How to Conduct a Content Marketing Interview: An Essential Guide to Prepping & Interviewing Your Subjects
This post was co-written by our staff members, Tara Clapper and Hannah Darling. In content marketing, interviewing is a crucial component. Giving a successful interview is not only an efficient way to generate content, but it also provides fresh material that people will genuinely want to read. As project managers with backgrounds in feature interview creation and publication, we’ve streamlined our processes for the workflow here at Express Writers. Here’s our co-created guide to save and refer to when it’s time to conduct an effective interview for your content marketing subject. Enjoy! How to Conduct a Content Marketing Interview: An Essential Guide to Prepping & Interviewing Your Subjects Here are our top tips for preparing your interview subjects for the interview. 1. Schedule and Confirm When you’re juggling multiple interviews, organization is essential. Sometimes, you may need to work through a third party to schedule calls – a press contact, content manager, or someone who wants you to interview a client or employee. Tools to Use Tara: I use Calendly to schedule all my business calls. I block out time (marked as busy) when I don’t want to take calls, such as on weekends or when I need time to answer clients’ emails or create content. Calendly also sends you and the interview subject an email confirmation. If you need to schedule with multiple interviewees frequently, Doodle may suit your needs better. 2. Prep Your Interview Subject Before you get on the phone with your interview subject, it will help them to know exactly what the interview will be about. That’s best done in the introductory email, which should be professional and enticing. Once they accept, follow up with some more detailed information: Email 1 – Initial Interview Pitch Subject: Interview Invitation – [Brand Name] Blog Hello, Name of Potential Interview Subject: My name is Tara, Content Development Specialist at Express Writers. I’m writing on behalf of our client, Brand Name. Brand Name knows you’re an industry leader in Industry, and they’re very interested in featuring you on their blog, located here: ExpressWritersClientBlog.com/blog. To get an idea of how it would look, please check out this blog post with Other Industry Superstar: ExpressWritersClientBlog.com/blog/superstarpost.html If you’re interested, please let me know what days work best. You can book a time most convenient for you here: www.calendly.com/this-is-an-example. I’d love to discuss [unique thing they’ve done in their industry], and I’d also like to provide you with the opportunity to promote your book. We could even include a discount code or link to a sample. Thank you for your time and consideration. Tara Email 2 – Follow up email Subject: Thank You For Scheduling an Interview Name of Interview Subject: Thank you so much for accepting the interview invitation. I look forward to speaking with you on Monday, February 17th at 4 p.m. ET. I’ll call you at 555-555-5555. I hope to focus on your impressive career in Your Industry: how you got started, what drives you to innovate, and where you think you’ll be in five years. I’m also curious about what prompted you to write and publish a book. Thank you, Tara Unless you’re dealing with a veteran interviewee, it can really benefit you both to prep them a second time in person (or over the phone) right before you start. If you need long, direct quotes, you can encourage them to expand as much as possible when a question is asked and to try and avoid one word answers. 3. Set Parameters for Promotion If the interview subject has a new book or a product they’d like to promote, you should let them know whether it’s okay for them to push their product. I usually handle this preemptively (see above emails), stating that I’m going to include a link to their product, and confirm which link I want to use. Since they know it’ll be included, they usually feel less inclined to insert too much self-promotional speech. I also try to put one question in there about their product or book, even if that’s not the center of the conversation. 4. Ask the Softball Question, Then Play Hardball Interview subjects vary – some get on the phone ready to talk about their unique place in their industry or field of expertise. Others are reticent and don’t know exactly what to say. Either way, you want to use the interview to develop a piece which highlights and distinguishes your interview subject from every other expert in their field. In your research, try to discover: What makes them interesting? What are they best known for? What personal facts and experiences help shape the human element of this person’s story? Once you begin the interview, ask some ‘easy’ questions, like “How did you get your start in this field?” Once you’re a few questions in, ask something a bit more hard hitting. (In a business interview, you don’t need to ask a Barbara-Walters-make-them-cry question, but try for something thought-provoking.) If your interview subject says they need to think or that they’ve never been asked that question before, you’re on the right track! Make sure not to ask ‘yes or no’ questions unless absolutely necessary, especially if the purpose of the interview is to serve as the foundation for a blog or article. If you do, there will be very little material to work with when all’s said and done, and you won’t have anything quotable. More is more. The more information that you have to pull from, the better. Ask every question that comes to mind, whether or not you think it will be interesting. Pause. As unnatural as it feels, when your interviewee is answering a question and they come to the end of a thought, pause before you say anything. Sometimes in that moment, they’ll keep talking if you let the silence hang there for a moment longer than feels comfortable. Don’t fill in the blanks or utter too many affirming phrases. In normal conversation, encouraging words to show that … Read more
