Even in the hands of a seasoned professional, every interview isn’t a homerun. An interviewer can poke, joke and prod—but not every interviewee is as quotable as Yogi Berra. Here are 8 tips on improving your interviews for better content.

Tips:
1. If, at all possible, call the interviewee and get a sense of their personality before the interview. Are people coming in and out of their office? Are they focused on the interview? Are the overly concerned with how they will be represented? Better to deal with these issues now than a few days before the deadline or the day of the interview. Some might say, “If you have them on the phone, why not do the interview then?” I say if it feels right and you are prepared, go for it. But more times than not, that three minute call is better used to lay out the scope of the interview, get the interviewee to understand the approval process and nail down a date and time—all of which is easier done on the phone than over email.

2. If you know the interviewee is on a PR push, do some research and find out something off the beaten path about them or their business. Most likely, they have a standard interview loop they unconsciously lock into—try and knock them off that loop and you’ll get better content. If they’ve had a book published, read it; if they have a website, research it; and be sure to drill down into Google beyond the first few pages. You never know what you’ll find. I, for instance, used to play in a loud math-rock band and my partner played violin in a dreamy post-rock orchestral band. Even if this isn’t relevant to the interview at hand, if an interviewer were to mention our past gigs at The Knitting Factory or Joe’s Pub, we might connect with them in a way we wouldn’t with someone who gets straight down to businesses.

3. Don’t pre-email questions if possible. You are setting yourself up for an answer too well thought out, or worse, a sales-pitch. The goal of the interview is to acquire the sexy, quotable stuff; not the canned answer as approved by every marketing, biz dev and product exec in the company stuff. If the email interview is the only way you can get access to your source, don’t waste time asking the questions you already know the answers to or can easily find through research. “When is your new book coming out?” is a waste of a question. Instead, get more specific, (and here’s where your homework comes in) like, “I noticed you’re with a new publisher. How does Random House’s approach to publicity differ from Simon and Schuster’s?” The more curveballs you throw an interviewee, the more apt you are to get a unique answer.

4. Drill down, and don’t be afraid to go off your script. Don’t accept answers from subjects that are vague, and don’t be dazzled by a bunch of mumbo jumbo that in the end really is nothing but fluff. Keep circling around your question until you get an authentic answer. If you sense your subject is getting frustrated or worn out, move on, but look for opportunities to circle back to the topic later. Watch how interviewers like Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric and Oprah handle this—sometimes you can learn a lot from watching talk shows. Not that we watch talk shows.

5. If you are recording the conversation using your own equipment (I recommend the Olympus WS-300M), make sure you have fresh batteries. All digital recorders are battery hogs. You don’t know the meaning of the word panic until you are 35 minutes into an interview with a bigwig and you look down to see your digital recorder window blank. It sounds basic but it has happened to the best of us/me.

6. When using VOIP recording services like AT&T or Freeconferencecall.com use your own recorder as a backup. (It sounds like overkill, but erasing a file on your digital recorder is a lot easier than rescheduling an interview.) Don’t forget to ask the interviewee for permission if you are recording the phone call.

7. If you are having the audio file transcribed, send it to your transcriber right after the interview ends. Name the file appropriately, upload it to your transcriber and save the upload confirmation. And always, always save your own copies of your audio files.

8. When you get the file back from the transcriber, do a search and replace for “interviewer:” and “interviewee:” and remove the formatting. Next, quickly gray out any extraneous text that isn’t relevant to the interview, and highlight any passages you know you’ll want to use. That way, by the time you sit down to write the article, all the “good stuff” is staring at you, ready to be turned into a compelling story.

Information without voice is like content without design. Unless someone is dying to read about what you are writing, you have to grab them with your voice/personality. And because many of the articles in the content marketing space are saying very similar things, making your voice (and the voice you give your clients) stand out is one of your biggest tools. Use it.

The way I see it, there are five flavors of writers in today’s content marketing world.

Dry Toast – All information, no voice
This corporate collateral is typically produced by smart people who know all the right marketing formulas and can juggle terms like the “integration of marketing channels” with “streamlining the optimization of sales collateral.” But when you’re done reading this company’s blog/newsletter or collateral, all that’s left is a vague memory of a PowerPoint slide gone boringly wrong.

Solution: Don’t be afraid to lightly ruffle some feathers with your voice. Your view/opinion is never going to appeal to everyone, but if you’re doing things right, you aren’t marketing yourself to everyone, anyway. Also, if you do an honest assessment of your collateral and realize you’re in the Dry Toast category, ask yourself if you’re still fishing for your core competency or audience.

Extra Sauce – All voice, no information
“Then, after I attended the Shiny Happy Convention hosted by Guy I Knowsowell, I parlayed over to the Social Media event of the year. If you weren’t there, you really missed out.” Really, I missed out. Because you reporting on your blog about the event you attended shouldn’t have been all about you. You know.

Solution: Talk to us, not at us. Keep your reader at the forefront of all your communications. If you’re going to write about every industry conference you attend, give us information we can use (not a blow by blow of your itinerary and all the cool people you saw).

French Cuisine #1 – Great design, little to no content
Flash is for advertising firms and art school. Everyone else put it away, now.

Solution: I realize it looks cool, but lets just face facts: Flash loads slow (always), the motion graphics detract from the content, it’s difficult to track (SEO), and sometimes customers and prospective customers already know what information they want and don’t have time for your two-minute splashy intro or your nav-bar to reload. Great design should breathe life into editorial content, not take away from it.

French Cuisine #2 – Great design, little to no content
Without great design, readers may come to your site, get what they want, and get out. Content needs great design or no one will ever notice it. Or if readers do notice it, they most likely won’t navigate beyond what they came to read. Case in point—I am a basketball nerd. Every morning I read Hoopshype.com and ESPN.com. Even though I have been reading Hoopshype for years, I couldn’t tell you who advertises on the site, the names of the regularly appearing columns, or anything about who runs the site—I’m in and I’m out. With ESPN, I read the NBA highlights, view an ad that catches my eye, and before I know it, I’m reading a feature about some champion ping-pong player from Guam. The content may have drawn me there, but it was great navigation and design that made it easy for me to stay.

Solution: Make sure your website looks as good as it reads. The truth is, Hoopshype has far better content than ESPN when it comes to basketball. But while the content delivers, the design doesn’t court me to stay.

Meat and Potatoes – No opinion information
Content that tells people what they already know gives readers the impression that the product is available elsewhere—and it doesn’t matter if they use company A or B. Telling me what you sell, what you charge and that you are the best is the same thing everyone else is doing. And in a contest of best vs. best I’m heading for the hills and looking for offbeat and good (at least they are saying something different and I will stand out amongst the crowd of same-osity). Remember, your clients can blend in safely amongst their peers all by themselves (sans your retainer fee).

Solution: Every brand doesn’t need to be as “voicey” as Jet Blue. But every brand does need a personality. Customers should be able to view an ad or read a piece of collateral and know who it’s from without even having to look at your logo.

Smorgasbord – A little of everything
Ever land on a website and wish you had a digital weed-whacker to knock back all the Social Media/Web 2.0 widgets that clutter the site? Welcome to the work of the “smorgasbord content marketer.” That old “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” mentality unbelievably employs people for years, but flies in the face of logic when you are in the business of measuring who read what, when, why and how it may lead to a sale.

Solution: Take a look at your site and then your competitors’ sites. Do those
widgets add value? Do they differentiate you from the pack? Or does your site look like a 2008 Jaguar littered with bumper stickers?

When content is your business, story angles are your end caps, voice becomes your packaging and the hunt is always on for more product. Today my inbox got a pleasant surprise with the beta launch of First30days.com. First30Days Founder, Ariane De Bonvoisin, sets out to prove that targeted, free and quality content (sans a sales pitch) does have a place in the market.

The concept of First30days is simple.

“Whether you’re starting a new job, getting married, switching to the Mac or have decided to live a green lifestyle, you’ll find the help you need at First30Days. Expert Advice. Helpful Tips. Q&A. Inspirational Stories. Community. And a whole lot more!”

Despite the fact that Ariane just used up 50% of her annual exclamation point allotment, my recent switch to Mac had me immediately hooked—moving emails from PC to Mac has proven to be on par with a string and doorknob tooth-yanking, and I have yet to figure out how to save a file directly to anywhere but the desktop. I’m a prime target for this service.

Some may argue that First30days.com is a rehash of About.com, but by narrowing the subject focus and having the content delivered passively versus actively, the perception is very “Mr. Miyagi” (master this lesson and I will deliver you another). I feel like First30days.com is a “they” and not an “it” and I perceive them to be experts. About.com has historically told me what I already knew or told me in a way that felt like they were talking to a watered-down me.

Do I have concerns that my next 29 days of emails will be full of trite advice that I could have figured out on my own? Sure do. But something tells me First30days.com is onto something. Content doesn’t have to be corporate, overly intellectual or entirely state of the art, but it does have to make the reader feel like they are in a special club and that the information is just for them.