One of the first things you'll want to do in the Community section of the SweepsU.com site is to create a profile. Your profile gives the other users a glimpse of who you are and helps us to build our SweepsU.com community.

From the SweepsU.com home page, you'll click on the Community link. Once on the Community page, you'll click on the profile tab. Let's start with uploading a photo or avatar, shall we?

Click on "change profile picture." You'll be able to upload a photo of yourself or an avatar that you've created. (A couple of my favorite sites for creating avatars are http://www.doppelme.com and http://www.planetcreation.co.uk/createpic) Please pay special attention to the size of the photo/avatar that you're uploading. If you're having trouble uploading your photo 9 times out of 10 it's because the file size is over 2MB.

Once you've put a "face" on your profile, you'll need to add your basic information. To do this, you'll click on "edit profile." Here, you can enter as much or as little information about yourself as you choose. Please note that the birthday field is in the European format of DD/MM/YYYY.

There is also a status update on the profile page much like a facebook or twitter status. In order to update your status, look for the pen and paper icon immediately to the left of your profile picture. Click on it and edit your status. Your status will then show in the "recent activities" section of your friends' profiles.

Finally, we come to the most important feature of the profile section: Privacy. You're able to choose with whom to share your profile information. From the profile page, simply click on "privacy" to change your settings. The best part is that you can choose different settings for different parts of your profile. For instance, you can choose to share your basic info with all SweepsU.com users and your uploaded photos only with friends. Or you can share everything with everyone. You can customize these settings to ensure your comfort with the level of privacy your profile has.