Step Into the Spotlight with Digital Q&A Interviews - Jen Jones Donatelli

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00:02 Hi there, my name is Jen Jones Donatelli and I'm a certified and credentialed coach, creative facilitator and the founder of Creative Groove, a small business that offers coaching programs courses, workshops and community experiences around the art of creative living. And I believe that creative living thrives inside four major areas, which are creativity, of course, visibility, productivity and authentic self-expression And I believe that when those four things converge, you find your creative groove. And I'm particularly passionate about the visibility piece because I spent about 20 years in the journalism field.  

00:40 And now today I help entrepreneurs, small business owners, subject matter experts and thought leaders learn the art of getting media coverage and other forms of visibility such as podcasts, online speaking events, etcetera, etcetera to connect with their ideal clients and become recognized experts in their field. And I believe that one of the easiest and best ways to jump start your visibility is through what I call Spotlight Q and A sites. So what is a Spotlight Q and A site? Essentially, it's an online publication that primarily publishes Q and A style interviews.  

01:19 And these interviews shine a spotlight on people such as entrepreneurs, creatives, change makers, founders, innovators, people who are doing interesting work in the world, and they shine a spotlight on that. And the good news about these sites is they're relatively easy to break into. So they're great for people who are kind of new on the scene as well. And it does take a fair amount of work to do an interview for one of these sites so I wanted to share a little bit of food for thought around why it might be worth your time.  

01:50 So first and foremost, these sites can help increase your digital presence. Most of them are pretty SEO friendly so these articles are likely going to show up in your search results. They will also have backlinks to your website. So again, it creates more domain authority for your website and ideally more traffic toward it as well. So again, you're increasing your digital footprint by doing interviews with Spotlight Q and A sites. Also, it helps you get better at interviewing and get more clear on your message, which is always a valuable way to spend your time. And it's a way for new people to discover you and your work in the world.  

02:29 So this is an interesting way to connect with some ideal clients, maybe make some new fans, or just get the word out about what you're doing. Now, there are also some drawbacks to this approach, which I'll share a little later on in the presentation, and I'll also share some tips and best practices. But before we do that, I'm just going to walk you through some of the most popular sites out there so here we go. Ok, so one of the first sites we're going to look at is Authority Magazine.  

02:55 And this is actually one of the most popular publications on Medium. And they've conducted over 100,000 thousand interviews with notables such as, you know, Snoop Dogg, Doctor Jane, Goodall, Daymond John, and also thousands of everyday entrepreneurs, executives and other interesting folks. And that's exactly what they do. They want to showcase people who are authorities in their field, and that can range from business to pop culture to Wellness to social impact to tech.  

03:28 Chances are you can find an opportunity for yourself on here no matter what you do. And I'm going to show you how to do just that. So first, we'll take a look just kind of at the homepage so this is Authority Magazine, and you can see they have these different verticals here. And if you Scroll down, it's actually a pretty attractive website so you can see here, these are kind of the articles that they're showcasing right now. And I'm going to show you how you can get one of these articles on authority. So the first thing you want to do if you're interested in being featured is you want to look at their current interview topics.  

04:03 So right now they have 614 topics to choose from so again, like I said, chances are you will find something that appeals to you and is relevant to you here on this list. So obviously it might be kind of difficult to scroll through a 600 topics. You can if you wish, but you can also parse it out a little bit. You can look at the different categories so if you know you want to do business, you can simply just look at those. And you can see the topics range from kind of advice style things like 5 things I wish I knew before I started out to more tactical stuff like how to make money by writing a book.  

04:40 So the way I usually do it is I usually just search a few keywords so let's say I want to find something around coaching. So I would simply do a search function, type the word coach and just see like what's available to me here so I see top five trends shaping the future of coaching. What else an inside look at the benefits and impact of executive coaching. Again, I'm not going to read through all of these, but I typically do that i'll look at the categories available and then I'll just search a few keywords because there might be something in a different category than than what you had looked at if you're only looking at the category so looking at keywords as well helps me broaden my search and makes me and helps me choose the most relevant option for me.  

05:24 So let's now one thing I want to say is, you know, with so many topics to choose from, you want to be somewhat strategic about it, right so you want to think about, OK, who's on the other end of this seeking out this information and you want to think about who you want to reach and why this particular topic you choose helps position you more with a message you're looking to put out there or the types of people you're trying to look to, to attract. So let's say that you decide that you're going to choose this one. Five things you need to create a highly successful career as a life or business coach.  

06:01 So the first thing I would do is I would click this. And if you if you look, you can see the other people who've already done interviews for this topic. And the reason that that is helpful is 1, You can see the types of questions that they ask so you can kind of see the interview because these are essentially templates. So they pretty much ask the same questions in every single interview so if you kind of want to get a peek at the types of questions, you can just click into this feed of prior people who've done the interview and check it out so let's just click this one.  

06:33 So you can see here and now these have great photography you can see and you're actually going to be the one providing the photography. So most of the time if you're going to be doing an interview with a Spotlight Q and A site, you're going to need to have three to five high quality images that you can submit with your interview so that is something to think about. And then they have this little intro here and actually this one is looks like it's behind a pay wall, but a lot of them are free so it's not all behind a payroll so let's see if this one's open oK, so this one's open to look at.  

07:05 So again, you have this little intro here and then it gets into the Q and A piece. So again, you can just kind of see like how did other people answer this? What are the types of questions that they're going to be asking me? And that can help you decide if the topic is the right fit for you or not if it's not, you can go back to that list, do the same thing with maybe a couple other topics, and then choose the one that feels most beneficial to you to align with. And once you have a topic and you're ready to apply, you're going to go here to this pitch form and the pitch forms really easy to fill out.  

07:39 You don't have to do the full interview to pitch. It's simply denoting your interest and sharing a little bit more about why you're a fit to speak on that topic. So again, just short form you want to paste here with the exact topic that you chose is and you will copy and paste that from the list I just showed you. And then you write a 200 word pitch, and again, that's just kind of demonstrating why you're a good fit to speak on this topic.  

08:06 So usually I might just do a sentence or two about who I am and why this topic appeals to me in my work. And then I might just very quickly give quick bullet points or share what I plan to include in the article. But you don't have to go in depth again, this is just 200 words and you want to just show why you've chosen the topic and why you're a good fit for it. And that's pretty much it that's just basic information.  

08:32 They do ask that you share your headshot here you don't have to have all of the images yet, but they want to see a headshot and then and that's it. And generally, you will hear back within one week, maybe two weeks tops. And to be frank with you, I've never seen anyone who was not chosen to do this. They're looking to create lots of content. And so if you've done the due diligence of choosing your topic and filling out this application, they for the most part are willing to go for it and have you submit content to their site.  

09:05 Now, I will say these interviews are somewhat lengthy. So if you decide to do this, you want to make sure that you have a nice, you know, one to two hour chunk of time where you can actually sit down and do the interview and submit it. Generally, they give about a three-week deadline. They can be kind of flexible with it at times, but you know, while it's fresh in your head and while you have the momentum going around it, it kind of makes sense just to go for it. So you want to make sure that you have the bandwidth to sit down.  

09:32 And that's one other thing to mention, and I'm not sure if I mentioned it yet, pretty much every single Spotlight Q and A site is an email interview. So it reads like they did a phone interview or in person interview with you, but they are basically just providing the questions and you are providing your answers so again, this is going to be, they will share the questions with you, you will fill it out and create a document and you will submit it.  

09:55 And then generally it's published within, you know, one to three months after you submit. And some of the articles are actually syndicated on BuzzFeed, which is really cool so there's potential for bigger distribution and more eyes on what you write. I really like Authority Magazine and this is one of the Spotlight Q and A sites that's probably my favorites out there.  

10:19 All right, so the next set of Spotlight Q and A sites that I'm going to share with you is run by a group called the Voyage Group. And they were kind of The Pioneers of this whole Spotlight Q and A trend that we're seeing out there. So they have a number of different sites that fall under this category and I'm going to share some of them with you briefly and then we're going to do a deeper dive on one of them.  

10:41 And they all follow kind of a similar model and aesthetic so on your end, you can really just choose the one that you feel suits you best, or if feeling super inspired, you can do all of them right? The world is your oyster. So I'm just going to show you what's available to you and you can take what serves you and leave the rest. So this is the main publication that is run by the Voyage Group. And as you can see, it's geographically focused so this one is Voyage Ohio, you know, but they also have many other Voyage publications so Voyage, LA, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Phoenix, you know, the list goes on and on.  

11:19 So these are somewhat geographically focused. So if you're not in one of those particular geographic areas, there are still options available to you on their other websites. This is another geographically focused publication that they have this is called Shout Out LA. So if you're in LA or Southern California, Shout Out LA might be a great one for you to check out. But you know, if you're not necessarily looking for something that's geographic in nature, there are two publications from the Voyage Group that might be a great fit for you. One you can see here is called Bold Journey. I know a number of people that have been featured in this one.  

11:58 So this is their homepage and you can see one of the most popular Spotlight Q and A sites that Voyage runs is called Canvas Rebel. And this is the Canvas Rebel home page. And you can see here, you know, a lot of these sites have very beautiful photography. They focus on people's missions and messages and interesting projects and sharing wisdom and insight and just really looking into what makes people tick and what makes them successful, you know, and that's the model that these spotlight Q and A sites tend to follow. So Canvas Rebel is somewhat similar to Authority magazine and that they have different themes and questions that they ask that you can kind of choose between in terms of what you want to focus on in your interview.  

12:46 And so let's just look at an example here so here's a question. What did you learn as an intern or apprentice? So that's they're on their homepage and if you click through, you'll see they have this kind of, you know, landing page for the question that they've posed. And then if you Scroll down, you'll see many of the people who've answered the question so these are different folks that have responded and just a slight snippet of what they wrote.  

13:10 So this is kind of the compilation of the different people who have chosen this particular theme here, and if you click into it, it takes you to their full interview. Ok, So it's almost like this rabbit hole that we're going in where you're on the homepage and people are choosing between the content that interests them. Then they go to the homepage for that piece of content and has all the different people who've applied and then they can click here into your particular interview.  

13:38 Now, when you're sharing this online, obviously you can just share the link to your interview they don't have to go through that kind of navigation process to find you. But this is just kind of a look into the organization of this website. So you can see here, you know, it's kind of similar to Authority Magazine and that's this Q and A style interview. And this has been conducted as an email interview. And this is shorter than Authority Magazine so if you're looking to do something short and sweet, one of the Voyage websites might be the way to go.  

14:08 But at the end, you can see here, they have a link to this person's website, their Instagram, their YouTube. So it's kind of nice for getting those backlinks. And if someone's inspired by what you have to say, they could check you out further, which is highly valuable. So if you're interested in applying, what you do is they have this, it's kind of like a nomination page, but you can nominate yourself and you essentially just put in your name, email website, social media, and you will usually hear back from them with more information on how to conduct the interview and submit it back to them.  

14:46 They also thrive on kind of this ripple effect where they will actually ask you for recommendations of others so you can see that's here on the application page. And after you do an interview, they may ask you for two to three people that you think should do this as well. And then they will reach out to them directly. So it's not an MLM or anything like that. It's just kind of a way to keep the content flowing and to learn about new and interesting people.  

15:13 Now I will say you might be wondering how do they monetize this project or you know, what's in it for them. And so I'm not really clear on the answer to that question to be honest but I will say one thing that happens after you do this is they will ask you if you want to buy prints of your interview for framing or you know, for posterity or that kind of thing. You do not have to. It is not a requirement this is not necessarily a pay to play opportunity, but just be aware that you will be asked afterward if you want to purchase prints.  

15:45 It's really up to you. Some people like to frame that and put it on their walls, especially if they're a brick and mortar. Other people just like having the digital version, and that's totally fine. So that's just a short rundown of some of the Spotlight Q and A sites out there. There are many more, some of which I debrief in the resources I'll be providing so if you're interested in that, you can download those and learn more about what's out there. But before I wrap up this presentation, I wanted to make sure to give you some things to think about and some best practices so that you can make sure you maximize this opportunity should you choose to do an interview with a Spotlight Q and A site.  

16:22 So first and foremost, you want to make sure that you take the time to write thoughtful, well composed answers to these interview questions. And one thing it's so important to know is that these interviews are published verbatim from what you submit. So it's really, really important to make sure there's no typos or inaccuracies or other issues with the copy that you write. Also, make sure to be consistent. I actually had a client once who was kind of copying and pasting some things from her bio. And so her interview read like it toggled back and forth between first person and second person. And if you have any issues like this or mistakes, unfortunately there's no way to edit what you've submitted.  

17:03 She tried reaching out to them and never heard back so it's kind of A1 and done type thing. So you, you really need to make sure of that whatever you publish is what you want out there representing yourself. Also, again, you're going to need high quality photos to accompany your interview most of the time. So you want to have that available before you pitch. And it could be a formal headshot, but it could also just be photos that represent you and your work, maybe out in the field or working with people or in an event or something like that so it could be a nice variety that really shows you in your element.  

17:35 And, you know, don't feel like you have to do interviews with all of these publications. You certainly can, but you can also just choose one or two that feel aligned with what you want to speak on and maybe the types of people that they reach. So those would be my top tips. And I would say there's really no drawback to doing Spotlight Q and A sites other than that they can take quite a bit of time to compile the interview. You know, like I said, make sure that it's polished and reads well and represents you the way you wish to be represented.  

18:07 But really, I think they're a nice low hanging fruit to start getting visible online and start sharing with the world who you are and what you're about. So I hope that was helpful and I hope this helps you jumpstart your visibility and get started checking out the Spotlight Q and A sites and what they can have to offer you.