Facebook is a good place to find sweepstakes and giveaways of everything from free food and coupons to automobiles. Here are a few tips to help you find and enter them.

How to Find Them

1. Facebook Search: While this one is a no-brainer, it's actually hit or miss. When you enter the word sweepstakes in the FB search engine, only a small amount of results may come up. Once you start entering sweepstakes on FB, you'll notice more sweeps on the sidebar where the advertisements are as Facebook keeps track of your activity in order to cater the best ads to your tastes (that's a general rule but not always true in practice).

2. Sweepstakes Directories: Many of the popular sweepstakes directories have Facebook sweepstakes listings. Sweepstakes Advantage has a section devoted to FB sweeps. Other sites have FB sweeps interspersed within their other listings such as the online section and daily, weekly and monthly sections including Contest Girl, Online Sweepstakes.

3. Your Favorite Merchant and Celebrity Sites: Your favorite actor, actress and music artist most likely have a Facebook page to promote their work including giveaways. The same goes for practically every place you shop offline and online. Follow all these pages to keep up with the latest giveaways.

Entering

Every sponsor that ran an FB sweep that I've entered required entrants to like their page. Usually just after that, an entry form will come up on the page. The info required to enter will vary from contest to contest, but the least you'll need to do is enter your email. Some contests require a comment on a timeline post. The rules for entry will be laid out for you, but the official rules will usually be found on a separate page just like any other sweepstakes.

If you don't have a Facebook account, it's easy to sign up at facebook.com. You need to enter your name, email, birthday, gender and create a password. Have fun and good luck!

Be sure to also follow the Facebook page I run for the BellaOnline Contests and Sweepstakes site here.