When to Deny Friend Requests for a Myspace Business Profile Page

Placing a business profile on Myspace for the sake of free promotion and networking can be a great way for small businesses to get the word out. Of course, like any "great" idea, and as many business owners have learned throughout recent years, the plan can backfire if the proper precautions aren't observed. While the ability to make countless contacts might sound appealing, promoting a business on Myspace is much more than simple name-collecting. The rules for accepting and seeking "friends" on Myspace for business purposes are a bit more complicated.

While you may have to accept a few "friends" whose pages don't exactly appeal to your tastes for the sake of not offending anyone, there will be certain circumstances under which approving a request for friendship may harm the reputation of your business. Compound that mistakes several times and you may find yourself in the boat of other naïve business owners who have had to completely take down and rebuild their profiles simply for the sake of starting fresh and making quality contacts. In other words, it only takes a handful of bad "friends" to repel thousands of potential clients.

The first rule of thumb to keep in mind when deciding who will comprise your business's Myspace friends list is to steer clear of profiles with their own unrelated products to promote. You'll likely receive dozens of requests from bands, artists, singers, poets, and authors who are on Myspace solely for the purpose of promoting their own products. In other words, they have no real interest in yours. Not only that, but such individuals tend to make a habit of posting tour dates, new songs, CD releases, videos, etc, into the comment boxes of their friends' pages for free promotion. While deleting a promotional and unrelated comment here and there isn't much trouble, the task can become a daily requirement without careful screening of friend requests. Therefore, if you are fairly positive that there is no reason an individual or group requesting your friendship would have a legitimate interest in your project, deny the request. For example, if you're running a newsletter for work-at-home moms and a rock band comprised of teenage boys wishes to be added to your list, you can bet that their reasons for connecting with you are purely self-promotional.

Next, avoid falling into the trap of believing that because you have control of the "Top Friends" listed on your actual page that you can afford to accept requests from less-than-appealing profile owners. Obscene display names, nudity in icon pictures, and other unprofessional attributes of your "friends" will be displayed on your business profile page each time such a profile owner makes a comment on your space. In other words, even if that half-naked twenty something with profanity in her display name is one of your best customers, it might be best to decline the friendship rather than have that image on your page. While you can make the decision to delete comments posted by such "friends," doing so is equally offensive. Your best bet may be to let those individuals figure out for themselves why you may not wish to be affiliated with them in a public forum. Losing a sale now for the sake of gaining more sales in the future may be a result.

One of the most difficult tasks a Myspace business profile owner may have to face is denying friend requests to family and loved ones. Just as you wouldn't find it amusing to have friends and family constantly showing up in your workplace, having comments placed by friends and family that are of a personal nature on your business's Myspace page is equally unprofessional. If you do decide to add loved ones, be sure to immediately send a quick, apologetic note stating that all personal messages must be sent through a private email, and not through comments posted on your page.

Finally, avoid accepting friend requests from profile owners with extremely limited information on their pages and high numbers of friends. Most often, these individuals, with almost no personal or business information and hundreds of friends, are collecting friends on whose profiles they can place informational links to money-making scams, false jobs, and other illegal or undesirable projects. Because these individuals realize that most business profile owners do not make the time to check the profiles of those making requests for friendships, they will add pictures and limited personal information in their icons and search displays and will have next to nothing on their profiles. They are not interested in creating a legitimate business page, likely because there is nothing legitimate to discuss. Deny such requests with vigor.

Remember, associate yourself online with those whom you would feel comfortable associating your business with in the offline world. With the aforementioned tips in mind, you'll quickly come to find that denying a friend request here and there for the sake of your business's reputation is a valuable, time-saving, and stress minimizing skill that will preserve your company's face in the world of social networking.