How to Get Blog Traffic Using Unique Strategies Part 3

Get Blog Traffic to Your Blog By Conducting an Interview Series

In the last post I talked about how blog series can be excellent ways to get blog traffic, but there’s one type of series in particular that deserves special mention: The interview series.

The interview series is can be ongoing or close-ended, but the premise is the same: You interview a set of people, preferably with a significant audience of their own, on a specific topic and run their answers on your blog as text, audio, or video. For instance, if your market is fitness professionals, you could interview the “trainers to the stars,” asking each one how they got their high-profile clients, how much they make, and the pros and cons of working in Hollywood.

This type of series is effective to get blog traffic for several reasons:

It provides great value to your readers, who will enjoy getting an insider’s view of the topic at hand.
You can generate content without having to write anything yourself.
It gives consistency to your website or blog, building momentum over time and giving readers something regular to look forward to.
It allows you to leverage other people’s audiences. Example: If you interview Jillian Michaels for your celebrity trainer series, you will gain visibility from people who follow “The Biggest Loser.”

Creating an interview series is fairly straightforward: Create a battery of questions, generate a list of interviewees, send them out, and when you get answers, post them to your blog as a regular feature. There are some hints, though, that will make your interview series rock:

Keep your list of questions short and to the point. Make it easy for your interviewees by focusing on only a few targeted queries, rather than asking them to write a novel for you.
Have a backlog of interviews. Before you roll out a “regular” feature, make sure you have enough interviews in the can so you don’t have to take an indefinite break before the next set of responses rolls in.
Keep your interviewees in the loop. Let the subjects of your interviews know when you post their information. That way they can post a link on their blog and share it with their readers, thereby driving traffic your way.
Encourage audio and video responses. Audio and video are great ways to increase your audience and appeal to other learning modalities. Some of your interviewees may find it easier to answer your questions via recording, so let them know they’re welcome to do so.
Create internal links. Just like with any blog series, drive traffic internally by linking from each post in the series to other posts. Not only does this practice let readers know about the other interviews they may be interested in reading, it also improves your search engine rankings.

If you’d like to take a look at a neat spin on interview series, check out internet marketer Nicole Dean’s “Expert Briefs” series on her blog, NicoleontheNet.com. (You can find them all here: http://www.nicoleonthenet.com/category/marketing-experts/ ) Instead of posting a single respondent’s answers to a group of questions, she posts a single question or topic to a group of respondents. Inventive, interesting, and traffic-worthy!

If you missed the first 2 parts to this series you can check them out here-

Get blog traffic by hosting a contest

Get blog traffic by writing a series

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Comments

George Fourie says:

03/03/2011 at 6:30 pm

Hey Angela!

Yep, it’s the perfect way to engage an audience! Great tips here too! I’ll checkout Nicole’s link there too thank you.
George Fourie´s last [type] ..MLM Weekly News- Ameriplan Terminated 900 Distributors WHY
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