Leads**
**by Garrett French**
In 2009 we found that visitors from our two blog
<http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/link-building-qa-with-ben-wills-ceo-and-co-founder-of-ontolo.html>
interviews
<http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2009/11/09/ben-wills-garrett-french-interview>
converted to inquiries 3X more than visitors from our SEL articles.
We also discovered, in the link building query
<http://searchengineland.com/21-link-builders-share-advanced-link-building-queries-29848>
group interview we conducted with 21 link builders, the
"share-power" that interviews can have. That piece received 443
tweets, 238 Delicious saves and over 4k links. Our second most-popular
article
<http://searchengineland.com/how-to-research-create-and-distribute-highly-linkable-content-22416>
at SEL received 161 tweets, 126 Delicious saves and 301 links.
So. Do you interview others or try to get others to interview you?
Either way, the queries are the same to find your prospects. Here are
query ideas to get you started.
Media interview queries
intitle:expert interview or talk or discuss or answer
expert interview
intitle:"group interview"
intitle:"advice from"
intitle:"chat with"
intitle:"conversation with"
intitle:"discussion with"
intitle:"q and a with"
intitle:"tips from"
intitle:"q/a with"
intitle:"q&a with"
intitle:"question and answer with"
intitle:"questions and answers with"
intitle:"thoughts on"
intitle:"talks with"
intitle:"talk with"
intitle:"discusses"
"group interview"
intitle:"thoughts from"
intitle:experts interview or talk or discuss or answer
intitle:experts interview or talk or discuss or answer
intitle:expert interview or talk or discuss or answer
To speed up your research, auto-create these interview queries in our
new link building query tool
<http://link-building-tools.ontolo.com/LinkBuildingQueries.php>
. Just add your keyword and select "Thought Leader" from the
Asset Type dropdown menu.
Running queries and analyzing your interview prospects
The queries above show you people and sites that conduct interviews
(targets for getting interviewed) and they show you people who submit
to interviews (targets for interviewing).
If you want to get interviewed, use our guide to qualifying link
prospects
<http://searchengineland.com/a-guide-to-qualifying-link-prospects-for-relevance-value-potentiality-17637>
to identify the sites that will have the greatest impact on your
rankings. For large digs I'd also recommend removing the
"intitle:" command from the queries above, running each query and
then analyze them using the SERPs dominator process
<http://searchengineland.com/the-link-builders-guide-to-analyzing-serp-dominators-for-link-opportunities-21076>
. This will show you a far larger universe of prospective
interviewers (hat tip to Dennis Hette.ma <http://Hette.ma>
for this idea).
If you want to interview people in your industry, make note of people
who consistently give interviews and gather all the URLs of all their
interviews. Interview subjects are highly-likely to help promote your
interview with them. Make note too of community metrics
<http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/how-to-measure-community/>
that illustrate their social reach such as Twitter follower count,
how many times they've been listed on Twitter, their blog subscribers,
etc.
By no means should your interview prospecting stop with queries
though: your existing relationships are another great source for
interview prospects.
To interview or be interviewed?
Interviewing others—especially group interviews—has the potential
to earn many links but far fewer leads. Getting interviewed earns you
one link but many leads. If you're newer in a space, build your
community and reputation by interviewing others. If you've been in the
space longer this does not give you the "right" to be interviewed,
but you will have a better chance of landing interviews through
outreach.
Interviewing others, either solo or in a group, requires careful
question preparation. If you land an interview with a prominent
industry expert you must go back and review their previous interviews
(it won't do to ask questions they've already answered elsewhere,
unless you use a different angle). In group interviews you must create
engaging questions that help your guests demonstrate expertise and
meet the information needs of your audience
<http://searchengineland.com/link-building-with-content-how-to-attract-links-and-leads-27982>
.
Getting interviewed requires far more finesse and relationship
building. You're asking others to "vouch" for you to their
readership, plus do the actual work of interviewing you which may
require becoming more knowledgeable about what you do. If you don't do
your homework in approaching potential interviewees you'll come off
looking arrogant and overreaching. But, the leads are worth the
effort.
Further thoughts on interview execution
Preparation is everything, whether you're interviewing by phone,
email, audio podcast or on video. Treat every interview like a serious
business engagement by conducting thorough background research. Know
where your subject went to high school, his first job after college
and be prepared to ask how these historical nuggets impacted his
ascent to the top of the industry (unless those questions have already
been asked in other interviews). But you'll know this because you
already sourced and took notes from all previous interviews by
querying: ["person's name" interview].
On the other side of the microphone, in some cases you may get more
interviews if you write and answer great questions for yourself and
simply submit the interview as if it were a guest post
<http://myblogguest.com/>
. Researching previous interview questions with industry
experts—and staying relentlessly, thoroughly helpful—will help you
ask yourself some solid questions that make it easier for your
interviewer to hit the publish button. Further, be aware that the
person interviewing you might be interested in your capacity for
pushing the interview in your community. It won't hurt to let them
know how you plan to help promote them!
Group interviews done well are exhaustively thorough. Here are two
fantastic examples from the link building space: 11 Experts on Link
Development Speak Out
<http://www.sugarrae.com/11-experts-on-link-development-speak/>
and Link Value Factors <http://wiep.net/link-value-factors/>
. Your goal as a group interviewer is to dig out nuggets of
actionable brilliance using questions and your decisions about
organization and editing. It's a lot of work, but if you have great
interview subjects and incisive questions, the links will follow.
Plus, promotion is "baked in," as the interview subjects will
mention the interview to their network.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.
Garrett French <http://searchengineland.com/author/garrett-french/>
is co-founder of Ontolo <http://ontolo.com>
, a link building agency and co-author of Link-Building-Guide.com
<http://www.link-building-guide.com>
, which leads motivated readers through the methods and processes of
large-scale, crawler-based link research, link acquisition and
linker-targeted content strategy.
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