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Interview With Jill Foster: Doing an Interview for Your Blog

Doing interviews in your blog is, by all accounts, a good way to get content. You can use interviews to bring in alternate voices; do something new, interesting, and even useful; and maybe get some attention (and even a little link love) from people more prominent than yourself.

I myself haven’t really ever blogged an interview before. I’ve done plenty of paraphrasing, and used direct quotes, but nothing I’d call a full-on interview. Perhaps I’m too in love with the sound of my own voice. In any case, I’m going to blog my own journey of discovery, wherein I will use my own variation of the Socratic Method (wherein I bother people with dumb questions until they get tired of me) to get tips and pointers on how to do an interview for your small business blog. So this will probably be a series of entries.

First up is our own Jill Foster, who shares the following interview tips. (Even though we talk all the time, the following is from an e-mail exchange):

Can you share with me a few tips that you’ve learned when you do interviews?

“When recording audio or video: Create a sense of ease with the interviewee with the mic or camera rolling. Start the conversation off-topic with some small talk (if this is a comfortable style for you), or a compliment of their work, and/or an appreciation for their invested interview time. This lubricates the conversational mind and confidence.

When cutting a promo video with a CEO a while back, he was nervous. (As in a lot.) He decompressed significantly after talking about his kids for 10 minutes on camera before we launched into our interview.”

Also with regard to audio or video,

“Inform and direct… with respect: Relay the questions before the date of recording, and feel free to tell the interviewee what you envision (or want to emphasize) for your conversation i.e. ‘Sam, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m really interested in this part of your story: you’re a registered Democrat but your team is 60% Republican….’”

On technology:

“I’ve enjoyed good experiences with Audio Hijack in conjunction with Skype to conduct the interview and record (which can be imported and easily edited in iMovie or other editing platforms; I just happen to use iMovie more steadily).”

On choosing a line of questioning:

“Combine emotional and more structural questions regarding your interviewee’s business.  Ask not only ‘How they developed “x” initiative,’ but also what their most favored aspect of their business is. What gets them on fire?  Asking questions with a varied tack can help you recognize where your subject is most forthcoming, most confident, and what most sparks their interest.”

A suggestion for a good staple question:

“It’s useful to ask “What was a question you wish we would’ve addressed that I didn’t ask?”

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Thanks, Jill, for those interview tips.

As noted, this was all from an e-mail exchange. Some people prefer doing e-mail interviews, and it’s my natural tendency, but you can lose some of that iteration and back-and-forth that you get from a verbal interview, or even over IM and Twitter. So as I progress, I hope to add in audio, or even video (as appropriate). Stay tuned.

Have you incorporated interviews into your small business blog? Leave a comment and share a lesson you’ve learned or a tip you’d like to pass along.

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