Social Media Marketing Made Easy | Facebook & Twitter for Business

What to Say on Social Media – 10 Talk Worthy Topics

Guest post Adeah Wetzel

Are you participating with your friends, followers and likes on social media?
Okay, I hear the mumbling…”What do I share? Who cares if I am at the car-wash?”

Right. I get that a lot.

Try using these 10 talk worthy topics on social media (1-2 posts per day for 30 days) and I promise your perspective will be different…So will your business.

What to say on social media- 10 talk worthy topics

1. Things you treasure- Think about things that light your fire! It doesn’t matter how big or small , it seems people love these insider warm-fuzzies. So what is it for you? Mine are spiritual and personal growth, yummy foods, and funny things my kids say.

2. Things that inspire you- Where do you go to affirm your greatness? Art? Songs? Favorite author? Mine include the ocean, women who are living their passion and chocolate.

3. Tools you often use- Stop and consider what items are you using throughout your day. Ergonomic chair? Astronaut pen? Vitamixer? Tell people how they bring value into your life/business/family. My top tools- headset for calls, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, ipod touch and pandora.com.

4. Bragging Rights- Share your accomplishments in your business. Did you help a client face her fear of asking for a raise? Tell people! Is your schedule booked with clients for the next 2 months? Brag about it! You get the idea, right?

5. Other peoples’ stuff- What e-newsletter do you always read? What blogs are you subscribed to? What events/products are your peers producing? What website offers great content for your community?

6. You couldn’t stop laughing because… Funny things (not at the expense of others of course!) are wonderful to share. Search on Youtube.com for a funny video or find a photo that cracks you up. Here is a great example: 

7. Ask questions- Get curious about your community. What are their thoughts about current affairs? What are they doing this weekend? How do they manage family and work life? What books are on their nightstands or Kindles? What cures a bad day? It doesn’t have to be about your work. Focus on getting to know who you are connected with on your social media profiles.

8. Witty musings- You know those strange and lovely things that happen to us in life? One morning I found a worm in my coffee and shared about it. These moments show your human side and give others a chance to connect on a common trait…being human.

9. Places or products- Where did you get your haircut? What is your favorite “I’m not cooking tonight” restaurant? Did your insurance agent go above and beyond? Did your cell phone company correct an error they made (what that could happen!)? Sharing your interactions with other businesses is a simple and lovely way to build community.

10. Promote your stuff!- Important to note this is #10 of 10 but it is still on the list. Earning a profit from your business is important, so share your goods too! Pull up those old blog posts from last year. Take quotes from your book. Tell people about your next event or you’re open for one more coaching client or your speaking on the local radio station as an expert in your field. Share about the services you offer in a balance with the other 9 items on this list.

The point is to nurture a connection with like-hearted people who will love being with you & your business just because of you! Remember to key into the emotions (human factor) of what you are sharing.

Adeah Wetzel brings her finely tuned sense of human behaviors, thoughts, and motivations into her true love affair with relationship marketing- the ultimate way to bring like-minded people from across the globe into your business.

Does marketing feel like flossing? You know it would be a good habit for your business but you keep forgetting to do it!  That’s why Adeah created The Reach Kit – a set-up and go system with hands-on support to habituate your marketing. Learn more at www.wholeheartedsocialmedia.com/ReachKit

The Facebook Divide: How To Untangle Your Business from Your Personal Life Once And For All

Have you seen the new Facebook? Timeline, the ticker, your “talking about this” number – there are so many big changes it can be hard to keep up.

These changes are CRUCIAL to successful facebook marketing and we don’t want you to get left in the dark. That’s why we decided to hold a special webinar to get you up to date.

In this completely FREE one hour video, you’ll learn:

• All about the new “timeline” and how will it affect your business
• How to completely separate your business life from your personal life on Facebook (finally!)
• Why the new changes could actually have zero impact on your Facebook marketing
• The groundbreaking “off-page” way to market on Facebook
• The bottom line on pages versus profiles versus groups and where to send your prospects

You’ll also learn more about our in-depth program Zero to Facebook.

How to Use Your Personality to Increase Your Social Media ROI

Guest post by Kirsten Simmons

There’s so much social media advice out there. Search for like-minded people. Join in on conversations…but only the ones you can add something to. Automate your tweets. Don’t automate your tweets. Be interesting. Provide value… it’s enough to make your head spin!

For the past nine months, I’ve been working on a theory about the relationship between personality type and productivity strategies. I’ve been using it myself and I’ve taught it to clients and friends. They’re surprised when they realize how much easier their lives are when their productivity strategies are in tune with their natural personalities. And they’re realizing that it can be applied to almost every area of their businesses – including social media.

There are four personality types in the theory – the fantastical, environmental, analytical and the structural. Most online entrepreneurs are either fantastical or analytical. The fantastical is a creative problem solver and the analytical is goal oriented and motivated by success. The environmental type is fueled by the people around him, and the structural type is a natural organizer.

What type do you think you are? Take a guess at your type and check out the social media recommendations below!

Fantastical – Tell your people what you’re up to! Chances are it’s something fascinating and others will be interested in following along. Don’t worry so much if you’re not on social networks all the time – just engage when you’re around and let people know when you’re not.

Environmental – You take to social networking like a fish to water! Your challenge isn’t being more effective, but making sure that you don’t spend all your time chatting with your new friends online. Use social networking time as a reward to get yourself through tasks that aren’t so fun, and set some timers so that you don’t lose track of the clock.

Analytical – Lists are your friends! Take advantage of your ability to sort your friends and followers into groups so that you can maximize your time on the most influential people in your network. As tempting as it is, don’t try to outsource your social media time – people will eventually figure out if you’re not the one behind the tweets, and your reputation will be shot.

Structural – Keep your circles tight! Chances are that you know exactly how many people are in your networks and you have a pretty good idea of who they might be connected to. But all that information will get overwhelming if you don’t keep it organized and stay on top of who’s coming into your networks and why.

Handling social media according to your personality type helps you come across as authentic, instead of having a fake veneer of interest or simply programming your tweets in advance. People can tell when you’re truly engaged, and staying true to your personality will up your engagement and help you attract friends and followers.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the personality productivity theory and your type, come over to Personalized Productivity and take our free quiz! You’ll get a definite answer and tips on time management, organization and productivity that are customized to your personality type.

Kirsten Simmons is an author, a coach, and the creator of the Personalized Productivity program that uses your personality to create your ideal productivity system. She’s a Fantastical (in case you were wondering) and she’s also a full time grad student focusing on mathematical models of epidemics. Connect with Kristen on twitter @kirstenasimmons.

They’ve said yes to the meeting, now what? Five ways you can ensure they love you face-to-face

Guest post by Juliet Erickson

Despite the growing role that technology plays in building relationships and our relative ease doing business with strangers, our most important short and long term decisions are still made face-to-face.

Here are five ways you can ensure they love you in the meeting

1. Get Smart: Lack of preparation is the biggest mistake people make.  What is important to the other person and why? What will influence their decision or attitude about you or what you have to say?  This affects everything you do from now on.  Go beyond Google!

Key: learn as much as you can about the individuals before the meeting.

2. Focus on your objective, not your subject:  What do you want this person to do or think as a result of this face to face meeting? Does it line up with their expectations or what is possible in the time you have with them? Rather than do a data dump or talk too much, focus on what you need to do to achieve your objective.

Key: Be realistic about what you can achieve in the time available

3. Remove distraction: Our bodies send a louder message than our words. Our posture, energy, dress, gesture, eye contact, movement, voice, are all sending a message to the person across from us.  Be comfortable, clean and appropriately dressed for the situation.  Avoid the ‘rule of three’:  First mistake (dirty shirt) okay, I forgive you.  Second mistake (unpolished shoes)  hmmmm.  shame. Third mistake (dirty shirt, unpolished shoes and messy hair)  forget it.

Key: Breathe, relax, slow down, be yourself, have fun.

4. Listen: Based on what you learned in the Get Smart stage, you realize you can’t possibly know it all, so you need to ask.  Plan your questions beforehand. Ask good questions where you can and really listen to the answers.  A big mistake in first meetings is to listen only long enough to be right.  It is a bit of point scoring to get positive airtime.

Key: asking insightful, relevant questions is a powerful way to make a lasting impact.

5. Followup: It’s a chance to prove you were listening, are interested and attentive. Answer any questions or objections you couldn’t in the meeting within 24 hours.  Send a thank you note.  Be creative.

Key:  The post-meeting impression is just as important as the impression you made at the meeting. Don’t drop the ball.

Remember to be yourself and take the time build a rapport with who you are meeting. Your intelligence, talent and experience will only take you so far.

Juliet Erickson specializes in high-stakes face-to-face persuasive communication and coaches individuals and teams worldwide.

5 Key Steps to EXPLODING Your Business on Facebook

Guest post by Jess Webb

Facebook is a fabulous platform for marketing your business. With over 500 million users, and at least 50% of those logging in every single day, it has become a huge, vibrant community, where people go to connect, play and network. It has become a part of our every day lives. And chances are, your target market is hanging out there, as well…

The biggest thing to keep in mind when marketing your business on Facebook is that people are not on there to do business or to be marketed to. They are there to connect with friends, family and colleagues. They are there to have fun, to interact, to see what everyone else is up to.

So when you’re using Facebook for your business, always keep this in mind and look for ways to do your marketing in a way that is not annoying and spammy and that adds to the value and fun of Facebook rather than getting in someone’s face with something they don’t want.

With that in mind, here are 5 key steps that you can take to start exploding your business on Facebook today.

Step 1: Use a Facebook Business Page

Facebook Business Pages are where Facebook wants you to be doing business. Also known as Fan Pages or Like Pages, this is the place where you can promote your business and build a fanbase of people who are interested in hearing from you on a regular basis.

Facebook Pages are easy to customize, and you can have an unlimited number of fans, as opposed to being limited to only 5,000 friends on a personal profile. They function much the same as a personal profile, with the Wall, tabs and various other tools and features that are the same. Facebook made some exciting changes this year to Pages that allow you to use Facebook as your Page and post things to your Page using the standard Facebook Share buttons around the web.

Step 2: Customize Your Facebook Page

With so many businesses now using Facebook as part of their marketing strategy, it is more important than ever to do what you can to stand out from the crowd. One of the best ways to do this is to customize your Page so that it reflects you and your brand and lets your potential fans know why they should hang around and choose to follow you.

You can customize the picture in the left sidebar and make it a nice vertical banner with your logo, picture, name, tagline and any other info you would like to include on there. Since this banner shows up on every page within your Facebook Page, it’s a great way to really brand your Facebook presence.

The other important piece when customizing your Facebook Page is to set up a Welcome or Landing tab. This is the page that non fans automatically see when they first visit your Page, instead of just seeing the Wall. The Welcome tab gives you a chance to let potential fans know why they should follow you and click that Like button. Having a Welcome tab set up can increase the number of conversions (people who actually click Like) by 45%! So it’s an important piece to have in place on your Page.

Your Welcome tab can include a special gift that your new fan can only access after they click Like, as well, so it’s a great way to offer an incentive or a thank you for your new fans to show them you appreciate them.

A Welcome tab is like an optin offer for your Facebook Page.

Step 3: Keep Your Page Updated – Regularly

One of the worst things you can do for your Facebook marketing strategy is to set up a Page and then rarely (or never!) update it. If your fans don’t hear from you, they will forget you. And if they forget you, they certainly won’t be doing business with you!

So be sure to set up a marketing plan for your Facebook Page so that you ensure it stays up to date, with new content going out to your fans on a regular basis. Posting daily, and even several times a day, is a great way to get your fans engaging with you by posting comments or clicking Like on your updates.

And by posting regular updates, you’ll be staying top of mind so that when they need what you have to offer, they know where to go and will contact you.

Step 4: Network with Other Facebook Pages

You can use Facebook as your Page by choosing the setting in your Account drop-down menu. This allows you to Like other Pages and comment on their Wall or updates as your Page, which means you leave a link back to your Page. This is a great way to interact and network with other Page owners, as well as to get in front of your target market and attract new fans.

When using Facebook as your Page, always be mindful of how you are interacting and what you are saying. Remember, you are commenting on someone else’s Page, and they don’t want to be spammed, either! When leaving a comment, make sure it is something that will add value to their Page and the conversation. Don’t go blatantly advertising yourself or your services. Instead, join the conversation and contribute comments that are thoughtful and helpful.

When you do this, it will help you to build relationships with other Page owners, as well as attract new fans who like what you have to say.

Step 5: Talk About and Link to Your Page

It’s great to have a Facebook Page, but if no one knows about it, then it’s not going to do you much good. You need to get it out there and tell people where to find you on Facebook.

If you have an email list, send out an email letting them know where they can find you on Facebook and invite them to become a fan. Send out some Tweets inviting your Twitter followers over to your Facebook Page. Invite your LinkedIn connections to connect with you on Facebook as well. Are you starting to get the idea?

Add a nice Facebook icon or Like Box to your website. The Like Box let’s visitors become a fan of your Page right from your website, without even having to leave your site, which makes it even more convenient for them.

Link to your Facebook Page from your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter profile and anywhere else you hang out online. Add it to your profile on any forums or groups you’re in.

Add it to your email signature, your author bio and anywhere else you can think of.

And don’t forget to add your Facebook URL to your offine marketing as well. Put it on your business cards, brochures and any other print materials you use.

Following these 5 steps will get you off to a great start to build your Facebook presence and explode your business.

And always remember, Facebook especially is about relationships and connecting. Once you’ve got those new fans, focus on building a relationship with them, getting to know them and helping them out, and they’ll want to stick around and even tell their friends about you!

Jess is a digital artist and quirky entrepreneur who loves to create a beautiful and delicious online presence for the female entrepreneur. Facebook is one of her specialties and she can help you create a fabulous custom Facebook presence that helps you stand out from the crowd and attracts your ideal customers. You can find her on Facebook or at her Jessilicious website

25 Ideas for Your Big Banana

Guest post by Jill Shearer

Building a solid mailing list is a lot easier said than done, to which many budding entrepreneurs can attest. Coming up with ideas to implement might make you feel like a monkey trying to operate as a brain surgeon. I mean, where do you even start?

You’ll have to peel the banana yourself, but here are 25 ideas for your Big Banana – that one free giveaway capturing the loyalty and imagination of your audience and keeps them coming back for more.

1. The Checklist
A checklist is a convenient and quick way to evaluate a prospective provider of services, stay organized or as a reminder of what your customer needs to do to achieve their goals.

• The Ultimate 10-Day Trip Packing List – and It All Fits In Your Carry On

2. Take This Quiz!
Great for life coaches and career advisors, a quiz is not only a fun way to determine certain personality traits, but you can follow up with details and an explanation of their type. People love to take quizzes, especially when it’s all about them.

• Test Your Career Personality IQ! Discover the Career Path that Leads to a Job You Love.

3. Teach A Video Course/Series
Even a short instructional video can have a big impact. Show your potential customer how to accomplish a task, solve a problem or learn a new skill.

• 7 Easy, Self-Defense Techniques Every Woman Should Know

4. Everyone Loves To Be A Winner
Contests are very popular and they are a good way for your brand to go viral. Be sure to follow all legal requirements.

• Enter To Win Your Choice of Earrings from my New “Elegant Is The Night” Collection!

5. Templates
If you have a template you use often and find useful in your area of expertise, why not package it up as a valuable tool for your customers as a Big Banana?

• 7 Professional Resume Templates that Will Make Employers Beg to Interview You

6. Taking A Swipe At It
Swipe files are an invaluable resource for customers and can really take a lot of pressure off of coming up with new ideas constantly.

• 15 Copy & Paste Emails To Resolve Any Customer Service Issue and Still Have Them Love You

7. Write an E-book
The possibilities are endless, and you can write a short e-book about any subject under the sun.

• Dating After Divorce – Avoiding The Pitfalls of Dating Hell

8. A Blueprint To Take Action
Give them a detailed plan of action they can start using right away.

• The Super Happy, Healthy Baby Blueprint: The Secrets to Surviving the First 6 Months without Wrecking your Kid.

9. Educational Webinar Series
This is a great idea for a short training series on a single subject for inquiring minds who want to know.

• Laura Roeder’s The Facebook Divide: How To Untangle Your Business from Your Personal Life Once And For All

10. Assess and Evaluate
A free assessment is especially effective for any type of coaching or can work with a variety of service industries such as lawn care, cleaning or consultant work.

• Is Your Home Killing You? Get Free Assessment of the Health Risks in your Home

11. Thieving My Rolodex
Sharing is caring, and chances are your Rolodex is full of juicy contacts.

• My Top 25 To-Die-For Vintage Clothing Stores (with Private Contact List)

12. A Host With The Most – Teleseminar
Why not host a teleseminar about a topic with which you have a lot of experience?

• Speaking Without Fear: How to Win Over a Room and Have Blast Doing It.

13. Guides Through The Jungle
Life is a jungle. A step-by-step guide can provide a place to start for your customers no matter the subject.

• Marie Forleo’s Free Guide for Women: 8 Big Mistakes Most Women Make in Business and How to Avoid Them

14. How About A Discount?
Who doesn’t like a discount on a product or services?

• 25% Off our “Uniquely You Two” Engagement Photo Session.

15. A Podcast Is Not A Spaceship
The audio media is becoming more and more popular every day. Give your customers an audio experience they can listen to anywhere.

• Million Dollar Launch – 5 Interviews with Online Entrepreneurs Who Have Had Million+ Product Launches This Year

16. Of Course, There’s an App For That
Offer a free version of your game, app or entry-level software.

• Is that a Cloud in Your Pocket? Try the POKTCloud App for All Your Mobile Device Storage Needs.

17. What The Hell Does That Mean?
Industry related terms in any business may be clear to you, but not to your customer. Help them out.

• 25 Terms You Need To Know in Real Estate Contracts Before Signing Your Life Away

18. A Worksheet To Ease The Workload
A workbook or worksheet takes your customers through the questions they need to answer in order to achieve clarity.

• Danielle LaPorte’s The Authentic Dreaming Worksheet – designed to find out why you want what you want.

19. The Handy Dandy Toolkit
Your customers are always hungry for the tools you use to succeed. Package an e-book, report, video series, app or any Big Banana to create your own free kit.

• Detox Toolkit: The Not-So-Crazy Cleanse to Lose Weight, Increase Energy and Feed Your Soul.

20. Get the Conversation Started
Lists of questions are sure-fire ways to feel smarter and spark conversations.

• 15 Must-Ask Questions Before You Hand Your Money Over to a Financial Planner

21. Come on Down
A free event (or group coaching) where you can give several potential clients a chance to get to know you and what you offer -all at once. This saves tons of time over offering individual trial sessions.

• OHM My – Free Yoga in the Park Day (Register Now)

22. Free Designs or Graphics
This Big Banana works well for designers and illustrators.

• 15 Free Awesome Social Media Icons

23. Testing, Testing 1-2-3
Provide a test case or case study to help your customer target their own markets.

• PR is Not The Same as it Was 5 Years Ago! How I Tripled My Business Almost Overnight by Using The Modern PR System

24. Help Me, Please!
Write a white paper or report to solve a specific problem.

• Best Practices: Social Media Time Management for the Solopreneur

25. Making Big Plans With A Mind Map
A mind map is very useful for those who are more visual learners.

• The Meditation Mind Map – Your Visual Guide to Learning & Embracing Meditation In Your Daily Life

Jill Shearer has spent the better part of 15 years making crazy-money for huge companies like Apple, Adobe and 3Com. Now, she is putting all that experience to good use teaching new and established entrepreneurs on how to make the most of their online and offline business. She has created SimplyLaunch to supply others with the tools they need to achieve the next level of success.

Fall Reboot – The Great Q&A Webinar

Is your business ready to get a fresh start this fall, but you still have some nagging questions that are holding you back?

Then register to this no-holds-barred, all Q&A FREE webinar!

I’m going to “lightning round” as many questions as I can in one hour.

If LinkedIn’s For Business, Where Are All The Leads?

LinkedIn is the ONLY major social network devoted solely to business use.

Then how come so many entrepreneurs have LinkedIn profiles that are doing ZILCH for their business??

I think it’s because so few people have learned how to properly use LinkedIn to bring in leads. I know I’ve been guilty of passing over LinkedIn to spend time on “more exciting” tools like Twitter and Facebook.

That’s why I asked my good friend Lewis Howes to come in and school us all on how to use LinkedIn!

Lewis literally wrote the book on LinkedIn (two of them in fact) and he gives smart, real-world advice on how a small business can leverage LinkedIn to succeed.

We’re covering how to:

• Generate more Leads for Free on LinkedIn
• Build a targeted community of potential customers
• Increase your Connections by 3X over night!
• Drive traffic to your website and sales pages
• And more…

Sign up below, if you want to get access to the video seminar hosted by Lewis and Laura.

If Facebook Were Gone Tomorrow…

Guest post by Alicia Rittenhouse

Putting your eggs in one basket is a risky move. Putting your business marketing efforts into one network that you hold no control over is riskier.

You must create your own social network of fans and connections with your brand. Social networking was created to help you share, connect and converse. Think of using your website the same way.

Your website allows you to bring all your connections to one place. You website is Your Social Network. You just don’t need $100K to start it.

We know how quickly the latest trend can switch to the newest has been. This is why it is important to create your social network.

Benefits of using your website to create a social network:

• Drive traffic to your site
• Grow email list and increase sales
• Help build an audience and following
• Position yourself as an expert in your niche

Here are some ways you can turn your website into a social network:

Increase your groupies with social sharing

People are now accustomed to looking for those key social sharing buttons when they read something they like or something that helped them! Don’t be left in the dust by not having this simple feature loaded to your website. Facebook gives you all the tools you need when you are connecting on its platform. Make sure you give your readers the same! Installing this feature on your site will help attract a new set of members for your network.

Build your list to build your network.

Send your fans, followers and friends to a sign-up page on your website. You can set up a separate page or a squeeze page on your website that snags their email addresses in exchange for your big banana freebie. Adding your connections from your social networks will help bring them to one place: your social network.

Call to Action

We know that an important step in marketing is creating that “Call to Action” to direct your buyers to the next step in the process. You can use your call to build your network. When you send out your weekly email message to your list, direct them to what you would like them to do next. Ask them to share with friends that could benefit from the information, have them leave comments on your blog, or encourage them to like, tweet, share with their social networks to bring their friends to the party. When you provide unique information that has helped them, they will in turn help you — just be sure to ask!

Conversations with Comments

Comments are not only a great way to receive feedback on your content and to hear from your readers, but are also a great way to build your network with conversations!  Social conversations are a huge part of social media. Use your comment sections to allow your followers and readers connect with each other.

When you create your own social network, you become a community leader.  I invite you to join my social network!

Alicia Rittenhouse is the Geek Goddess of Online Empires. After five years of success as a virtual assistant, she is now the media-maven who women entrepreneurs have manage their online empires while growing their online presence using savvy marketing tactics. Alicia lives in a smaller town in Ohio but has reached entrepreneurs all over the world with her weekly social media and online presence tips.

How to interview fellow entrepreneurs to further grow YOUR audience, traffic and business

Guest post by Torrey McGraw

Because you’re an avid reader of Laura’s site, I’m willing to guess you’re interested in increasing traffic to your site & making more money.

Entrepreneurs are always looking for creative ways to accomplish this and I’d like to suggest something that may be a great addition to what you’re currently doing: video interview experts/influencers in your niche.

Why video interviews? Check out the following statistics about online video consumption:

Comscore’s March 2011 Online Video Rankings showed that the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.7 billion online video content viewing sessions in March 2011.

HubSpot released a poll indicating that in 2011 the average American watches 3 hours and 26 minutes worth of online videos a week, up from 2 hours and 20 minutes in 2008.

Emarketer reported that 77 percent of mobile users are watching more online mobile videos than they had been a year ago.

Video interviewing influencers/experts in your niche will without question send oodles of traffic to your site. The great thing is if your content is great, there’s a great chance that some of the visitors will stick around. It’s a great change of pace from typical text posts. Here’s how to do it:

1. Look for popular & interesting people in your niche

Seek out those with a thriving audience to interview. Ask yourself, “Do they have an active community?”. You know by checking out their Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and their blog commenters and/or subscribers. By having an active community, you can assume that their fans will check out a lot of stuff related to the person you’d like to interview. Thus, sending people to your  lovely site.  It will send droves of people to your site because they are always curious to hear what the entrepreneur has to say.

2. Request a video interview

Email the person and request an video interview. Keep the email brief. Just answer the who, what , when, where and why and you’ll be fine. Remember, they’re probably busy so they don’t have a lot of time to read long emails.  K.I.S.S. And press ‘send’.

3. Don’t overthink equipment or technology

Don’t rush out and spend thousands on top notch stuff. In person interviews can be done with a digital camera that has video mode or a digital camcorder like the Kodak Zi8. If you’d like to conduct the interview from your computer, like I do, you’ll need:
Webcam
Microphone
Skype
Skype call recorder add-on (Ecamm Call Recorder for Mac or Vodburner for PC)

4. Conduct the interview

If you’re not used to interviewing, it’s understandable to be a bit nervous. Do some research on the person you’re interviewing and ask them questions you and your audience would be interested in.

5. Post the interview on YouTube or other Online video sites

Take the video and upload it to YouTube and embed the video in a post on your site. Keep in mind that although this is a video, be mindful about search engine optimization (SEO). Optimize the video title, description and tags. If you want bonus SEO love, get the video transcribed and post the text on your site. The search engines will have additional text from your interview to crawl.

6. Send the interviewee a follow up email

Thank them for the interview. Also tell them you’ll be promoting the site and you would appreciate if they did the same. Most likely, since it’s something featuring them, they will.

7. Publicize the interview

Once you’ve posted the interview, spread the word via your social media accounts and email list (if applicable). Be sure to notify the interviewee. I do this by including the person’s Twitter name in tweets and tagging the person in a Facebook post.

There’s a great chance the interviewee will tell their followers about the interview thus sending lots of people to your site. That’s where the magic happen. You’ve effectively increased your reach by having an additional person sending people to your website.

What makes this extra groovy is if your site content is great, you’ll probably get people to be repeat visitors or new prospects/customers.

So do me a favor, give it a shot and let me know what you think about adding interviews to your website. Got any comments or questions about conducting online video interviews? Feel free to share them in the comment section.

Torrey McGraw is the creator of Grind & Thrive, a website featuring video interviews with successful entrepreneurs sharing business advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.