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Ten Essential Tips for Engaging Interviews

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This is a guest post by  Casey Brazeal. Casey writes and produces the interview blog/podcast North and Clark.  Every Wednesday he features an interview with a different Chicagoan with a story to tell.

An engaging interview can give you a window into another person’s life.  They are generally fun to conduct and quick to generate interest.  When Andrew asked me to write a post about how to conduct an audio interview for online consumption my first thought was to break the basics down into ten essentials tips for Engaging interviews:

1. Take it easy. An Interview is a conversation.  You have dozens of these every day.  If you are qualified to ask your wife how her day was your qualified to ask Bill Gates how his day was.
2. Do your homework. Whoever your talking to its going to be easier to think of insightful questions and get compelling information out of him or her if you know a little about them.  Also, research is a way to make yourself more comfortable when you don’t personally know the interview subject.
3. Ease into it. I don’t do fluff interviews and you shouldn’t either, but there’s no reason to start with the most challenging questions.  Set the tone you want first and then move to your burning questions.
   
4. Don’t miss your biggest questions. While its important to set the tone.  Don’t leave your burning questions till the end of the interview.  And don’t ever finish the interview with out asking them.
5. The follow up is your friend. Its common for an interviewee not to give you all the information you want — maybe they misunderstand the question, maybe they are still ordering their thoughts, maybe they are reticent to answer.  Regardless of the situation its your responsibility to give them a follow up.   You want your subject to have as many opportunities to answer the important questions as possible.
6. The cliché is your foe. Interviewers hear their share of pat interview responses.  Don’t let your interview be a cliché exchange.  Ask the follow ups that make a person explain what they mean or give a story that illustrates their point.  If they tell you that they take things a day at a time, get the examples why is that important to them, how does their approach affect their life.  Details give interviews personality.
7. Edit carefully. Editing is an art and not a science.  It’s the hardest and most important part of the interview.  For me, the first step in editing is to think about the interview before you start editing and remember the most crucial pieces first.  If you can identify the key points you can build the rest of your interview from there.
8. If your thinking it, ask it. An interviewer is his or her own worst censor.  If you really want to ask a question you probably should.
9. Shut up and Listen. That said, an interview is not your chance to preach!   Save your ideas for your own posts.  Its great to challenge a subject to explain what they are saying but it would be wrong to get in there way.  If you disagree with your interviewee, your next post is already written.
10. Share your enthusiasm. If your interviewing someone, you must think there is something interesting, scary or important about that person or what they do.  Make sure that comes across in your introduction and in how you interact with them.

The surest way to make sure your audience enjoys your interview is to enjoy it your self.  Have fun with it.

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Tags: audio interview, blog, Blogging, interview subject, interviewee, interviewers