A Tiny Little Time-Saving Secret When Starting An Interview Podcast

Back in 2004, I was pretty good at cartooning and pretty average at marketing. And podcasts, let alone interview podcasts, barely existed.

So how do you get more knowledge and how do you get yourself known?

You can do podcast interviews. In my case, the interviews were to fill a need. I’d just started a membership site called 5000bc and I was desperately trying to drum up content. Those were early days. Writing articles was difficult and like any beginner, I was trying to do everything all at once. I had to pull back a little and take stock of the situation.

I decided on a strategy that would help me get better known, improve my knowledge and also create valuable content for my members. If you have an interview style podcast, this same strategy can be used today. The only thing I needed to do was overcome my mind chatter and get on with the job of interviewing.

I did have a fair bit of mind chatter

I knew very little about marketing or marketing strategy and I was going to interview people who had written books on the topic. I lived in New Zealand, but had an Indian accent (Would that be a problem? I didn’t know for sure). Even though I was (and still am) a voracious reader, there’s still the issue of having to read an entire book before approaching someone for an interview.

I decided to focus on the concept of “less is more”, instead

I decided to pick on random chapter, but only after reading the blurb on the back page, the introduction and scanning through the table of contents. Once I’d done those three actions, I’d pick random chapters. Let’s say I’m the interviewer and I were to interview myself for The Brain Audit, I’d possibly pick the chapter on uniqueness, testimonials and target profile. I know, I know. It doesn’t seem logical to pick chapter as though you were at a “book a la carte”, but this technique is useful for several reasons.

The first reason is that it allows you to dig deep into a chapter

Most chapters are between 7-20 pages and jumping right into the middle of a book allows your brain to focus on how the content makes sense to you. Hey, it works for a la carte, doesn’t it? It will work for information as well. When you work your way through that chapter, put down all your questions. You should be able to go through about three chapters in a few hours. Using this technique you’ve saved yourself a ton of time. Yet, that’s only one of the reasons why this technique is so cool.

The second reason is authors love it

If you’re an author, you often get the same boring questions when you are interviewed for a podcast. You want to know what they are? It goes a bit like this:

• Tell our audience a bit about yourself (Ok, so the interviewer didn’t do their homework)
• What caused you to write this book? (A valid question, but rather repetitive)
• Tell us a bit about the “seven red bags” (I’m referring to the elements described in The Brain Audit)
• Talk about Bag No.1
• Talk about Bag No.2
• Talk about Bag No.3 etc
• Tell us what you’re doing and your future plans
• Where can we find you (again a lack of homework).

This kind of podcast interview plays out over and over again, unless you jump into a la carte land

Imagine an interview that goes like this:

• The interviewer talks—not reads a script—about the interviewee and their background
• They ask a question like: So there are seven bags in The Brain Audit. Why does uniqueness matter so much?
• What are the big struggles with finding your uniqueness?
• What’s the best way to find and keep a uniqueness factor?
• Jumping into another red bag, why are testimonials so critical?
• What causes a testimonial to fall flat and not convert as well as it should?
• How do you easily get testimonials that are between 800-1500 words long?
• Moving to the third bag—and we’re still out of order: Target Profile. Why is target audience an issue?
• Why does a target profile interview bring astounding, even surprising results?
• Why do clients feel the target profile method is terribly risky?
• Tell us about the rest of the bags and why they matter.
• That was Sean from Psychotactics.com. You can find a very useful report called (name of report) that helps you (put in benefit here). Is there anything else you’d like our listeners to have, Sean?

What you’ve done is given the author a fun ride

They get to talk about their book in a way that most interviewers would never have approached. You’ll almost hear them beaming as you wrap up the interview. They’ll have immense respect for you as an interviewer and you can be sure you’ll be remembered among the hundreds of interviews they’ve done (yes, good authors do hundreds).

Ironically you’ve saved a lot of time and got a lot of respect

What’s even more interesting is you’ve come out looking like an expert, even though you may not be on top of the subject matter. And let’s face it, when you look at most interviewers on TV or radio, it’s not like they’re reading books all day. So even if you feel like a fraud, think of what professionals do, day in and day out.

When I first started my membership site, I wish I’d known this little strategy

Tactic? Strategy? Who knows, but it’s so easy, saves so much time and it works better than all the boring interview questions that you tend to have to wade through.

Starting a podcast is not easy

You have so much to do. There’s equipment, dealing with nerves, learning how to contact people and getting them to say yes. And there’s other stuff too. However, once you decide to get going, it’s always a great idea to start up an interview podcast. In the next installment, let’s find out just why it’s a good idea to do podcast interviews.

P.S. To start at the very beginning and work your way through the Podcasting 101 Series click here:  How To Start A Podcast