Do you use interviews to promote your business, increase traffic to your website or raise your profile?
When I was writing my book I wanted to include chapters written from the perspective of my children, but I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell of getting either of them to actually write anything! So I interviewed them – well, I asked them lots of questions, they answered them and I recorded our conversation – and the transcript of that formed the basis for their chapters in the book. it was an interesting and revealing experiment – they talked about lots of things we’d never discussed before – and I think the chapters really enhance the book.
But you can use interviews in your business too – and lots of people are! Yesterday I met Mary Thomas of Concise Training for coffee, and she interviewed me about how I use social media. She’s started a new feature on her blog and is looking for business owners who know how powerful social media is as a marketing tool to take part in it. My interview will be featured in May; you can see one of her recent interviews here and if you’re interested in taking part, click here to contact Mary. (Normally she conducts the interviews on the phone so distance is no object!)
But why would you want to run such a feature on your website? Surely you’ll be promoting other people’s businesses rather than your own? Well, in Mary’s case she has seen traffic to her website grow since she started the series of interviews – which is always a good thing – and as she offers social media training and consultancy, she’s giving visitors genuine proof that social media works. These people aren’t Mary’s customers, by the way, and she hasn’t paid them to be interviewed!
I’ve been involved in another couple of web interviews lately, too. Morgen Bailey runs a fantastic resource for writers and she “interviewed” me via email a couple of weeks back, adding her own comments to my responses to make it flow more naturally. I think the completed interview is an interesting insight into what makes me tick as a writer, and Morgen was able to promote some of her services too – a win win situation! You can read the interview here.
Finally, fellow proofreader Liz Broomfield of Libro Editing has been running Small Business Interviews on her blog for a couple of years now. Basically every week she interviews (via email) a small business owner and then every year she revisits the interview and asks them what’s changed in their business. It makes for fascinating reading and I’m sure has raised the profile of Liz and her business hugely, too. You can read my initial interview here – and if you’re interested in taking part you can get in touch with Liz here.
So how could you use interviews to raise your business profile? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Image courtesy of chanpipat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
