My first article on this topic showed the importance of setting a goal for each interview you agree to do. Goal-setting is one of five keys to building your business through interviewing. The second key is to pick your gigs based on your goal.
Once you have your goal(s) clearly in mind, you can pick the interviews you most want to do based on whether the interview will meet your goal. One of the things to find out from the person who wants to interview you is information about their target audience. What types of people usually listen in to the program? What age group? As an example, if you are a solo professional whose target audience is professional woman who make more than $200,000 a year, interviewing for a host whose audience is stay-at-home moms under 25 probably won’t be worth your time. While it might be difficult to match your target audience exactly, at least take a look at who the audience typically is, and try to match your target audience as closely as you can.
Ask your host about the size of the audience, as well. She may have a very small number of listeners but yet they match your target audience very well. You need to get an idea as to how many people might be listening (or watching) the interview for several reasons. For instance, if you are crafting a special offer for this interview, you might not want to offer a complimentary copy of your book if there are 5,000 people who typically listen in!
The more you know about the profile of the host’s audience and the typical number of listeners, the better you can pull together interesting topics for the host, and that is important. You want to let the host know that you are interested and curious because you want to be interesting and helpful to their listeners. Asking about the host’s target market, audience size, and maybe an example of who she has interviewed in the past can give you a good sense of the type of guest she wants. Ask, too, if there are audio files (MP3) of a few recent calls. If so, listen to a part of each one just to get a sense of the host’s style and the type of questions she gets from her listeners.
If you want to offer the audience a product or service as a part of the interview, consider a collaboration with the host. Does the host also market product or services to the audience as part of the program? Is there something that the two of you could offer together that makes sense, is an attractive and unique offer to the audience, and would be profitable for both of you? This isn’t always possible, but it is a good idea to see if this might work. After all, the audience is quite familiar with the host, whom they already know, like, and trust. If you can combine your offer with hers, you will instantly gain credibility from the host’s know, like, and trust factor, thus establishing your own.
Get an agreement with the show’s host up front that you will receive a copy of the audio or MP3 file after the show. Most of the time, this is no problem. After all, you are providing free programming for the host, and in return it is common practice to give you full use of the audio. Even if you don’t want to make a product out of your interview, the audio can be useful to you. You might cut out a few sentences to use on your website, or in a blog post, or in other copy. You might re-work the interview and present it to another audience. Personally, I get each interview I do transcribed. I then have the audio file and the verbiage, which can be easily manipulated and cut into blog postings and article submissions. Once you have both the audio file and a transcript, you can make a product to sell, as well.
My personal stance is that if I can’t get use of the audio there has to be a very good reason why! Unless the program is very high profile and an obvious benefit, I probably would think twice about accepting a gig where I was refused access to the material. In the world of Internet marketing, it is common to agree that both the host and the interviewer have full access to the audio file and both can use it in any way they wish.
Finally, speak on a topic that relates to your business in some way. You are doing this to help build your business, right? The best gigs for you will be those that are related (even in a far-fetched way) to your business. You want to do interviews that meet at least one of the goals I talked about in the first article. The interview topic should either relate to your current business or to somewhere you plan to take your business in the future. These gigs are the ones that will serve you the best.
The exception is if you feel that you are so inexperienced that any interview on any topic would help you out, by giving you some practice in front of an audience of listeners. Usually, these “throw away” gigs are not truly necessary for you, and they offer no return on your investment of time. Be thoughtful and strategic about doing interviews that are off your topic.
Stay tuned for more! In the next article I’ll talk about the third key to interviewing like a pro, which is how to prep for the interivew.
(c) Sue Painter
Sue Painter spends her time helping people create work that is rich in spirit and profit. You can check out her marketing tips at and get her marketing tips videos on the YouTube channel confidentmarketer. Sue’s marketing expertise and strong insight leads her clients to call her a marketing therapist. She can help you build your business from the inside out.
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