It’s ok to ignore them. The other person won’t even know. If it’s a close, personal friend, you can send them a thank you post if you feel it’s necessary. But if you accept the “gift”, that means going to another page to add the app to your profile, then it asks you to send the app to your friends including the friend who sent it to you.

Some apps are helpful. It’s nice to know when someone is having a birthday so you can send them a card. If you want to join the Mafia Wars because you have the time to play the game then accept. Otherwise most apps just take too much time and there’s no reason why you can’t just hit “ignore”.

As your friends list gets longer, you’ll also start getting more and more event invites where you have to RSVP. If you look in the top right hand side of your screen, you’ll see where you can actually ignore the invite also. These people send their invites to hundreds of people at a time. They won’t even notice if you ignore yours.

My magic is WordPress. Give me a blog and let me “do my thing”. I will give you a high functioning, efficient blog that Google will fall in love with. I am working toward certification as a Social Marketing Specialist, but it’s not my magic, yet. With WordPress there isn’t anything I don’t know or can’t troubleshoot. It’s my mojo.

I have heard people say they feel more productive if they get dressed in the morning as if they were going into an office. That’s fine for them. Those are the same people who typically like to attent networking events. I network almost completely online because I don’t like putting on uncomfortable business clothes and wearing makeup. I work virtually so I can throw on a pair of jeans, tye my hair in a ponytail and be done with it. Online it doesn’t matter what you are wearing.  It only matters that you do a good job.

So which is better? It really doesn’t matter – as long as you are doing it!

  Networking doesn’t mean joining forums and then lurking , either. Whether you are new to business and just shy or you’ve gotten too busy, you cannot grow your business from the point of where you are now if you do not network. Find the time to network and muster up the courage to post.

Networking can be one of the cheapest forms of advertising your business. Obviously both types of networking require certain tools that you may have to purchase. But you can easily control the cost. The cost to not network is lost business.

Since getting Digsby I go to MySpace more often – which is good. In the past, my friends would leave me comments and then get upset that it took me sometimes a week or two to acknowledge them. The reason was it just was too much effort for me to sign in. Seriously. MySpace doesn’t keep you signed in. Digsby does.

Digsby doesn’t help me to leave comments more often, but at least now I am saying Thank You in a more acceptable timeframe. With all this new media social networking, we cannot forget our traditional social etiquette and manners. If you don’t acknowledge someone’s kindness, they will remember just as they will remember the ones who said Thank You and sent the Birthday wishes.

MySpace has a reputation of being for teenagers. That was true in the beginning but they are trying to be more grown up. They’ve changed the back end a bit and I hear there’s more changes to come.

Facebook, on the other hand, seemed to draw the college crowd or the people who wanted to connect to people from their past. There is still a lot of that going on, but I think it’s much more sophisticated than that now.

Since I’ve been on Facebook for a while I go there more deliberately. In the past I would open the site, but I wasn’t really sure what to do there. Now that I’ve been there a while I know what must be done and what’s a waste of my time. When I see a (1) when I hover over Facebook, I go check it out.

Facebook has a lot of rules that you need to follow. It doesn’t allow anyone to conduct business, ie advertise/spam. You can invite people to business happenings, though. It doesn’t allow you to grow your friends list very fast, either. As a matter of fact, it caps your friends at 5000. You can only have one account and it must be your real name. Break a rule and your account will be deleted. Seriously.

Twitter is the one that can get you into trouble because its role is not clearly defined yet. Many people still post what they are doing each and every minute. “Eating ham sandwich.” If you read that, would you care? If not, then don’t post what you are eating.

So what do

you post on Twitter? Keep it interesting – ask yourself, “If I were to read this, would I be interested?” That’s the best I can advise.

be on – MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. You may also want to join the social networking sites that are specific to your industry. You can see in my list on the left that I am also on Active Rain and Ryze because those are important to my business.

The first thing to do before setting up a social network is to sit down and write a profile – one common profile that you will use on all your social networking sites. Your profile should show people who you are and why you are competent to do what you do. You want to add your personality to this profile, too. Many of the sites have places for you to list your interests.

So how much of “you” should you add? That’s a good question. The answer depends on your target market. If you plan on doing business with any of your contacts, then try to stay on the professional side. When in doubt, look at other people’s profiles and see what they do. Don’t outright copy someone, though.

Then choose one photo that you will be common to all the sites. To brand your social networking sites to your website, gather together your header, your logo, and your main website color codes to be used to customize your site.

Now that you have so many social networking profiles out there, what’s the point of having a website? Think of yourself as a rock star. You round up your band and your costumes and put them in the tour bus. You visit many cities gathering a following. That’s your social networking. Each site is a city where you gather fans. Some of your fans may become groupies and follow you around to other sites. Unlike rock stars, you should reciprocate and add them or follow them also.

But you can’t fit everything you own into your tour bus. You can’t fit all your products, all your services, plus all your price lists. You may fit a few testimonials, but not all. You get the picture. What you need is a home base, a place where these things all fit. That’s your website or your blog site. On the social networking sites you are going to leave links so when your fans want to know more about you, they will click on the link to your website or your blog. That’s where they will find out everything they need to know.