Killer Interviewing Tips for Podcasters

Interviewing for podcasts is as easy as putting a microphone in a room and asking a few questions—as long as you’re satisfied with your listeners turning you off after a minute or two. If you want your listeners to hang around for your conversation with a rising star, read on. In this article, Jack Herrington shares a podload of tips on conducting and recording a killer interview. Although you can do amazing salvage work with today’s digital editing tools, it’s faster, easier, and usually better-sounding if you begin with a great recording.

Scoring the Killer Interview

To get listeners to stick around, you have to give them compelling content: all killer and no filler. That means interviewing people who are famous in their field, hot right now, or who have something intriguing and unique to say.

I recommend starting with the topic. What are people talking about? What are you talking about? Find a person at the center of the swirl and come up with three or four questions that you are dying to ask.

After that, it’s a matter of persistence to get that interview. Let the potential guest know that they will get lots of exposure and that the interview will be easy and worth their time. It’s helpful to know who is on a publicity tour. Right around the release time of any commercial item (e.g., a book, CD, or software) key individuals will go on a publicity tour to get the buzz going out on the street. That’s the time when you can easily score an interview if you appear to have even a shred of credibility (see sidebar).

Interviewing Face to Face

With the interview set up, you will need to choose how to conduct it—in person, over the phone, or over VoIP. I detail these different options in the sections that follow.

Face-to-face interviews are best, so try to set up something local. Then pick a spot that will have good acoustics. I can guarantee you that it’s not the local coffee shop. The clink of the glasses seems like it would add ambience but it will distract from the interview. You need someplace relatively noise-free.

Many libraries have small conference rooms you can reserve for an hour at a time. If the interviewee is staying at a hotel, then ask to meet them in their room. The cushions from the couch, the padding in the bed, and the curtains will all dampen the room noise. You should also turn off any fans or air conditioning since those create a nasty periodic noise that is tough to remove.

Once you have the location set and the noise dampened you need a recording rig that you can rely on. Think simplicity and quality. You want a setup that has the least possible hardware and software. If you are running on a computer, make sure that your sound recording software is the only thing running. Every additional box and cable is one more thing to fail or add noise.

Authored by Jack Herrington