11 Advantages of Interviewing Others and Being Interviewed

Learn more about Internet marketing strategy by subscribing to my RSS feed - free and updated daily!

If you’ve been following Winning the Web over the past 3 months, you might know that one of the top features on the blog is Winners’ Circle, a collection of interviews with some of the top Internet marketers and entrepreneurs in the industry. So far there are interviews with Tyler Cruz, Ms. Danielle, and Prija of Blogging the Movie. I’ve set my sights high and I hope to add some more A-list bloggers and influential marketers in the near future. It’s always good to learn from the experiences of the best and to try to emulate or improve upon what they’re doing. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out Winners’ Circle. Also, I’ve done a couple interviews myself and will be keeping a running list of blogs I am featured on here - Interviews with Gyutae Park of Winning the Web. If you want to know a little more about me, read those interviews.

The Advantages of Interviewing Others

When someone with authority speaks, everyone listens. Because of this, it’s a good Internet marketing tactic to try and conduct interviews with people who have more authority than you do. In this way, you are leveraging the power and audience of another person to promote your own brand or website. For example, if you have a fan site on U2, conducting a personal interview with Bono himself will do wonders for your site. Below is a comprehensive list of the advantages interviewing others can have on your site or business.

• Your site builds authority because it is associated with an influential figure.
• Your site adds another voice other than your own.
• The content for an interview is mostly provided by the interviewee.
• Interviews are interesting to read and usually gain many incoming links.
• You develop a relationship with the interviewee, which is good to have and can help you later on.
• You learn from the experiences and skills of others by asking the questions you are most interested in.

If you are not in the habit of interviewing others, you might want to look into it as soon as possible. Conducting interviews with the top leaders in your field can boost your business and help you make a name for yourself. Be sure that your questions are personalized and unique and are catered to the audience of your site. When asking for an interview, I try to be as concise and as direct as possible. I also like to limit my list of questions to 10 at most and will include them in my initial email to save time.

Looking to interview someone? Contact me with a list of questions and I’ll try to reply to everyone to the best of my ability.

The Advantages of Being Interviewed

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of interviewing others, next we’ll discuss the advantages of getting interviewed. Once you reach a certain level with more and more people knowing who you are and what you do, there will be an increased interest in conducting an interview with you. People will want to know more about you and try to extract some of those golden nuggets of knowledge and experience you have. It’s important to use this to your advantage. Interviews are a great way to expand your reach and to make the leap from oblivion to highly-acclaimed authority. Below are some of the advantages of being interviewed.

• Connect with your fan base and develop relationships.
• Expand your reach by tapping into new audiences that you previously did not have exposure in.
• Get a chance to talk about yourself without having to force the issue or sound vain.
• Let the interviewer market you on their site (with links to yours). More exposure with less work.
• Be perceived as a top authority. Interviewees are usually considered important and worth talking about. Image is everything.

Now that you know how interviews can work to your benefit, contact some people in your industry who might have some interesting stories to share and conduct an interview. Once you get the ball rolling and start making a name for yourself, people will start sending you interview questions as well. How are you using interviews to learn more about others and make a name for yourself?