I’ve had success with both. Well known is great, well known is really good for traffic, for prestige that you were able to interview this guy.
I mean imagine if I can get an interview with President Obama? Wow, wouldn’t that be incredible? I interviewed Obama. A lot of people know who Obama is don’t they? A lot of people want to know more about that well know person, especially in a good interview. So if you have a well known interview that you’ve secured and you want to promote other things on your Web site that is going to be real valuable to you, especially with the search engine terms.
See the whole goal of my Web site is two fold: It is to provide incredible value that no one else provides, but I’m also there to sell product. It is a business and I have a lot of expenses that I pay to keep this thing going from the transcripts to the editing to my team of virtual assistants. It can be expensive at the level that I’m doing it.
So you’ve got to sell something to keep it going. A great interview with President Obama, I could put that interview up on the Web site, I could take that interview and post it on YouTube, Michael Senoff Interviews President Obama, I could put it on Facebook, I could make the announcement on Twitter, and I could put it as a podcast up on iTunes. I guarantee you people are going to want to hear that thing and it’s going to bring people to the site and if they are a first time visitor to the site they are going to see a pop-up that asks for a name and email address. Then I have them on that list and I’ve a chance to wow them, I have a chance to drip on them with a series of auto-responders. I have like 87 different auto-responders just in that one auto-responder sequence that does nothing but give valuable information to new interviews.
So these are some of the methods that I would use and that I’ve had success with well known.
If it’s not a very well known that could be good, too. Mike Semonic, the guy who published the special effects cookbook, he wasn’t really well known at all but that has been a really successful interview because it’s like a nobody who made a million dollars in self publishing. And the visitors to the site they can identify with that. They may view themselves as a nobody and they say, “Well, if this nobody can do it, maybe I can do it, too.” So people like listening to that and if you do a good job as an interviewer that will get a lot of play and get people listening to that and they will remember that interview.
It’s packed with all kinds of ideas from an unknown guy but I was able to get all the information out of him by asking good questions. I just got his story down.
But ask yourself; what is the ulterior motive, what is the purpose of the interview? Is it to get traffic to your site? And that is very, very important. Is it to provide great content? That’s very important, too. Is it to build additional content for existing products so you can increase the value and sell them for more money? That is important, too. You have to ask yourself; what is my purpose and what am I trying to do with all of this?
Another option is you know David Dutton; he has a nice little system for doing this. He goes after the people who were once celebrities and their 15 minutes is over but everyone still knows who they are. Right and they had some real marketing value. A lot of people who were on national TV, a lot of people know their name, Dave Dutton interviews this very well known TV star, even though they aren’t that famous now, that can go a long way in building your credibility. And that could be your strategy. Your strategy can be nothing but to land five or six interviews with big time people just to build your credibility so you can use that social proof to trade up to higher level interviews.
But the bigger names can be really valuable for social proof and for getting traffic to your site, a very important strategy if you’re selling products and services.