Here’s a truth; I want to be famous. I want to be well known. And I want to make money from it. I don’t want to be infamous; I don’t want to have to do something illegal or be outed for something bad to get that fame. I like to think my integrity is higher than that.

I’ve given this a lot of thought and come to this conclusion. The best way to get positive publicity is through doing interviews. This, of course, presupposes that you’ve done something that’s worth getting interviewed about. However, if you have this part covered, it’s the best way to go.

To get interviewed, you just might have to contact someone and make a pitch about why you would make a good candidate. If you’re lucky to have done something already, someone else might ask you for an interview. When this happens, you at least know that someone knows about you, which helps make things go easier later on.

Being interviewed is also a big part of marketing. It’s the reason movie stars go on talk shows when they have a new film coming out. It’s the reason musicians show up in places they wouldn’t want anyone to ever see them, because they want to promote their new album (heck, do people still call it that?). I’ve talked about marketing often on this blog; this is one of those most positive things anyone can have the privilege of doing to help promote themselves.

Basically, there are three different types of interviews, and they help you, or hurt you, in different ways. Let’s look at these three.

The first type of interview is as a part of a piece that will have other people’s opinions at the same time. The best part about an interview like this is that you have the chance to not only focus your message in a short period of time, but if the interview goes well you might get your business name mentioned in the piece as well. The bad thing about an interview like this is that you never know which line the interviewer will use of yours, so it’s possible that they’ll use your line to highlight something negative. An example of this type of this interview I was a part of, which I found while writing my article on searching for your own name on search engines.

The second type of interview is a written interview of some fashion only about you. This can be in a magazine, blog, or newspaper article of some sort. With most of these, you may have the same problem as with the first type of interview, that being that you could say a lot of things that you felt makes you look good, only to find that the interviewer decided against using most of it. The best part, of course, is that it’s all about you, and if the interview is positive, you look good and, hopefully, your business and reputation gets a nice boost. An interview that could help highlight this is doing an interview on another blog. And, actually, this recent interview I did with Jim Turner on this blog is a pretty good example.

The third type of interview is the best, that being a live interview. This can either be on live radio or television. If you’re confident enough to be in front of a live audience, you can be an instant hit if you come across well, and your message will be unfiltered. The downside, of course, is if you’re uncomfortable, or look uncomfortable, and give one or two word responses instead of coming across as easy going and someone people might like to work or talk with. This type of interview can make or break your career. An example of that is an interview I did with Beverly Mahone of BAM Enterprises, which, if you’d like, you can listen to, as I talked about the concept of reinventing oneself; this is an MP3 file.

Sometimes the person doing the interview isn’t all that good, so you take risks with your reputation in those instances. Still, most of the time people will understand if you were good and the other person wasn’t up to snuff, and if you handle it all well, then your message will still come across properly and you’ll be better off in the end. Nope, not giving any examples there. 🙂

Getting interviewed means you’ve at least made some kind of dent into the consciousness of another person. If you handle it properly, you could be on your way to great things happening in your life and career. I love being interviewed, just as I like getting other people to allow me to post interviews with them here. I think everyone can learn something from an interview, and some of us can gain something from being interviewed as well.

So, who else wants to interview me? 😉