Interviews can do wonders for your business. They help you branch out to new audiences. They boost credibility and authority. Interviews also provide a useful form of content to your customers and prospects.
Deciding How to Conduct Your Interview
Interviews can be conducted in a number of ways. You can send your prospective interviewee a list of questions and have them respond in writing. You can then reprint the interview in its original Q&A format. Add a few pictures and a call to action and you have a nice piece of useful content.
You can also record the interview with audio and/or video. This type of interview can be delivered to your prospects in digital format. You can also have the material transcribed so your website visitors have a choice of how they obtain the information. Some people prefer to read and others prefer to listen or watch videos.
Preparing the Questions
Regardless of how the interview is conducted and what format is used, you’ll want to prepare your questions in advance. This gives your interviewee has an opportunity to review the questions. They can then prepare cohesive and valuable answers.
The questions you ask your interviewee should be researched. Make sure you understand who you are interviewing, what they have to offer, and who their audience is. Additionally, make sure that the topic you’re covering and the potential answers will provide value to your prospects.
Make sure the questions are open ended. There’s not much room to elaborate on or derive value from yes/no questions.
Formulate the questions with an end goal in mind. For example, if you’re interviewing someone on how to train a dog you don’t start with the question about how to get them to jump through hoops. You begin with the how the trainer approaches dog training or the tools they recommend. In short, you begin at the beginning and work toward your goal.
Finally, if you are conducting the interview via audio and/or video then make sure the technology is working well beforehand. Test everything. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to interview someone and having the technology fail. Give it a trial run to ensure you’re ready to roll when the schedule interview day arrives.
Interviews can be a fun and profitable way to create content for your blog or website. They help introduce fresh value to your site as well, they can be a content format that is easy to repurpose into many other pieces.