Over the
years, I have media trained over a thousand authors, guiding them on what to say and
do – or not – during an interview with a television or radio show, or with a
newspaper, or magazine. All of these
interviews were done in person, via studio satellite, Skype, or phone. In all cases you heard someone’s voice, had a
back and forth dialogue, and were able to have a sense of how it was
going. But with digital media, where
most interviews take place silently and distantly through email exchanges that
don’t even happen in real time, there’s a huge challenge for the interview
subject. How do you deliver a great
interview when no one is there to interact with?
The
first challenge with online interviews is that they create a perfect record of
things. If you fear being misquoted, that
won't happen here, but everything you type can and will be used for the
interview, so make sure you don’t reveal something you think is “off the
record.” Someone recently put down their
true opinions in parenthesis in an interview she did for my blog, expecting me
not to reprint her comments. I chose to
honor her wishes, but I didn’t have to, and others wouldn’t think twice about
using such material if they think it’ll make for a better interview.
The next
challenge is voice inflection – there is none.
Therefore, people will miss jokes, even sarcasm, and certainly could
take something for anger or rudeness when that wasn’t how you meant to
sound. Re-read your answers to remove
any doubts as to your “voice” and the impression you want to leave.
Third,
often people like to use body language and eye contact to get a point
across. You only have words to do your
talking, so use ones that give your comments some character and emotion. Humanize the process.
Length
is a big issue with online interviews. Some
give answers that are way too long, leaving the blogger or media to edit things
down, which could get tricky if they edit the good stuff and leave a choppy
answer in place. Writing too little is
even more problematic. Your answers
appear to lack substance or depth and sound empty. I have had to go back to people that I’ve
interviewed, including recently the head of a major organization in the book
industry, because the answers were missing some meat.
Fifth,
online interviews are great opportunities to insert links to things, but don’t
overdo it. You don’t want to look like
an infomercial or advertorial. Some
people overpopulate links in their interview.
Save it for the end and just give the most important link – otherwise the
interview gets cut short when readers leave to click on your links.
The
online world seems like a huge universe, but when it comes to doing interviews
through a screen, be aware of the pitfalls and limitations. Good luck!
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Brian
Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and
not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email
him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in
the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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