When you go to interview someone for a blog post, how do you go about doing it? I have someone whom I wish to interview for my blog, I think they have a fantastic story worth telling.

I want to interview them via skype or phone, but they seem to want to do so via email. This to me takes away key parts of the entire interview process (granted I never studied any journalism). What are your thoughts on interview posts?

@kristi-hines oh really? What were the types of questions you enjoyed the most and feared the most. I certainly don’t want to make them uncomfortable and my goal is not to grill them.

Hi Glen, I’ve completed a few written interviews — the choice was written, email or recording, all picked written.

Two want videos this year — so that should be interesting for me!

I don’t know the ‘feel’ of your blog, my own is very conversational and I wanted the interviews to be the same. I started with 10 questions, sent them through, they were agreed or not. I then offered the opportunity for the person to ‘make up their own’: questions they would love to be asked, but haven’t been yet, which was popular as they could really highlight their ‘best’ — that make sense?

All in all, no problems at all. I did have to do a little re-writing to make it feel conversational and then sent this to person to agree before posting.

I did have a connection before the interview — that may (or may not) make a difference.

I bet it will be grand. Have fun.

Dawn

@glengorham I’m usually not a fan of generalized questions like “tell me about yourself.”  I like “tell me more about why you started blogging” or “what do you do when you’re not writing.”  I’m like a deer in the headlights when it comes to the first one.  :)

Also, on the note of “sometimes it feels frustrating because everytime I go to write a post turns out another blogger just or recently covered it…”  When it comes to blogging & social media topics, almost everything has been covered.  You have to read those posts, look at what the blogger didn’t cover, and then add your personal touch to it.  Maybe you need to go into more detail about something they missed, or maybe you need to look at a bigger picture because they focused too much on one detail.  If you look at it that way, other bloggers’ posts could become a source of inspiration.

@glengorham Some of my most successful posts were on topics that have been done over and over, yet none of the people who did them addressed them in the way that I did.  Sometimes the difference was just putting the information in a step by step order with screenshots!