Secret to Getting Interviews

Yesterday I was interviewed by Elijah at The At Home Couple Blog.  Elijah is a regular reader of this Blog and is one of my top commentators.  He approached me a while ago to do an interview on his Blog for his readers, and I agreed.  Yesterday we finally did the interview and it was quite fun.

As some of you may remember, back in November of 2007 I did an interview with Dr. Joe Vitale when this Blog was still in it’s infancy.  Interviews can be a great way to bring some seed traffic to your Blog and they can provide a lot of value to your readers.  They can also help you to establish credibility in the marketplace.

Pat O’Bryan has this really cool metaphor for becoming an “expert” in something.  He talks about it in reference to online business or Internet marketing, but the metaphor can really be applied to anything else.  His metaphor is that in life we are all in something like a Disney parade.  If anyone has ever seen the Disney parade, it’s basically this super long parade where all the Disney characters come out and walk down the main street in Disneyland.

I can’t remember exactly how long it takes for the parade to walk by, but let’s just say that you end up seeing more Disney characters than you could ever remember.

Pat’s metaphor is that when it comes to Internet marketing, or Blogging or whatever, we are all part of this Disney-like parade.  Once you begin Blogging or Internet Marketing, you join the parade behind the person at the very end and you start marching.

There are a tonne of people ahead of you already, and in the beginning you end up being the guy tagging along in the end, but soon enough someone else joins the parade and you are no longer at the very end.

After a few months, a whole bunch of people are now marching behind you and after a few years there are probably just as many people behind you as there are in front of you.

Most people get discouraged because they compare themselves to all the people ahead of them in the parade.  For example, I could say that Joe Vitale is ahead of me in the parade.  So, compared to the millions and millions he makes online in a year, I could get very discouraged comparing my online income to his.

The trick is to realize that the people ahead of you in the parade will probably always be ahead of you, and that’s ok.  You don’t have to catch up to them in order to be part of the parade.  There is plenty of room for everyone.  If you just become comfortable with your place in the parade, you’ll soon start to realize that there are plenty of people who are behind you as well, and THAT is where your “expert status” will come into effect.

Let’s take Blogging as an example.  Let’s say you run a Blog and you’ve got 20 RSS subscribers, $1/month in AdWords income and 10 visitors per day popping by, leaving the occasional comment.  Do you realize that there are people out there who don’t even know what a Blog is?  You’re ahead of them in the parade.  Tonnes of people have never left a comment on a Blog.  You’re ahead of them.  You’re also ahead of all the people who have never started a Blog.

Now, when I say “ahead” I don’t mean this in an egotistical kind of way, saying that you’re somehow better then them.  All I’m saying is that in the eyes of the people behind you in the parade, you are an “expert” already.

Your job, essentially is to learn from the people ahead of you in the parade and pass the message down the line to the people behind you.  When I interviewed Dr. Joe Vitale, that’s the way I was looking at it.  I felt I was at a point in the parade where I could potentially secure a quick interview with him and pass it onto my readers.  Elijah pretty much did the same thing.

So what’s the secret to securing an interview with someone ahead of you in the parade?  Let’s use a Blogger as an example.  Here are some tips:

1. Become a regular reader on their Blog.  Subscribe to their RSS feed, download and read any eBooks they offer.
2. If they offer any products for sale, get familiar with the products and purchase them if they would help you in your life.
3. Begin to foster a relationship by commenting on their Blog or participating in their forums.  Although I don’t reply to every comment on this Blog, I read every single one.  I know Bloggers way ahead of me in the parade who still do the same thing.  Comments are the lifeblood of the Blog, so Bloggers like to read them to keep a pulse on their blogs.
4. If you’re going to do an interview, look for questions which haven’t already been addressed on the Blog.  If your interview is a series of questions which could easily be answered by simply searching through the archives, it’s probably not going to be a hit with the person having to repeat himself.  It also shows that you don’t pay attention and aren’t familiar with their Blog.
5. Be flexible in your approach.  Some people prefer phone call interviews, while others prefer online methods like MSN or Skype or email.
6. Be flexible in your schedule.  Don’t email someone the day before you need the interview done and say “You don’t know me, but I need to interview you before tomorrow.”
7. Put some thought into the questions and find a way to make the questions relevant to your readers.
8. Finally, there is one secret that most people don’t know, or if they do know it they don’t follow it.  I suspect it is because they are afraid that because the person is ahead of them in the parade, they will not want to or have the time to do an interview.  At the end of the day, after covering your bases on the first 7 steps there is only one secret to getting an interview left.  It’s so profound that I can’t even list it here.  Instead what I’ve done is I’ve hidden it within this post.  If you look at the post, you’ll notice certain letters have been highlighted in orange.  If you write down the letters in the order that they appear in this post, you will have the real secret to getting an Interview.  Shhhh…don’t share it with anyone else!

I hope that helps anyone else out there who’s been thinking about getting an interview with someone.

If you’d like to read Elijah’s interview with me, you can find it on his Blog “The At Home Couple Blog“.

You can find out which business person I would spend 15minutes with, and what I think about coffee.

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