With Blog Inspirations, we help you find topics to maintain your business blog.
Incorporating an interview into your blog post is a great way to create a unique, entertaining, and informative article. It is ok if you are at a loss for words – just get somebody else to do the talking!
Are you planning on attending a conference related to your business or industry? This is a great opportunity to speak with professionals in your field who can offer their opinions and advice. If you have access to a list of attendees or speakers, take a look through it and pick out several professionals you are interested in speaking with. If you want to secure your interview, try contacting the people you would like to talk to in advance. This way, you can introduce yourself and let them know the nature of the questions you are interested in asking them. You might ask them to meet you for coffee after the event or meet you between seminars and workshops. If you do not have access to a list of attendees, you are sure to meet some interesting people while you are there, and most professionals are happy to sit down for a quick interview – especially if they know it is going to be featured on a blog. In addition to bringing your pen and paper, bring a small tape recorder with you, so you can capture your interview and review it later. Recording the interview makes it easier for you to engage in the interview, and you won’t have to scribble notes while trying to talk.
You don’t have to go to a conference to meet people to interview. In fact, you most likely already know many interesting professionals in your industry. Consider requesting an interview from your boss, perhaps your readers would like to hear from someone in an executive seat. You could request an interview from your co-worker, perhaps he or she recently completed an interesting project and you could tell his or her story in your blog post. You can even go through your Rolodex and contact people you have met and worked with who may have interesting insight into the future of your industry. You can even interview someone outside of your field, someone in a different specialty – you can always find a way to make the information relevant to your readers.
If you have a topic in mind to write about that you are very interested in, but know little about, you can conduct a panel-style interview. Do some initial research on the subject of interest. Formulate some questions you would like answered by those who know the subject best. Also, consider questions you think would elicit informative answers for your readers. Then, contact people you would consider experts in the subject. Maybe it is a professor at a local college, a government official, or a small business owner – you can ask each individual the same questions and compare and contrast their responses. This type of investigative interviewing lends itself to a very comprehensive blog post.
So, the next time you have a case of blogger’s block, get out your tape recorder. Your interview is likely to inspire an interesting and informative new post.
