Bring Your Blog to the Next Level with Expert Interviews

Note from Mack: This is a sponsored post from Ann Smarty for MyBlogU, who is the sponsor of #Blogchat in August.  You can learn more about them by clicking here. 

Last week I was lucky enough to co-host #blogchat talking about being featured in the expert interviews for brand awareness and influence building, so today I thought I’d follow up with tips on how to benefit from publishing expert interviews as well (there’s truly a win-win concept there)!

Attracting real people to your blog is not an easy task… especially nowadays that the web is so much overloaded with content. Building a micro-community around your blog is so essential for its success: You need people who will help you get your word out.

That’s where the concept of group interviews comes in handy. If someone is willing to provide a quote for your article, that accomplishes so many goals at a time:

• Your content suddenly becomes more trust-worthy (With readers seeing possibly familiar names contributing);
• You get people on board who are willing to promote and share your article (the basics of ego-bait) with the huge long-term potential benefit of turning those contributors into your blog community champions.
• Your article becomes more in-depth and unique (thanks to the variety of first-hand experiences or personal takes shared in it)
• You can engage your community by inviting them to feature their answers on your blog (and thus build better relationships with your readers)
• You may discover lots of new angles of the topic you thought you knew quite well (and thus stand out)…

The Draw Of The Expert Interview: Examples

While there are many reasons for conducting expert interviews, there are two primary reasons that they work so effectively. First, they are leaning on the brand of those contributors’ namse, which holds a lot of clout on both the social web and the entire industry. Second, you are giving your own followers/readers/fans something valuable that they can use, learn from and be entertained by.

Interviews are a great vessel for well received content. Here’s an example of how one email to a prominent blogger with a single question can be turned into a useful article of its own. Here’s a more traditional q&a-style expert round-up, with each contributor telling a personal story. Here’s another approach: A group expert interview which was packaged into a huge all-in-one tutorial filled with actionable advice. Here’s another type of the group interview that doesn’t have “question-answer” format but still delivers a powerful message with first-hand examples.

There are also whole business models based solely on featuring expert interviews. Here’s a good example shared by my fellow @MyBlogU ambassador @YoavEzer: A site filled with lots of personal stories of how people embraced freedom for the sake of becoming entrepreneurs. Or this one turning interviews into a powerful course! There’s also a great example I came across at #blogchat:

I’ve experimented a lot with various types of expert interviews and I’ve seen great results, especially if I get consistent: Our weekly #vcbuzz interviews with experts (turned into on-site interviews as well) attracted some of the biggest industry names to our site: Most of them have become our site users and / or chat regulars.

The Power is in Connections

Creating awesome content is often not enough to get heard. You need eager people who will be happy to call your blog “a home” and will talk back to you. Otherwise, it’s tough to keep on. Adding expert interviews to your blog editorial calendar (and possibly approaching the task with some creativity) is a great way to get some discussion going and spread your reach!

Do you have any creative examples of blogging utilizing expert interviews? Please share them in the comments!