Research Your Guest
Write Your Guest's Bio
Highlight Where Your Show & Guest Intersect
The point of an interview is to bring additional voices into the conversation about your podcast’s topic. Ensure you are focusing on how your guest’s expertise and background can contribute to your show’s overall theme and goal. Your audience is tuning in for a reason, ensure you are sticking to your ‘why’ for podcasting, even during an interview.
Again, this is why researching your guest is so important. They may have fifty interesting things to talk about, but if only three are relevant to your show, ensure you are steering the conversation back to the pertinent topics. Don’t be afraid to skip over something the guest thinks is important if it doesn’t make sense for the show.
Prepare Questions In Advance
You don’t have to script every word of an interview, but you do need to have a list of questions prepared to drive your conversation forward. Also, ensure you have more questions than you need. Your guest may inadvertently answer something before it is asked, or you may realize during an interview that a question doesn’t make sense.
Keep these things in mind:
- Avoid basic questions you can answer with a proper guest introduction
- Don’t ask leading questions of your guest
- Focus on ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions for greater depth
- Ask only one question at a time
- Don’t mention your list of questions
Interviews are an opportunity to learn about someone new, gain new perspectives, and possibly even gain a few new audience members. These are a few quick tips to get you started in crafting your next interview. Remember, above all else, it begins with research.