Every niche has its celebrities, people who aren’t well-known to the rest of the world but are heros to a passionate few. We’ve heard past Mixergy entrepreneurs mention that they actively cultivate their niches’ celebrities to grow their reputations and their sites’ memberships. Wil told us how he got top investors to be members of goBIGnetwork. Otis told us how he helps famous authors become members of Goodreads.
Since eduFire, the live video learning site, plays in many niches and recruits stars in each one, I thought they’d be a good company to teach us how to do VIP recruitment. I invited Koichi, the company’s Social Media Marketer, for an interview about how eduFire recruits and trains its rock star teachers.
The transcript for the minute 0 till minute 5 is BELOW this line.
Ad: The interview you’re about to watch was made possible by Haystack. Haystack is where you’re going to find the right web designer for you next project. So check out haystack.com. Here’s the interview.Andrew: Hey everyone its Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. So a buddy of mine started a website called eduFire, which you’ll find out about in a moment eduFire is a place where you can go and learn online from teachers using live video. Well I remember when he was starting he had scramble to get teachers to start populating his site. Well I was just talking to Koichi who is working at eduFire now and he told me that now eduFire has 5000 teachers and 50,000 students and it’s only been about a year and a half since launching. I invited Koichi here on Mixergy to talk about how they got so many teachers. I know how hard it is to get a teach to come on to get a dozen...
Full program includes
– How eduFire trains its teachers to use social media to promote their classes.
– How MC Hammer can help you teach social media.
– Lots of references to this old interview that I did with Jon Bischke.
A few tips from this program
1. Get their fans to help recruit
Instead of having your company pursue your field’s celebrities, ask your audience to help recruit them. It’ll be more persuasive coming from them.
(By the way, I get a lot of my Mixergy interviews that way. If you want to help, read this.)
2. Play up their passions
The VIPs you’re going after reached the top of their fields because they’re passionate about their work. Let them know why working with you will be fun.
3. Do it for them
In a past interview, Wil told us how he didn’t ask top investors to create accounts on his site. He created accounts for them, and if they wanted those accounts to be live, they had to just click a link. In this interview, Koichi told us how eduFire helps its VIPs teach a class by creating PowerPoint slides and helping out during a class.
4. Get connected through a contact
Sending emails to strangers is a hard way to get them to help you out. Koichi told us that eduFire taps its founder’s big Rolodex to get introductions to the VIPs it wants to recruit.
(By the way, this is why I keep recommending that you reach out and say “hi” or “thank you” to my interviewees as soon as you hear their interviews. It’ll help you establish a relationship with them that you might be able to tap in the future.)