Let me break it to you: For every well written blog post you write, readers can find a dozen just like it (covering the same topic), and probably just as helpful. It's time that we diversify and stand out. It's time that we offer something more than useful advice and tools: It's time that we explore more formats, packages and marketing channels!
One way to diversify your editorial calendar is to offer expert insights from outside contributors. Expert interviews provide a personal flare to a fledgling style. Rather than just laying out information based on your own experience, you are relying on the expertise of others who have been highly successful in the industry. It changes the overall tone, and attracts readers as much for the knowledge that will be imparted as the name attached.
Expert interviews have been used a lot lately: Even though they help you add something refreshing to your editorial calendar, there's still effort needed to pack them the way the content attracts more attention and caters to different channels.
Changing Up The Platform
Different platforms vastly change the overall outcome of an interview. A discussion conducted on an open social network will encourage others to participate. A call in show will make it mostly between the host and guest, with a few questions or comments from third parties. A video conference will be between the expert(s) and host(s) only.
Using different tools can keep your interviews fresh. One may also work better for certain experts, because it fits with their schedule. Say you are at a conference, and you want to set something up quickly. Obviously doing a live interview through a social network might not be the best idea, but having a quick question/answer session published as a transcript will work much better.
Here are a few platforms to to hold your interview:
YouTube Live Events (formerly Hangouts on Air)
YouTube Live Events have become something like the unofficial format for anyone looking to conduct group interviews. It offers a very convenient way of having multiple people jump onto a video chat, and then streaming that chat live, and/or recording it for later use. If you head over to Youtube, you will find a ton of these interviews from every industry imaginable.
If your aim is to get a group of people together for a chat, this is the perfect way to do it. Simple to set up, no complicated equipment necessary, everyone just needs a webcam with a functioning mic.
Example: Alex Mandossian did an awesome job hosting regular Google HOAs in the radio-show style inviting featured experts, switching between questions and engaging the audience too!
UPDATE: Now that Hangouts is gone, you can use Streamyard instead. Use Ms. Ileane's link to get a free Streamyard trial!
Learn more about doing expert Interviews with Streamyard
Twitter Interviews
Twitter offers a great way to get your readers/followers involved in the discussion. Set a day, create an itinerary complete with questions submitted by followers/with an open time for them to ask their own during the chat itself, and promote it. You can even brand a hashtag that can be used for future interviews.
Recommended: Complete Guide to Hosting a Twitter Chat
Once you have completed the interview, make sure you save the transcript to use later on. You can show it to those who didn't make it, or re-purpose the content, like mentioned earlier.
Twchat has a great post and template for Twitter interviews.
Re-Packaging Interviews
Reusing content is difficult when it is an interview you are drawing from.
Generally, you are just going to be taking pieces of the whole to apply to something else. In other words, you will be providing quotes. I have seen this done in several interesting ways:
- Create a visual version of the post, against a colorful or relevant background, and link it through social media to the interview.
- Quote a portion in a wider collection of expert opinions.
- Ask people from some of their favorite quotes on a topic, and include one from the interview as an example of your own.
- Put quotes on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or other social networks, linking to the original. This is especially useful on Twitter. You can share it multiple times through a day with different quotes.
Here's a great example of the visually-repackaged group expert interview. That's the whole new content asset, an infographic which can be promoted on Pinterest, SlideShare, Visal.ly and many other visual marketing channels. It appears to have done very well on Pinterest!
Anything you can think of that gives you an opportunity to attract people to the interview is going to be beneficial, and perhaps spark new traffic after it has gone a bit cold. This guide on how to start your blog outlines some major formats you can re-package your expert interview into:
Here's a great example of re-packaging an expert interview into a viral SlideShare deck to give you an idea.
If you were doing video interviews, re-packaging them into a podcast series is a natural re-packaging idea. Offering interviews in a downloadable audio format is the one way that everyone should be holding discussions.
Another great idea to re-package video interviews would be collecting them into a Udemy course.
Conclusion
Re-purposing blog expert interviews takes a bit more planning and creativity than re-purposing other content. But you can still wring out every bit of benefit possible from every one, and use it far into the future to benefit your site. All while providing something valuable to your readers, and keeping them coming back for later installments.
Thanks Ileane and Ann for this. I think every blogger should incorporate some sort of ‘experts’ interview or post in their content strategy mainly because of the traffic and connection opportunities you outlined. These types of posts not only get shared more, bring more authority, but in the end often deliver the best content to your audience.
Thanks for the comment, Ben! You are right: Expert interviews are awesome!
Hey Ann
Great to see you on basic blog tips. And thanks for the mention, again :>
There are also some ideas here I have not read before, so appreciate that!
I have been doing a few infographic repurposings lately, so I am certainly leveraging that.
ashley
Thanks for the feedback, Ashley! It’s great to see you here!
Great advice, Ann. What you’re saying is true. I have seen a lot of blogs having the same type of articles. With the increasing number of blogs, the content looks and sounds same. It’s time that bloggers and writers diversify their content to make them stand out from the rest.
Yes! It’s time to stand out with some creative tactics and packages! Thanks for the comment!
Great Post. Very informative and nice tips for the freelancers like me.
Will try using this new tactics of writing content on my blog.
Thanks for stopping by to comment, Karanraj!
Great post!
I’ve been thinking about starting an interview section for our blog. I reached out to experts in the past and it was always an amazing experience but I’ve never published a real interview. I had never seen or heard of Twitter interviews before and I’m not sure I’d be a fan of the medium as it limits conversation to few characters.
I have to get into Google Hangouts one day. I know the technology works great but I’ve never had a group chat with other professionals there. It’s on my bucket list for this year 🙂
Now this is quite influential and definitely helpful article to learn how to make an expert interview better. Expert interviews are really booming these days. thanks for sharing.
Hi Ann, thank you very much. I am just thinking of bringing my site with expert interviews to the next level. Therefore I am really happy that I found your post. It holds a lot of information and I update you once I have conducted my first interview. Thank you a lot. How do you approach experts for a specific topic to get an appointment for the interview?
Best regards,
Matthias
Thanks for the feedback, Matthias! It’s great to know it may turn useful!
Hi Ann, I hear what you’re saying about blogs playing the same old tune, and I know it’s hard to come up with fresh stuff all of the time, so diversification is powerful. This is a marvellous idea however, great examples provided on how to diversify interviews, so thanks for that, I’ll have to give this a try for my next interview.
I’m all for posting interviews and getting new and fresh values and perspectives from industry leaders on my blog, but in my opinion, people come to your blog to get YOUR perspective on things, what ever that might be.
Now like I said I appreciate that people don’t diversify enough and end up writing the same old fluff that others are doing on their blogs, but in my opinion sharing with your audience advice based on your personal experience, real case studies if you like, whether it’s something that has worked or not, is what blogging is truly about.
A careful balance of giving your perspective knowledge, and other experts can go a long way, and then you begin to think about diversifying all kinds of content, not just interviews.
Lovely post thanks once again.
Thanks for the awesome comment, Fabrizio! I hope the article will inspire some bloggers to diversify and get creative!
Fantastic stuff Ann. I always enjoy reading your posts and this one is a killer.
I’ve never actually thought about repurposing expert interviews, I’ve done a couple of blogger interviews myself on few of my blogs. And I know expert interviews always pull more traffic. I’ll try out this tactic and I’ll consider turning video interviews into Udemy course.
Thanks for the comment, Anil! Udemy is also a great passive income source, so give it a try!
Really good tactical advice here. I have done over 150 entrepreneur interviews and I still got some good information here.
I’m with you on the interviews. I used to have a standard interview process on my blog but it was hard getting enough people to participate. I’ve had better luck doing interviews via Google Hangouts, one of which included Ileane, and that’s not only successful but a lot of fun. Diversification can be a good thing indeed.