Many online solo service professionals wonder how they will ever become known in their industry, given the easy access to the abundance of information found online. Almost everyone claims to be an expert, so it stands to reason that some percentage of that group are charlatans. How do you create trust and authenticity with your target market and be seen as a real, true expert rather than as a sham?
One of the easiest and quickest ways to do this is by interviewing experts in your industry. People pay big bucks to listen to or meet people like Mark Victor Hansen, Richard Branson, and Bill Gates. While these people may be considered celebrities in their fields, there are celebrity-caliber experts in every industry that members of that industry would be eager to hear speak and would gladly pay for that privilege.
What’s nice about this strategy is that the “celebrity factor” of interviewing experts rubs off on you, as you then become the person who knows “Miss Big Name” in your industry because you just interviewed that person. And, if you use the interviews as a lead generation strategy, you name is getting out to thousands in your target market in a big way.
Here are the 10 steps you can follow to help you become your industry’s leading expert in 30 days by conducting expert interviews:
- Research your industry leaders and compelling topics. Off the top of your head, you can probably easily list 10-20 leading professionals in your industry. And, given your level of expertise, you can also probably list 3-5 of the most compelling topics or problems in your industry. Create a list of your experts and topical areas and note which are experts in what areas. Note their email addresses or phone numbers where they can be contacted.
- Narrow your focus. Once you’ve taken a look at the experts and the current topical areas of interest in your industry, create a focus for your interviews. Perhaps you choose online marketing for chiropractors, lead generation strategies for real estate agents, publicity techniques for speakers or new retirement options for baby boomers. Whatever your focus, make sure that your grouping of interviews has an easily identifiable theme that will resonate with your target market.
- Create your list of your top 5-10 favorites. Take your list and organize it from most favorite to least favorite speaker. Create a goal of 7 speakers to interview and begin working the list.
- Create a web page featuring your speakers. Before you begin contacting your speakers, create a web page featuring your top 10 speakers and their speaking topic. This is something you can show to your invited speakers to give them a sense of who else is being invited and/or has accepted your interview invitation. To remain ethical, you need to note on that page which of the speakers are confirmed and which are still in negotiations.
- Invite them to be interviewed. You can begin with an email invitation, but as many of those are easily overlooked or are simply not delivered, getting on the phone and calling the expert is probably your best bet. You’ll need to tell them whether or not the interview will be live or recorded, have them sign an agreement that both of you can do what you like with the interview (sell it or give it away), and set your interview date and time.
- Create your list of questions or ask them for a program outline. Some of your speakers may have a prepared signature speech and a description of that speech. If so, ask them to add the 3-5 things that someone will take away as a result of listening to the interview. This will help you create copy for the interview web page. If they don’t have a signature speech, create a list of questions to send them on the topic on which they’re being interviewed.
- Conduct and record the interview. Use a teleconference bridgeline or recording system to conduct and record the interview. Most interviews are 60 minutes, which is usually more than enough time for an expert to make several valuable points.
- Transcribe the audio and edit the audio. Whether you’re selling or giving away the interviews, having the audio edited will make life easier on your listeners. Learn how to use audio editing software to balance out the speakers, edit out any hums or background noise, and to add introductory music and outgoing music to the beginning and ending of the audio. And, because some people prefer to read rather than to listen to audio, have the audios transcribed as well.
- Create a package. Once the interviews are complete and are edited and transcribed, you need to make a decision about packaging and pricing. You can decide to offer the package of interviews in an electronic format only, as a physical CD/print product, or both, and you can sell the package or give it away. Whatever the way you decide to package them, you need to have a graphic designed to represent the package. If you choose to ship as a physical product, you’ll need to have a CD cover and label designed and determine how you’re going to duplicate and ship the physical product.
- Interview the expert a second time and offer the package. In your original conversation with your speaker, mention that you want to conduct 2 interviews of that speaker — one as a part of the series you’re creating, and a second interview promoted exclusively to her list. In the interview for her list, your upsell becomes the package, and your speaker has been set up as an affiliate and earns a commission off of any of the packages sold in that promotion. You’ve created a win-win situation for both you and your speaker.
Interviewing experts in your industry is a quick way to become a well-known expert to your target market. And, if you choose to sell the package of interviews, you can earn some quick cash, as well. Begin to leverage your expertise by interviewing industry experts, and watch your online business grow!
Internet Marketing Automation Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create prosperous online businesses that make more profit in less time. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
How to Become Your Industry’s Leading Expert in 30 Days
Website marketing is extremely competitive. If you use videos on your website, you will do much better against the competition. The slickest type of video to use now is the transparent video.
People like to watch short, to-the-point videos. Statistics prove that using video on your site helps greatly.
A transparent video lives in a dynamic html layer. As you can see, you can scroll up and down and the transparent video stays in its position.
Making transparent videos is becoming easier to do. The tools you will use to accomplish this task are becoming more user-friendly.
As a quick overview of how you make this type of video: First, you need to record the video against a green background. Next, you need to key out the background which makes it transparent, or invisible. The process of keying out the background is covered in another one of my videos. The Keylight Keyer(1,2) is simple to use and very effective.
The settings to use when your render your video are very important. Your intent should be to make the file size of the video very small so that it will load quickly.
Most beginners don’t know the secret about how to make the correct settings. They render their video at a high resolution with stereo sound.
Consequently their video is bloated and it won’t load quickly. More importantly, when it does load, it is likely to stop and go. It will need to buffer repeatedly to transfer all those bytes.
Consider the settings you will make in video editing software. It uses the a special codec. What is a codec? This is a compression / decompression type of software product.
In non-technical language, it removes the unessential information from the video file. In a sense, it compresses the video by taking out information that doesn’t show in the video — it isn’t unusual to see a reduction ratio in the range of 100 to 1.
As an example, a walk-on video was saved as an uncompressed AVI file. It was 251,081 kilobytes in size. After this was run through the On2 codec, it was compressed down to 1,567 kilobytes. That reduction was in the range of 160 to 1…quite incredible.
Here is a review of what it takes to make a transparent walk-on video:
We encode the alpha channel that includes the actor but doesn’t include the background. Remember, we don’t want the background.
The frame rate can be reduced to one-half the source’s frames per second without much reduction in quality. By the way, a screen capture video can be shown at 8 or 10 frames per second without noticeable change in quality. The source’s fps was 29.97, which is typical. If we divide that in half, we get 14.987, not 15. If you use 15, you will lose lip synch if the video is long enough.
Don’t concern yourself with the default settings in your software…choose the maximum data rate of about 220 KBS. Consider the audio settings next. We don’t need stereo and we don’t need any more than 32 kilobits per second. If you add the video’s kbps to the audio’s kbps, we get only 252 kbps.
The vast majority of internet users, about 85%, can show a video properly without starting and stopping if you make your video small.
Making these type videos is fun and rewarding. Everybody should be able to make a walk-on video with a little study and work.
Transparent videos are being implemented more frequently. What are the secrets to making a transparent video? Learn about how to make transparent videos and more at http://www.TrafficBumper.com
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
%%How to Make a Transparent “Walk-on” Video, Part 2%%
At 9 a.m. Pacific time (noon Eastern) today, we’re going to do our third Google webmaster chat. People will be able to ask questions via Google moderator and we’ll answer a bunch either in Google moderator or over the audio portion of the chat. There will also be several Googlers doing short presentations. I hope to chat with lots of people, so please thinking about signing up. Here’s how to do it.
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Join the webmaster chat today!
You have a website, and perhaps you’re even a professional salesperson, and as such you know that the best way to sell someone something is face-to-face, but have you seen the price of gas lately?
So whether your customers are local, national, or international, the cost of getting to them is just too darn high to make any money. You could call them on the phone or email them, but with voice mail, spam filters, and all manner of gatekeepers, it is literally impossible to get to people, even when they’re waiting for your call.
It’s never been easy to sell, but in today’s jaded, cynical, frustrated business climate, the job is even harder.
Order-takers are next to useless in the field, so don’t expect the tactic to work any better on your website: you know what I mean by order-takers, the guys and gals that service fully developed territories with clients that already use your wares, and who order what they need no matter whether anybody calls on them or not.
No, what you need is a real sales presentation, one aimed at the customers you don’t have, the ones looking for new ideas and products.
Here’s seven website sales tactics to remember:
1. Use The Web’s Video and Audio Capability
Make better use out of your company’s website by adding some face-to-face ingredient through the use of audio and video. Give your audience someone they can relate to, someone who will connect on an emotional and psychological level.
2. Don’t Fall Into The SEO Trap
Unfortunately, many business owners have fallen into the SEO trap of designing their online presentations for search engine spiders not people. Sure it’s great to drive traffic to a website, but if they leave within seconds of arriving without getting your marketing message, what exactly have you achieved?
3. Technology Is Not The Solution To A People Problem
And of course, you’ve got those websites that are nothing more than a shopping cart and ordering system; a technological solution to a human problem that turns whatever is being sold into a commodity, and we all know commodity sales go to the lowest seller.
4. Be Aware of The Paradox of Choice
Some entrepreneurs think by offering everything but the kitchen sink is how to get customers; but they obviously haven’t heard of the Paradox of Choice, a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz, whose book by the same name postulates that the more choice you offer, the less likely people will make any decision at all.
5. What Is Required Is A Performer
The Web with its remote, dislocated nature requires very specific performance criteria that few people, even professional salespeople possess. You may be practiced at making presentations, maybe even immensely effective in front of a live audience or in a boardroom, but selling in person is far more forgiving than selling remotely online.
What is required is a performer, someone who looks, sounds, and acts the apart; someone who also knows how to use verbal and nonverbal techniques to deliver a message. Don’t let your ego get in the way of building your online clientele.
6. The Web Is No Place For Overheads Or Flipcharts
Selling on the Web is about building relationships the same as traditional beat-the-pavement sales, but the arsenal of techniques required is far more challenging from a psychological and performance point-of-view. An online presentation that is nothing more than a series of overhead slides, graphs, and royalty-free photos delivered with a tentative delivery will not be taken seriously from an audience that is one click away from accessing your competitors.
7. Treat Your Website Visitors Like An Audience
So what then are the criteria for creating an online presentation that sells? There are four things your online presentation must be: informative, engaging, entertaining, and memorable.
Why you ask? The thing you have to keep in mind when you want to use your website to connect to people and build a business relationship is that you can’t treat them like customers, you have to treat them like an audience, and once you make that leap of faith, you are on your way to a successful online sales presentation strategy.
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.
About MRPwebmedia
People ask, “What do you do?” You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to video-production to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.
What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to your audience’s real needs. We tell your story so your brand, your message, embeds in the minds of your clients. We are corporate storytellers.
Credit:
Creating A Successful Online Sales Strategy
Jerry Bader, Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia announced the introduction of Cache Closed an entertaining marketing resource for medium sized businesses fed-up with ineffective Web advertising schemes and the never-ending pursuit of search engine optimization rankings. See http://www.CacheClosed.com
Ontario, Canada–June 20, 2008 – MRPwebmedia, a Canadian Web marketing video and audio production firm with clients in the USA, Australia, England, and Canada announced the introduction of Cache Closed, a entertaining character who stars in a new series of videos designed to inform businesses on how to deliver their marketing messages in the most memorable manner using the full arsenal of webmedia techniques.
Jerry Bader, Senior Partner at the firm says: “Cache Closed is a digital construct, fabricated from the binary remains of lost and discarded knowledge found in the ditch beside the information highway. Cache, a combination of Max Headroom and Jim Cary’s Mask character, has absorbed theses random bits of wisdom to create a 
guru of marketing and branding who freely spouts his expertise and knowledge to all who will listen.”
Josh Bader, Director of Visual Design and Video Production, adds: “We already have over fifty articles on our mrpwebmedia.com website that explain how to use audio and video on the Web to deliver clients’ marketing messages in the most effective way, but we wanted to create something where the medium was the message. Cache is the perfect vehicle to explain to business owners and marketing executives feed-up with chasing search engine optimization nirvana of how to convert browsers into an audience, and an audience into customers.”
Simon Bader, Director of Audio and Sound Design continues: “Any business truly interested in maximizing their Web presence needs to understand the Web environment beyond chasing random search traffic and learn how to present material so a relevant audience remembers who you are, what you do, and why they should care. And that’s what the Cache Closed website and video series are designed to teach people: How to get noticed and be remembered.”
MRPwebmedia’s thought-provoking marketing articles have a great following and Cache is one more Web-video vehicle that extends the motivational dialog the firm has with its International clients and followers. It illustrates the cutting edge techniques and offbeat point-of-view of a Web-marketing firm that understands how to get a message across, and it showcases the full complement of services that MRPwebmedia offers.
Jerry Bader goes on to say: “People ask us, ‘What do you do?’ You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design. What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to our clients’ audience’s real needs. We tell our clients’ stories so their brand and their message embeds in the minds of their clients. In short, we are corporate storytellers, and the Cache Closed videos and associated articles show how it’s done, and why.”
Jerry Bader, Senior Partner, MRPwebmedia
Tel: (905) 764-1246
info@mrpwebmedia.com
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads
http://www.cacheclosed.com
http://www.sonicpersonality.com
http://www.136words.com
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MRPwebmedia Introduces Web Wise-Guy Cache Closed