Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Zach Armstrong, founder at Rooster High Productions, guides you through harnessing the full power content marketing powered by podcasts, especially for professional service businesses. In each episode you'll learn another process, method, or best practice for using podcasts as a cornerstone of a content strategy that starts that relationship with your next client before you meet them.
Zach started in theater in 2003, audio in 2010, and marketing in 2015. As an editor, storyteller, small business owner, and marketing process guru, you'll find yourself entertained and informed when you subscribe to Rooster High Radio.
[00:00:00]
Introduction
---
Hey there, friends. Welcome back to Rooster High Radio. My name is Zach Armstrong. I'm the founder at Rooster High Productions and Rooster High Radio is, the podcast where I get to talk about business with you, and that business is using the power of podcasts as a content marketing tool, especially for professional service businesses.
The medium has so much to offer as far as convenience and power and relationships and turning it into all sorts of content marketing and I'm here to break that all down with you.
How and When To Use An Interview
---
And today's topic specifically, is using interviews to bring the best possible expertise to your audience, to your listeners, and to your network. So previously on Rooster High Radio, we talked about the fact that an interview isn't focused on [00:01:00] you, right? The medium is the message and interview.
You want to be focused on your guest and the expertise they bring. So if you have a podcast that's for business purposes, there are some things that interviews are good for. And so having interviews in that business podcast is great. Now, there are going to be some use cases where mostly you may want interviews to be what your business podcast is about, but if you're going to use this podcast as the cornerstone of your content marketing, you're turning it into clips, you really want solo episodes to be most of what you record. You want solo episodes to show off what you know about your expertise and how you talk about it. You want to demonstrate your expertise on these. Episodes and only do interviews if you really need to bring in somebody else who can cover a topic better, bring a fresh perspective to something, something that really serves your audience.
And of course, there's the secret cheat code, the secret move of another use [00:02:00] for interviews, right? Which is getting a meeting with somebody you would like to form a strategic connection with. But we're gonna talk about that a little bit later. Today we're talking about the use of a interview in bringing an expertise to your audience in an appropriate way, right?
You've been making your solo episodes, you've been focusing on your expertise there, talking all about maybe the 10 commandments of your expertise. Talking through everything that shows off why you are good at what you do, what you understand, you know the systems, you know the regulations.
You have the certification, walking through all of the proof. You are good at what you do and showing that off all the time on social media with clips and with a podcast. Now you're gonna bring in the interview when you want to use it as a tool to serve your audience. You use an interview with a guest, with an expertise, when that expertise is going to serve your audience.
Deciding What Episode Topics Need Interviews
---
Now if you are a planner [00:03:00] like me, you've generated a large list of topics for your podcast. There's all sorts of methods to do this. I heard of one recently where you, go through the alphabet, A through Z and write a topic starting with each letter in your expertise.
One I use gets, gives you five or six prompts where you have, 10 essentially topic answers to each question, to each prompt, the 10 commandments. What are 10 limiting beliefs, what are 10 empowering beliefs? And go through that system. And you end up with a large number of topics for your podcast.
You have an entire year's worth of topics just from one sitting. Now what you're gonna do is find people who can speak to some of those topics really well, or add in a topic that's adjacent to you, or you have a peer in your expertise, who you know well, or you wanna invite them on and find an appropriate topic to bring that other perspective.
Maybe they have an expertise that, you don't have, maybe they have a perspective you don't have. Maybe they, you know, [00:04:00] that they are simply great on the microphone and really encouraging for your particular audience. And so you want to bring them on. You want to bring them on to really just bless your audience with their presence, their knowledge, their expertise, all that sort of thing.
So pick that. Pick that strategically, right? You've gotta show yourself off. And sometimes people don't like that. Sometimes people like it too much. But you've gotta show yourself off with a solo episodes and then serve your audience with who you select for your interviews. You want these people to be experts.
You want them to talk well about their topics. They want, you want them to have good. Insights.
What to Consider When Selecting Guests
---
So walking through, we're gonna, we're gonna break this down into the factors you should consider, and we're gonna talk about how to be a good interviewer, right? For your interviewee, how to be a good interviewer.
A little bit towards the end, on top of a couple other topics, diving into what the dynamic around these interviews should be, right? What the dynamic around these interviews should be. So first off, your guest expertise should [00:05:00] serve your audience. And in this case, we're talking about podcasts as content marketing, your audience is often going to be your ideal client.
So if you want to bring on a person to do an interview, think about how that person serves your ideal client. For instance, a lot of the work I do with this content marketing and transcripts and generating content off of podcast, a lot of it touches SEO and I know, a bit about search engine optimization, right?
I have experience with it. I have seen the great results of it at previous jobs. and, and I know. I'm aware of that industry, but I'm not an expert in search engine optimization specifically. And so I know that this is a place where a lot of the work I do crosses over into search engine optimization.
That might be where, I go bring, I go find an SEO expert that I like, that I trust who's relevant to the kind of work I do, and I said, Hey. Come on to my podcast, talk about search engine [00:06:00] optimization because my audience, my ideal client, is going to be served better by this person talking about it, and I get to show off my interview skills, how I treat a guest and my resourcefulness in finding a resource like this person, right, and having a connection to them in my network. One part of the goal with building up your network of interviewees over
Create A Solutions Hub Via Interviews
---
time is that the answer to an ideal client's question should be accessible through you. You as the expert in your field, should be the hub of information on solving your client's problem.
If you are a realtor, you want to be the hub of connections for good services around the kind of properties you sell. Residential, commercial, whatever.
If you have good roofing people, good home inspector, good remodeling, good, um, good, you know, basement treatment people, you want to be that hub because the more people that know you, trust you to have good recommendations to know good experts, the more longevity you have. Now, this is all, this is all of course [00:07:00] reflective of what a good real world network looks like, right?
If you work in an industry, if you, continue to do good work and make connections with people, eventually you'll have a lot of good quality connections of people with proven track records of work that are experts in the stuff, all related to what your client needs. For instance, with me, I need to know a lot of good graphic designers, videographers, photographers, and other kinds of creatives like web designers as well, because all of those are things I've dabbled in here and there, and I my skills cover quite well. Everything that's needed for a podcast or for general content marketing. However, if you need a rebrand, if you need a new logo, if you need a website redesign, that's where I need some experts in my field to come in, to come in and get that stuff done for you with their expertise so I can apply my expertise even more.
And with your interview serving your ideal client, the questions you are asking your [00:08:00] interviewee should be questions that your audience, that your ideal client would want to hear the answers from, from your interviewee, from the expert you've brought on.
Because if you bring somebody on and you just, you know, shoot the breeze, you just talk jargon and you know, whatever part of your expertise you share, it might be confusing, it might be a little alien to your audience, but if you make sure to advocate for your audience and. Ask the questions that they want to hear the answers to, that's gonna show that as, especially as a professional service person. You understand what's going on with your ideal client. You understand the challenges they're facing, and you understand how to find the answers right? There are answers in your service, in your business. There are answers in the expertise and business of your guest, and all of that shows your ideal client that you know how to deliver.
You know how to solve the problems, whether it's through you or through a recommendation. That they have, you understand their world. And the [00:09:00] more trust they have, the more trust they have in you to deliver on that kind of thing. The more they're gonna wanna work with you, the more they'll recommend you, the more other people will see those results and then come to you for, that specific problem that you're solving. Right.
How To Interview: The Basics
---
In an interview, you're going to want to guide the conversation but not take over. You want to advocate for your listener, but you don't want to completely dominate. Now, I have run a lot of interviews before. I have run many different styles. I. Of interviews, there are interviews where I, where I will sit invisibly behind a camera as we have somebody sitting in front of it, giving a testimonial about a service that has benefited them, or they work at a company and I'm getting, you know, I'm giving them prompts and I'm interviewing them to get them to talk about the story behind their company.
They're innovations, the challenges they've overcome. Right. And then there's interviews like you might be used to on a podcast, and there's a couple different styles of that interview, right. Some interviewers, sit back a little more and [00:10:00] just ask the questions to keep getting the good answers out of their interviewee.
You still wanna find the good stories, the, the, the emotion, the intrigue, the application, and you wanna do that in a way where you advocate for your listener, the stuff that they want to hear. You want to go dig for that. Right now, having a discussion style is fine because there's, there's this kind of journalistic style that I was just mentioning where you are mostly just asking questions, asking follow up questions, seeking out the story.
You're an advocate for the story, for the listener, right? For the relevance, for the information and for the impact to right to the analysis. and then there's . Then you can also do it in a more conversational way where you're sharing your own stories, where you are just really totally being yourself, and it's really just an engaging conversation between two people on a microphone.
Now, I'm not gonna say that's wrong to do. However, I'll say be careful with this very casual discussion style because it's very easy to [00:11:00] get off track where you stop advocating for your listener and where what you start doing is focusing a bit more on yourself in a context where that's not as appropriate to do so.
Now, sharing a story is great relating. Is great, right? And maybe this discussion style and the fun relationship, the entertaining conversation is worth it. In your particular podcast, I'm not here to make that decision for you. However, I would give you caution if you just want to discuss and have a good time, because what you might leave behind, what you might leave on the table is, is all the answers your audience actually wanted.
You might not hear all of the smart things from this expert you've brought on to interview that you should have, that could have served your audience through your . Show because even if this expert right is, is doing stuff you would never do, like, they're an expert in things you could never, you might never actually train on.
The thing is they're on your show. You are the host and [00:12:00] you are the one presenting. You are the one giving the context for them to share all this to your audience. And so you are still building that trust. In that relationship with your audience, that relational equity of doing a good thing and a good, helpful thing, even if you are simply the one opening the door, right?
Making that connection is so important, whether it's in real life. Introducing a friend I. To another friend because they're gonna be able to work together or introducing your audience to a fantastic expert on your show. So remember to advocate for your audience and don't take over remember what the purpose of your show is.
Now, if you're gonna have a great time having a conversation and that's gonna serve your audience, that's gonna really engage them, endear them to you and this guest, that's great. Just don't leave their expertise on the table when it could have served your audience.
Your Interview Goal: Information and Insights
---
When you look to serve your audience with an interview, you want information and you want insights, and this is especially in this business context, right? Right. You're not the, you're not the Joe Rogan [00:13:00] experience.
You're not having all your comedian friends on and selling t-shirts, right? Like we talked about a couple episodes ago, you are using this as your content marketing. So you need to think about what needs to be present in your content marketing. And so you want to look for information. You want to look for insights
What . is the information that is going to come from this interviewee that is really valuable to your audience? So ask for that information. Ask questions that will lead to that information being shared. And then what are the insights? This person has a perspective, they have an expertise, they have stories.
And so what are the insights from that expertise, from that experience, from those personal stories of theirs, from their career? That you can ask about, that you can follow up on that really illustrate, give emotional depth to their answers, right? And so chase those down as well. So information and insights and if you can have quality information and really great insights from your guest and follow those trails, ask questions [00:14:00] that get both of those things into that interview, then you've got a great interview.
You've got a useful interview. It has utility. It's got value, right? It's got value.
What An Interview Shows Off About You
---
At the end of the day, when you do this kind of interview well, where you've advocated for your audience, you've selected somebody with an expertise who's going to answer great questions for the audience, bring good utility, good value to them, hearing about this, right?
You are showing off how good you are in service, in this support role, right? Because the expert is talking, talking to you. As the host on your show, this is where your audience is coming to hear about it, and so it shows off. It shows off what is important as a professional service person, right? If you're an accountant, a realtor, being able to present well and actually serve well and deliver well, set expectations well is all a part of these hard and soft skills that make up good service, right? These social skills, these organizational skills [00:15:00] that all flow together, that all flow together in, in how to be a good service person. And you get to show off in a slightly indirect, but still very obvious way
a lot of these service skills, when you bring an interviewee on to your podcast and get their expertise to your audience, you're making that connection. You are still serving, and it's a new facet to how you serve.
Conclusion
---
So that's it for this episode of Rooster High Radio. Again, my name is Zach Armstrong, the founder at Rooster High Productions, where we make content marketing like this for businesses like yours, especially if you are in the professional service business.
We take podcasts, video podcasts like this and chop it up into clips that go out every day after the podcast launches. If you wanna see this in action, just check out the Rooster High Social Media channels, really anywhere you can find them. We're doing it with this podcast and so you can see it in action and then get in touch with me if you want it for your [00:16:00] business. Make sure to follow us on social media. We're on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. Really anywhere that's relevant in our social media tools link up to them. We're there. Make sure to follow the podcast if you're not already. We're dropping episodes every Friday as we talk about content marketing.
And feel free to get in touch with me if you have an, if you have a question about the kind of services we do or have a content marketing question you'd like to see answered on the podcast, I'd be so happy to get a prompt on a question for you for the podcast, via email. That email is zach@roosterhigh.com.
Thank you so much. We're gonna see you next Friday with another angle on how interviews can be useful for your business, and we'll see you then.