Interviews can be a great way to get high quality content for your blog. Whether you are interviewing brands, bloggers or industry experts, the benefits are many. You get great, sharable content. Your interviewee will in most cases share your post with their following. You are seen as a go-to source for industry information. That doesn’t mean it is going to be easy. You need to plan for success!
Devising Your Plan of Action
Define the Purpose of Your Interview Series – I recently conducted interviewsthat gave a “behind the scenes” look at brands in my blogging niche. For me, there were several reasons for this series:
• I’m a home business owner. I love learning about and meeting other entrepreneurs and their businesses.
• My readers had a strong interest in learning about the business model behind the products they love. And finding out if it was a viable business option for them in the future!
• My beauty blog is primarily review content. It needs to good, strong pillar posts and sharable content to prove its worth to the search engines long-term.
Choose Your Medium – I prefer text, both as a reader and as a blogger. That’s the medium I therefore chose to interview my experts. Podcasts, videos and hangouts are also options. Choose the route that works best for you and your readers.
Call to Action – What do you inevitably want people to do upon finishing your post or podcast?
Sign up for your email newsletter? Enroll in your online course? Make a purchase? This is how you will end each interview.
Setting Up the Interviews
Variety is the Spice of Life – Choose interviewees with different backgrounds or business plans. If that isn’t possible, vary the questions you are asking each person. That will help ensure your readers are not being fed the same or similar information time after time.
The “I’m not going first” pitfall – The online world operates no different than real life. Even though an opportunity is something everyone would like to take, sometimes no one will until they see someone else doing it. Then the floodgates open. I lined up my first interviewee and published her post before sending out emails to those I thought would be a tougher sell. Another perk of having a live example is that it (hopefully) eliminates any misconception or misinterpretation of what is actually taking place.
Use HARO – I had a few interviews lined up, but you can never be too sure that things won’t fall through. People change their minds. They get busy. It’s better safe than sorry. Submit a query to HARO and use pitches as backup.
Success is in the Follow-up
Follow-up with those that expressed interest but did not return your interview questions. We all forget from time to time! If they back out, and some will, thank them for their time and leave the door open for a future partnership.
When your post, podcast or video are live, take a moment to email your interviewee thanking them for their time and give them the URL where they can find the final product. There’s a good chance they will share that interview with their own following!
Make sure all of the interviews in your series are properly tagged or linked together in some way. This will make them easily sharable and searchable for years to come.
Tag the brand on social media. Oftentimes, the person handling PR is not the same as the person monitoring social media. This simple step will increase the chances of retweets and shares.
Have you conducted a long-running blog interview series? What tips can you share?
Angie Nelson is owner and head blogger of My Beauty Box Review. She believes every woman deserves to look and feel their best, regardless of her budget. Sign up for Angie’s newsletter to receive her free report, “Beauty on a Budget: How to Get the Best in Beauty Products without Going Broke.”
**Photo courtesy of Mihajlo Maricic/photos.com
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What a great idea. I might just incorporate it in my blog. Thank you so much for sharing.
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