Blog Tipz

A growing trend that I see developing is bloggers that are interviewing other people who may interest their readers, although they may not be in the same direct niche. Generally, the people being interviewed are at the same level or slightly above that of the person conducting the interview, making it more interesting and bringing in more similarities than differences. Interviews, when publicly published to your blog, can offer a great way to connect with more people and further renew interest in your blog or the people/topics associated with it.

We’ll start with a few benefits of conducting interviews:

• Helps relate your readers to other people, not just yourself and your thoughts.
• Opens up readership to whole new groups of people. You could get visitors from sites that refer their readers back to your site. It becomes a little “circle” of people who may be interested in learning about this person.
• Blog growth increases immediately following and for the period after the interview has posted, as long as you have interviewed a notable person.
• Your blog becomes more personal.

The key to achieving an ideal situation would be to choose a fellow blogger and interview him or her, crafting an interview that inspires your own readers. Your first interview may not go as planned, but you should be able to improve upon the main topics after you become comfortable interviewing others (even though you might not actually talk to the person).

Here are some additional ideas to get started:

1. Think about the main purpose of the interview.
2. Craft some questions that will help your readers get an idea of what the person does and how they are related to your blog.
3. Don’t pressure the interviewee too often, or they might not feel like their time is worth it, in taking your survey/interview.
4. Be sure that you have open-ended and somewhat personal questions mixed in so the interview isn’t an overlay of every other interview on the web.
5. Don’t let the interviewee become bored taking the interview – don’t make it more than ten or so questions to start.

Marketing the Interview

The best way to market the interview would be simply to post it on your website and include various links throughout your site back to the interview. However, this doesn’t always do justice for the time you put into the interview, so you should venture outside of your own blog and tell others about the interview, linking to it elsewhere. If you secured a popular person and interviewed him or her, it would be even more ideal if you purchased advertising to promote the post. These are just ideas, so they won’t work in all cases.

Formatting the Post/Interview

If you are simply emailing the interview, it is necessary to format it properly, leaving space for the person to answer and with appropriate font usage – you don’t want anything unreadable or unprofessional – they will take it as spam and likely disregard it. A high “success” rate is important, or else all the time spent selecting people to interview and drafting the revenue will go down the drain.

In the post:

– Use headings or separated text to offset the questions and answers.

– If appropriate, add an image or photograph representing the interviewee at the top (or bottom) of the article.

– Create an open discussion with your readers.

– Be sure that all sides are “covered,” in that the person interviewed and your reader are not left out – answer all questions.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that many of these are common knowledge when it comes to interviewing other people, consider transforming your blog with an innovative way to captivate your audience through interviews. They’re not extremely hard to create, but with some work and effort, they can pay off in more ways than one.

Please leave your thoughts about interviews and any topics that should be further addressed.