8 Mad Interviewing Tips for Content Marketing
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.
