While preparing this article, we decided there would be no better way to discuss
social media and social networking than digging into it ourselves. One of the ways we did this was by creating Website Magazine’sMySpace page, found at
www.myspace.com/websitemagazine. It took about 15 minutes to set up our page and within one hour we had our first “friend,” MasterLink — a
Dallas, TX Web design, development and Internet marketing firm. So, we decided to contact MasterLink and start networking right away. A message was
sent through MySpace to MasterLink and within an hour we were on the phone with Mark Barrera, MasterLink’s director of Internet marketing.
MasterLink has been on MySpace for approximately two months and as of this writing, already has 110 friends. MasterLink has also been utilizing
YouTube for business purposes since mid-2006.
The Interview continues below...
WM: Why is MasterLink on MySpace?
MB: We started a page because a client of ours was interested, so we tested
it out. Within a couple of days we had a bunch of friends.
WM: What kind of benefits are you getting from MySpace?
MB: People are constantly finding us — we don’t even have to do the work to find
people. I also find that I’m more likely to get responses through MySpace than
email. I think it’s the whole friendliness of MySpace and they can see who you
are before responding. One of the big players [in our industry] is very hard to
get hold of but we were able to contact him through MySpace. We also have a
widget that allows us to publish our blog posts. We get a lot of referrals
through MySpace to our blog. As an added benefit we get links needed for SEO.
WM: Are you seeing any new business leads coming from your MySpace page?
MB: We’ve used our MySpace page as an example for clients, and now we are
charging to create pages for our clients as well. We get plenty of interest for
our services through our page, but no new business as of yet. I have no doubt
that new business is right around the corner.
WM: Why did MasterLink decide to start utilizing YouTube?
MB:We were watching the viral effect of it and figured hey, it couldn’t hurt
our business. And competitors seemed to be jumping on board.
WM: How is MasterLink using YouTube as part of a business strategy?
MB: We use it to promote ourselves. At one time we were the first or second
ranked video for search engine marketing on YouTube. People have contacted us
because of that and we have several contacts interested in doing business
because of the videos.
WM: What kind of success have you had with YouTube?
MB: One of our clients is a video surveillance company. We posted some of
their video footage on YouTube and iFilm. iFilm yielded the best results, and
overall they had close to a million hits on their videos.
