Does your team use interviews in its content marketing? Whether you interview your CEO, customers, or industry experts, you can tap various sources to help you create compelling content. Here’s what you should know if you’re looking for ways to elevate your content with interviews.
Why use interviews?
Interviews provide a wealth of benefits for your marketing team and customers. Interviews can:
Boost credibility
When your brand interviews an expert, it earns credibility. Connecting with someone who has clout, even if that person works within your company, sends a signal to your customers that your brand is connected to knowledgeable, reputable sources, which can elevate their trust in you.
Break content stagnation
It’s easy to fall into a content rut. At some point, your team probably feels like they’ve covered every crevice of your industry. Interviews can provide a fresh perspective and a break from your typical content.
Easy to execute
Marketers have a lot of content machines to feed. From blogs and websites to social channels and emails, there’s a lot of content to write. If you interview experts, you can streamline the process and produce informative pieces that are low-touch efforts for your team. You could email a list of questions to an expert and publish the content after writing a quick intro and proofing it, for example.
Increase your metrics
After being interviewed, experts share your content. When they do, your brand expands its reach as their followers are introduced to your brand. Brand awareness and engagement typically increase, too, as more people read the interview, share it, and ask questions on social media.
How to use interviews in content
To inspire content, here are a few ideas on how to leverage interviews:
Interview customers for case studies
Every brand has satisfied customers. Consider asking your marketing team to interview some of your happiest clients for a case study. By highlighting the customer’s personal experience, you can help decision-makers see the value of your product or service.
Need an example? FreshBooks interviewed an Austin-based interior designer who uses the accounting software to streamline her budding business. The result is a personalized case study that entrepreneurs can relate to.
Interview your brand leaders
From your CEO to your sales manager, your company likely relies on a handful of industry experts to guide it. While the staff benefits from their wealth of knowledge, your customers can, too.
Sprinkle quotes into content
Consider weaving quotes from leaders into your blogs, newsletters, and social media. If you’re writing a blog or newsletter, pull the quote out and put it in larger text. If you use a quote on social media, consider putting it on a graphic so it’s more eye-catching.
When Social Champ planned a webinar, they promoted the event with a quote from the webinar’s host, placed on a graphic.
Interview CEOs about your brand
Consider conducting video interviews with leaders, covering topics like the brand’s history, how products are developed, or future growth plans. You can interview your internal product experts, sales leaders — you name it.
Let data drive the piece
When your brand completes a study or releases some industry data, consider interviewing your CEO about the findings. Ask him or her what’s most compelling? What were they surprised to find? What does the data suggest about the future?
When McKinsey researched the economic, financial, and societal aspects of a net-zero transition, they released their findings alongside interviews with industry experts and those who conducted the research.
Interview industry experts
You can go outside your organization and interview industry experts about relevant topics to your readers. Look at this compilation of interviews from marketing experts that explore trends. It’s informative and insightful, and it will likely generate great engagement with so many experts weighing in and sharing it with their audiences.
Tips for interview success
- No matter the format, keep the interview brief.
- For video interviews, purchase an affordable tripod and wireless microphone for your smartphone to produce more professional videos.
- Put the interviewee at ease by explaining the process and providing expectations.
- If you email questions, mention a deadline for responses.
- Let the experts know when the interview is published, and tag them on social media.
- Encourage the expert to share a link to the post.
- Consider setting up an interview cadence so you can regularly publish interviews and manage your content on brand channels.
Interviews give brands a unique way to connect with customers credibly. Get your team together and think about who you can interview, brainstorm topics you’d like to cover, and how you’ll distribute the content.
