Why You Should Interview People (And Hey! You Can Interview Me!)

If your small business has a blog
If you’re a blogger
If you have a life outside of the internet (with, like, friends and parties and food and cute ballet flats)
There’s a 99% chance that at some point, you have racked that incredibly attractive brain of yours for topics to write about. (“Animals in buckets! International snacks!  How to become a functioning member of adult society!“)

Those are all terribly clever ideas, friend.  You know what else works?  Interviewing people.
I do it every week on Yes and Yes - the True Story series and Real Life Style Icons are some of my most popular posts!

Here are four reasons why you should be interviewing people.

1. It’s ‘easy’ content
Of course, you need to research your interviewee and write clever, engaging questions, format the post, and scheduled the social media, but the meat of the post?  It’s insight from your interview subject!  You ask the questions, they provide the content.

2. It gives you access to people who might otherwise be ‘unavailable’
If you ask a Big Deal Blogger to guest post for you, they’ll probably turn you down.  But if you ask them for an interview?  Well, we’re all ego-driven.  It’s significantly more likely that they’ll give you an interview.  Of course, if you’re approaching someone who’s reaaaaaalllly huge, spend a few months interacting with them on Twitter and Facebook before you pitch them.

If the person you’d like to interview just launched a new product, couch your interview request in those terms. They’re a lot more likely to accept if they know they can talk about their new book/clothing line/podcast.

3. It’s a great networking tool
Interviewing someone is a great way to begin a supportive, mutually beneficial friendship.  When we’ve done a 45-minute Skype interview and I’ve seen your sweet face, I’m a million times more likely to tweet links to your blog posts and contribute to that book you’re writing.

4. It exposes your work to new people
In a perfect world, your interviewees will send traffic to your blog - tweeting links to the interview, posting it on their Facebook page, and even linking to it on their blog.  You can make this a million times easier by @mentioning them on social media, so they can just retweet it. 

(Annnnnnnd a bit of self-serving, self-promotion here: if you’d like to interview me on your blog/podcast/vlog about writing, blogging, internet awesomery, or my Solution Sessions - I’d love to chat!)

Do you do interviews for you blog?  Who do you interview? How do you find interview subjects?

photo by evan forester, cc