This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world’s best blog posts) – Darren
Think interviews are best left to Barbara Walters, news reporters, or magazine journalists? Think again. Conducting interviews for your blog helps create unique content, increases your blog’s authority, and adds an additional voice of expertise. In today’s post, we’ll look at how some bloggers covered this week’s most talked-about stories using interviews and how you can use interviews to your advantage. As always, the weekly blogosphere trends have been provided by Regator.com.
1. Proposition/Prop 8 – The Courage Campaign Institute’s blog, Prop 8 Trial Tracker, has been traveling the United States, doing video interviews with both supporters and protesters of gay marriage. One interview in particular, from “An amazing 24 hours: Round-up of NOM tour and marriage equality news,” was featured by several other bloggers and news organizations. Creating exclusive content that is picked up by other media outlets gives you opportunities to build your blog’s reputation as a voice of authority in your niche.
2. Steven Slater – There are a lot of ways to secure an interview and, while stalking apartment building elevators as City Room did for “Flight Attendant Had Long Imagined Escaping Down Chute” certainly isn’t your best first option, it did do the trick and prove that a bit of persistence and thinking outside the box can lead to an unexpected win. Try a brief, polite email or phone call first, detailing what you’d like to talk about, the amount of time you expect it to take, why you are interested in talking with that individual in particular, and when/where the piece will be published.
3. Jennifer Aniston – You don’t always need to interview the big celebrity to create a useful post. For “Jennifer Aniston Not ‘Destructive,’ Say Parenting Experts,” PopEater talked with parenting experts about Aniston’s newest role. Insights from a social psychologist, a parenting expert, and a mommy blogger add information and expertise. If you blog in a particular niche, you should be working right now to build relationships with experts in your field. Keep a database of people who can be interviewed or quoted on your topic.
4. Teen Choice Awards – Odds are you won’t be joining PopSugar on the red carpet of the Teen Choice Awards (“David Beckham and Twilight Take Over Teen Choice, Zac Tips Vanessa’s Sexy Dance, and Ashley’s Bikini Party”) and unless your blog is focused on celebrity gossip or pop culture, you probably wouldn’t want to. But the good news is that “regular” people (aka non-celebrities) can be just as exciting and interesting—often more so because, unlike stars, the average Joe isn’t media trained to spit out PR-approved soundbites. I interviewed musicians and actors for years and, to this day, one of my favorite interviews was with a cop who’d been fired for perpetrating a Bigfoot hoax. People are interesting if you give them a chance.
5. CEO Mark Hurd – Keep in mind that, because these are the week’s most blogged-about stories, the blogs that are able to score interviews with the high-profile individuals involved are likely to be larger entities, such as The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to learn from them when it comes to growing your blog. “
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