Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition

Expert Interviews

Conducting interviews with experts is a core component of the elevation principle. Great content plus other people is what helps your business grow quickly. Part of the “other people” component is content that results from expert interviews.

When you interview people who have professional knowledge in topical areas of interest to your ideal base, you'll be able to easily generate outstanding content and build relationships with experts. (Refer to Chapter 3, the section on discovering people, for more on how to find experts, and to Chapter 4, the section on working with outside experts, to learn how to persuade them to participate.)

Keep in mind that the most approachable experts have typically authored books or work for businesses that are known in your industry.

SocialMediaExaminer.com regularly interviews experts in the fields of marketing and social media. We publish at least three interviews a month. For example, I conducted an interview with Frank Eliason, senior vice president of social media at Citigroup, titled, “Why Social Media Is Inseparable from Customer Service.”

In this interview, with Frank on camera, I asked him about his thoughts on the current state of customer service and social media (see Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1 Here I'm introducing Frank Eliason at a major trade show.

You also should check out the written interview example in Appendix B called, ...