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Create a interview seriesOnce you become a thought leader in your industry you are then no longer competing on price with your industry peers; am I correct?.

A powerful way to become a thought leader is by interviewing others in your niche who are already “walking the walk”. As you then become a pro in the eyes of others by way of association and also by providing quality interesting content.

You may be thinking “Why would anyone famous or even playing a bigger game than myself agree to an interview?”
Well the reality is that someone becomes an industry leader by getting themselves out there and doing the things that others won’t,
like agreeing to be interviewed.

One of my mentoring clients recently contacted some top players around the world in her industry “health and wellness”. Following the rules of Dale Carnegie’s great book “How to win friends and influence people” we posed the interview invitation in  a way that we outlined all the benefits they would receive by participating.

She has now remotely interviewed three world class celebrities in her niche area of health and wellness and plans on turning her interview series into a sale-able product.

So how did we do it? Below is a simple 5 step formula to create a Pro Interview Series!

Step 1: Identify the famous thought leaders in your industry

Thought leadersShoot for the stars as the most famous influential people often got that way by harnessing the power of media, so chances are they are more likely to agree to be interviewed. To identify thought leaders in a particular nice you should google keywords in your industry and see who’s name comes up consistently, and also find out who are the stars of popular documentary films on the subject.

Step 2: Contact them and persuade them to participate

Many thought leaders have a contact form on their website for media enquiries.

Present your case by highlighting the benefits they will receive by being interviewed. i.e access to a hungry audience in your country, or the promotion they will receive via your large following.

Remember most of us underestimate our reach and influence, with social media we can now easily have a reach of many thousands.

When contacting them suggest a possible time and place or medium for the interview. If they are overseas the medium could be via a Skype call or a Google hangout.

Step 3: Record the interview

Always start with your name and your website address and then give a brief introduction of the interviewee. Have at least 5-10 pre-prepared questions ready but if the interview is flowing well just go with it.

With Skype audio calls I like to record use a free tool called the Mp3 Skype recorder

With Google hangouts you could try Hangouts on air which records directly to your YouTube account and can be easily embedded on your website.

For both these tools I recommend that you use a microphone headset to get the best quality audio.

Step 4 Edit the recording

To do this you do not have to spend thousands on the latest equipment and tools.

For audio recordings I prefer to use the free audio mixing/editing software Audacity.

For video editing there are some great tools available, but chances are you already have a tool like Windows Live Movie Maker for pc or iMovie for mac already installed on your computer.

Step 5 Put it out there

Upload or embed the interview to your website, this is easily done if you have a WordPress website by either using the embed code found on YouTube or by uploading an audio file to your site and using an audio player plugin like the mb.MiniAudioPlayer.

Once you have the interview on your site invite as many people as possible to come and check it out through email and social media. A good strategy is to send the person you interviewed the link and encourage them to share. One of our mentoring clients benefited by the best selling author she interviewed sharing the link to her website on his facebook page with his legion of 10’s of thousands of raving fans.