In this two-part article I would like to share with you a strategy that has generated me a lot of authority, credibility and traffic.
I have personally been using it to great success in my two main niches of stock trading and Internet marketing but whatever niche you are in (or are considering going into) this strategy will allow you to leverage the “power of association” by creating a multi-purpose audio interview product in a single day or less.
Does this sound too good to be true?
Well, please do read on because my own results have led me to believe that this is one of the most effective (and fun!) marketing methods that exists. What is more, it can deliver you huge benefit whether you are already a successful Internet marketer or are starting completely from scratch with no prior knowledge and experience.
1. Why create an audio interview product?
Here are some advantages of creating an audio interview:
Build instant trust through the power of association
One of the biggest challenges that face newcomers to Internet marketing is that both you and your website are completely unknown to potential customers. As I found out the hard way when I started last year, it is extremely difficult to sell products without first establishing at least some kind of relationship with your prospects.
This is what I love about audio interview products: By interviewing a recognised expert you immediately give the level of trust that you have with your potential customers a “shot in the arm” through the very fact that you are associating yourself with the expert in question.
This is the “power-of-association” and it’s the same reason why you tend to see successful people associating with other successful people, companies employing celebrities to help market their products and even why you occasionally meet people who like to “name drop” in a (usually crude!) attempt to leverage their own status.
Imagine you turn up at a personal development website for the first time and on the front page there is a link to an interview by the website owner with Tony Robbins, the world-famous life coach. Or, perhaps you turn up an Internet marketing blog and see that the owner has interviewed Nick Laight!
Either way you are far more likely to visit that website again in the future, have a higher level of trust, and ultimately buy more products.
More visitors to your website
There are many ways you can use your interview to generate traffic, and we’ll talk more about this next month. However, by way of a simple example, if you decide to publish your interview on your blog then it is very easy to arrange for the expert to promote the interview on their own site to generate you heaps of traffic for months into the future. Secondly, it is often the case that people will search for the expert’s name in Google so you have a great chance of receiving traffic from the search engines too.
It’s VERY quick!
I believe that one of the keys to success online is to get things done quickly. While many marketers spend days, weeks or even months creating products, the total time to arrange, create and publish an audio product is usually less than one day. I’ve personally done the whole process inside three hours, which is incredible when you compare it to the time it would usually take to create an eBook or training video for example.
You don’t need to be an expert yourself
Entering a new niche can be a daunting process and it can take a considerable amount of time to learn about the various topics within it. However, by interviewing an expert you can bypass this problem and accelerate both your knowledge of the niche and your perceived credibility. This makes creating an interview ideal for the newbie Internet marketer.
Build relationships with other marketers
This is massive! In any niche, most successful marketers rely on their relationships with other marketers in order to create products, drive traffic and ultimately make money online.
Interviews are a great way to make relationships like this for yourself. For example, one of the first people I interviewed this year was Joseph Archibald, a Scot currently living the Internet marketing lifestyle out in Malaysia. Although we didn’t know each other before the interview we have stayed in touch and are now considering working together on creating and marketing new products.
Interviews are multipurpose products
You can publish your interview on your website in order to attract traffic, give it away as a free gift to entice people to sign up for your email list, use it as a bonus for an existing product or offer it for free for use by another marketer (again, great for generating traffic!). Many marketers have even recorded a series of interviews and packaged them together into a stand alone product to sell. If you think about it, this is probably one of the quickest ways to create a really high quality product in your niche without having any in-depth knowledge yourself!
Interviewing is fun!
If you’re anything like me then there are probably some aspects of Internet marketing that you don’t really enjoy and of course, this is the same with anything in life. However, I have to say that recording interviews is very enjoyable.
If you doubt this then let me say that before I recorded my first interview (which was to become a bonus item for a stock trading product), I was very nervous and was not looking forward to the ordeal at all. I was even worried that people would think that my voice was “weird”!
However, with a few minutes of preparation beforehand (which we’ll talk about later) I think you’ll quickly realise that there isn’t anything to be afraid of. In addition, pretty much everyone – including some very successful Internet marketers – consider their own voice to sound strange the first time they hear it played back.
So please, if you have any doubts at this stage, please trust me on this point: Just get stuck in and you’ll be absolutely fine!
2. How to find an expert to interview
First, let me address one frequently asked question: You do not need to pay your expert for the interview! I have conducted six interviews (and counting) so far in 2011 and I haven’t paid for any of them. In the unlikely event that your expert does ask for payment, my recommendation is to politely decline and approach another potential interviewee instead.
Here are some great ways to find an expert that you can interview:
Blogs
This is my preferred method. If you don’t already have a list of influential blogs in your niche then start by searching Google. Using the personal development niche, for example:
Generally speaking, the more well known and respected your interviewee is the better, so I like to perform some simple checks to make sure that the blog is popular and its author will be worth interviewing. My tips here are to look for high quality content that is updated regularly, at least 10 people commenting on each post and plenty of Twitter Tweets and Facebook Likes as shown below:
Also, if your main intention is to publish the interview on your own blog or website in order to generate traffic then I highly recommend looking at the Page Rank (a measure of “authority” by Google) and Alexa Rank (an estimation of traffic). This can be done easily and quickly by installing a free add-on to your web browser such as SEO Quake which will inform you of this information for every website that you visit:
In the above example, the Page Rank is 2 and the Alexa Rank is 4856. These measures are not perfect but I find them very helpful as a guideline and usually look for a Page Rank of at least 2 (10 is the highest, zero is the lowest) and an Alexa Rank of below 100,000 (the lower the better).
Amazon
Despite the tremendous success of the Internet, writing a physical printed book still carries one of the highest marks of credibility. For this reason it is a great idea to find book authors to interview which can be done by searching http://www.amazon.com for your topic of interest. Click on the authors’ names to see how many other books they have written and search in Google to see if they have a website or blog through which you can contact them.
Other sites
Aside from Amazon there are a number of other sites which are great resources for finding expert authors such as http://www.about.com and http://ezinearticles.com, although with the latter I recommend that you do a few Google searches to ensure that your potential interviewee is a genuine and respected author and not simply an affiliate marketer who is publishing articles to Ezine Articles simply to promote other people’s products!
Although I have not used it personally, you might like to check out http://www.findanexpertonline.com which is another potential way of finding yourself an interviewee.
Free online ads
Placing a advertisement on a site like http://www.craigslist.com or http://www.reporterconnection.com is not only a free way to find interviewees but can also unearth experts which might be less visible online through the other methods discussed above.
Whichever of these methods you decide to use aim to compile a list to 5-10 people that you would like to interview. When contacting experts for the first time I usually send a short and concise email which contains the following:
– A (genuine) compliment about the expert’s website/blog/book/work, etc
– One to two sentences introducing myself – The benefits to them for agreeing to be
interviewed This last point is crucial: You really need to address the, “What’s in it for me?” question upfront before they even get a chance to ask it! So, explain how the interview will be great exposure for them for only a few minutes of their time and how you’ll actively publicise it (we’ll talk about this in detail next month). It is also a good idea to let them know that they will get the opportunity to talk about and promote their website/new book/blog/products at the end of the interview.
Of course, not everyone will say yes, but once you have one person onboard leverage this fact by telling other potential interviewees that you have already had another expert agree. This sends out a strong signal that you are a credible, worthy interviewer and over time you can use this point of leverage to arrange interviews with more and more influential people.
Finally, if your expert is still reluctant to be interviewed then consider offering them a copy of the final interview to use in any way they wish.
Obtaining interviews is a lot easier than you might think, even with very well-known people. To give you an idea, the strategy I’ve outlined above has secured me six interviews out of eight requests which although not perfect is still a success rate that I’m very happy with.
3. Tools you need to record your interview
Skype
Because your expert will usually be based somewhere else in the world you will probably want to conduct your interview over the phone. Although you could use a conventional landline or even mobile for this a far better solution is Skype. If you’re not already familiar with this brilliant communication tool then all you need to know is that it’s completely free to sign up and make voice phone calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world.
If you’re not already a member then I recommend that you sign up now at http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/home. You can advise your interviewee on how to do this too if they are not signed up.
Pamela
The next thing you need is a tool to record your Skype interview. I use a piece of software called Pamela Call Recorder which you can download and try for free here: http://www.pamela.biz. When you start a Skype phone call the software asks you if you would like to record it, as follows:
At the end of the call you will have an audio file of your phone call saved to your computer. Simple! The only downside of Pamela is the free trial version is limited to 15 minutes and as you’ll probably want your interview to be longer than this (I recommend 30-60 minutes) then you will need to pay for the upgraded version to remove this restriction.
Audacity
After you’ve finished your interview it is likely that you’ll want to edit it slightly, especially the beginning and the end of the call. There are several ways of doing this but I recommend Audacity. Although it hasn’t got the prettiest user interface in the world, it is very versatile and it’s free. You can download it here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net
USB microphone
If you have a laptop then it is fine to use its built-in microphone although you might like to consider buying an external USB microphone which will make your interview sound a lot more professional by drastically improving the sound quality. Personally, I use a “Snowball” USB mic from a company called Blue Microphones.
At around £70 I think it’s a very good investment and I highly recommend it. You can find it by going to http://www.amazon.co.uk and searching for “snowball microphone”.
That’s it for now. We’ll continue next month by looking at how to plan your first interview, what questions to ask and how to publish, market and leverage the finished product to get maximum results.
Rob Cornish used to be a fund manager and worked in the City for nearly 10 years. He started Internet marketing in April 2010, went full-time in September 2010 and is active in the stock trading and Internet marketing niches.
He offers a free weekly newsletter called Kick Start Profits which is step-by-step training on how to start and grow your online business completely from scratch. To sign up completely free of charge please visit: http://www.gainhigherground.com/kickstartprofits