172: How to Build a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others [An Interview with Michael Stelzner]

Michael Stelzner on Building a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others In today’s lesson, I want to talk about how to build a business around creating content that is based upon interviewing other people. To help me do that, I have invited my friend Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner and Social Media Marketing World onto the show because he’s someone who I’ve seen build an amazing business relatively quickly in the social media space. In the early days of that business, he did it simply by interviewing others. I first met Mike at a blogging and social media conference, in 2009, where he interviewed me and quite a few other speakers at that conference. In 2009, Mike was brand new to the scene. I’d never met or heard of him. As we discover in the interview that follows, he had little to no experience in social media at that point. However, within a year or so his blog - Social Media Examiner - was one of the go-to blogs on the topic, and today his event ‘Social Media Marketing World’ is one of the go to events on the planet. He’s built an incredibly successful business around Social Media. Listen to this podcast above in the player or here on iTunes. In this interview, we take a step back in time to 2009, and I ask Mike about that first conference. I ask him: Why he took the approach he did, How he got so many influencers and speakers to agree to be interviewed by him as an unknown and the benefits of doing those interviews. We then talk about Mike’s tips for preparing to interview influencers How to conduct yourself during the interviews And what he does after the interview to grow the relationship further Lastly: We talk about some of the new ways of doing interviews today. Mike did most of them in person face to face in the early days but today with podcasting, live video and other technologies there are some amazing opportunities. He gives some tips on choosing which medium to use How to monetize this type of content And shares some tools that can be really useful - particularly if you’re looking to do live video This interview sparked numerous ideas for me, as we spoke, and I’m confident whether you’re just starting out or are a more experienced blogger that you’ll come away with some great ideas and practical takeaways too! Further Resources on How to Build a Blogging Business Through Interviewing Others Social Media Examiner Social Media Marketing World Huzza Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hi there! It’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 172 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse, and I’m the blogger behind ProBlogger.com – which is a blog, a podcast, an event, a job board, and a series of eBooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start a blog, to grow that blog and the audience reading that blog, and to create amazing content to change the lives of your readers, and at the same time, to build a sustainable, profitable blog. You can learn more about ProBlogger over at ProBlogger.com. In today’s lesson, I wanna talk about how to build a business around creating content on your blog or on your podcast or video channel that is based upon interviewing other people. To help me do this, I’ve invited my friend Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner onto this show today because he’s someone, who I have seen build an amazing business relatively quickly in the social media space. In the early days of that business, he did it simply by interviewing other people. In fact, this is how I first met Mike – at a blogging conference. It was a blogging and social media conference back in 2009, where he interviewed me and quite a few of the other speakers at that conference. Back in 2009, Mike was brand new to social media. I’d never really heard of him before and certainly ...