Content From Conversations: 11 Factors That Make For A Great Interview

James Gill

Mar 18, 202410 min read

I have been interviewing people for 25 years for both media and marketing. It’s a core skill and sits at the centre of many activities in both sectors, whether you’re interviewing for a Q&A blog or doing customer research.

I won’t get into the weeds of what is and is not, technically, an interview, because it’s possible to argue that just about every conversation is an interview. For the purposes of this article, I will assume that any conversation with a particular purpose, in which one person is steering the interaction towards a particular goal, is an interview. That might be a set of direct requests for specific information with no follow-up or a meandering hour-long podcast. Some of this might even apply to text-only interviews via email or livechat.

So, what makes a great interview?

A note on format

It is important to note a key difference between written interviews and those for broadcast - audio or video.

As narrators, we can tell the story, so, when we write, we have complete control. We can condense, edit, remove, improve and qualify - even amend quotes. In many ways, the actual interview is hidden from the reader; all they see is our story.

In broadcast interviews, the interviewee is on show, live, without a net: their words, their tone, their information, their personality. Our own expertise and personality are also laid bare: from our ability to host, to question, to clarify, to steer and direct. Of course, audio/video interviews can be edited, but not with the ability to make a million cuts and smooth over the gaps.

Neither format is better. Each has its benefits. It’s about choosing the right guest/format for the right brief.

This article attempts to give guidance for both.

1. Rapport

Rapport is great to listen to or read in and of itself, the chemistry between two people, but it also facilitates many of the other things that make great interviews. Rapport comes from a mutual interest, understanding and respect. It might also be a shared experience and sense of humour. It’s the sound of two people who want to have this conversation, whether they agree or disagree (because opposing views and debate are not mutually exclusive from good rapport).

Tips for building rapport

A good interviewer will build rapport in various ways - though the key is to ‘read the room’.

One size doesn’t fit all and a good interviewer will know how to build rapport with different people: some might like banter and jokes, others may prefer a more formal Q&A style.
Most interviewees will respond well to positivity and attention - show them that you value their time by being attentive - use active listening.
Show them that you’re interested by asking follow-ups, agree with them and be polite if you don’t - a little flattery goes a long way in an interview.
Be grateful.
While humour can also help to build rapport, be careful you don’t offend. Avoid jokes about your subject.
Do your research. Even finding out a small fact and telling them at the start shows them that they’re important and that you value their time and insights. This might sound obvious but I once overheard a writer open an interview with a doctor, ‘What do you think I should ask you?’. The doctor said, ‘You’re the writer. You ask the questions, I’ll answer them.’ It implied that the writer couldn’t be bothered to do any research or prepare questions.
People like to be liked and valued. Display these things and they will respond in kind.

Watch this horrendous radio interview with Icelandic band Sigur Ros which shows you what happens when you don’t have rapport.

2. Information

A great interview is one that has lots of information in - many writers call it the ‘meat’. While information can be hard to define, we know waffle when we hear it, we know opinion when we hear it, and we know ‘meat’ when we hear it. Information might be facts, stories, advice, statistics, quotes, history, data or ideas.

Ways to get good information include requests to:

“Explain how/why/what…”
“Tell us more about…
“Describe…
“How do we know…?
“What’s behind….?

And don’t forget, you can bring your own information - facts, stats, quotes - for discussion.

3. Expertise and authority

Information is good, but ‘expertise and authority’ describes the quality - the validity, the value - of that information. In a time when ‘truth’ seems to be increasingly up for grabs and politicians say ‘we’ve had enough of experts’ the reverse is, in fact, true for most of us - if only because of these facts. With democratised platforming (social media) and content at scale (generative AI) people who care about a given topic want credible and authoritative information, ideas and opinions.

Who is authoritative in the subject matter? YOU may know the topic, but you won’t carry the weight of a PhD, a journalist for a trade publication or someone who runs a relevant company. Ensure that your interviewee has the relevant experience and bona fides to reassure your listeners/readers that the content of your article is credible, authoritative and, importantly, relevant (a doctor of urology isn’t useful when you need a doctor of oncology).

It’s worth including this in your interview. A short bio helps to communicate the above, from books published, years in the sector, titles and qualifications.

Finally, ensure that you bring this expertise to the interview: explore the ideas and experience that make them leaders in their field. What question could you ask that would make someone in the sector say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that’ or ‘Wow, I’d never thought of that before’?

Similar to the advice in the previous point, you can bring your own information - facts, stats, quotes - for discussion: get an expert take.

Listen to my interview with writer and lecturer Ian Nettleton. I could have just Googled some of the things he’d said, but the fact that an experienced writer and teacher was saying them gave the podcast authority.

4. Entertainment

Most interviews in marketing aim to be informative first and entertaining second. It’s worth saying that entertaining doesn’t necessarily mean ‘funny’, it might be simply interesting or creative.

If you’re interviewing for a written piece, you have more control over the end results, but it can be harder to be entertaining. The enduring popularity of talk radio and its offspring, podcasts, show that humans love human interaction and have a higher tolerance for ‘low-quality’ content (waffle) if it’s part of a conversation.

What’s entertaining?

Humour
Stories
Secrets
New information
A dynamic tone of voice, rhythm and emphasis in speech.

5. Concision and clarity

A good writer will have no trouble extracting the most important parts of an interview and clarifying ambiguous and muddled quotes. But you must remember to do so.

Text

Remove extraneous words, the kinds of things you don’t notice when people speak, but in text obviously don’t add anything, for example:
“The thing about that is…
“I think…
Qualifiers such as rather; really really;
Repetition: “I went to France, I went to Spain, I went to Germany.”
However, depending on the format and style of your written interview, don’t remove all of the humanity. Leave in just enough to signal that this was a real conversation - the odd vocal tic or colloquialism.
Write the meaning of what they say, not what they say verbatim. This may sound like it’s getting into the territory of ‘lying’, but we misspeak so often that we’re reliant on the listener to parse our words. As interviewers, we have to do this - especially with a written interview in which all of the non-verbal cues are absent as well as things like tone and emphasis. Be very careful not to inject words and meanings that the subject did not use.

Audio and podcasts

With audio interviews, it is possible to edit out ums and ahs and even words and phrases. However, some edits won’t work as they interrupt the natural flow of speech making the audio sound jerky and stilted. This is often to do with natural pauses, the distance between sounds/anatomy in our mouth and breathing - how much air we have left in our lungs.
With both video and audio interviews, you can ask people the same question again or ask them to clarify specific points. “So what you’re saying is…”
I tend to remove pauses and ums and ahs from the first ten minutes, then let the rest of the interview just be. This is because people are often nervous, but warm up after a while. Also, it means that the opening minutes of the conversation flow well, convincing the listener to listen further. Once they’re in the groove and committed, they will put up with a few ums and ahs.

Video

The challenge with video is to create a neat, concise response to questions because every audio-driven cut has a video consequence. You can either have a neat video with some misspeaking and pauses OR you can have concise edited audio with a video that jumps with lots of small cuts. Creators on channels such as TikTok and YouTube have ‘decided’ that they would rather have concise audio with jumpy video - this has been driven by our almost superhuman impatience for ‘the payoff’ with content - social in particular.

6. Secrets

People love hearing secrets. Luckily, people also love telling secrets.

What questions could you ask your subject that they’ve never shared before? Is it a story, fact or trick they’ve learned? Build rapport - maybe share your own secret to encourage them to.

You might even just ask: ‘What’s the secret to XYZ?’ or ‘What do you really think of XYZ?’

7. Personality

Humans are social creatures. We respond to personality in profound and powerful ways. While data and insights are convincing, nothing is as compelling as the person we believe in. Religions, cults and scams are all driven by individuals - charisma and charm - not data and insights.

How can you ensure that you, as host, are a likeable interviewer?

Don’t just ‘be your authentic self’. The key is to combine your natural personality with a set of skills that make you the host personality. Some people are naturally good hosts: quick-witted, extroverted but not domineering, friendly but not over-familiar, positive without being sycophantic and knowledgeable without being arrogant. Others are quiet and slow and mechanical. Both types need to adapt their personalities: extroverts should know when to stay quiet and introverts need to be forceful enough to steer conversions and build conversational energy and momentum.

In summary, be prepared to follow best practices, no matter how uncomfortable they may feel initially. No one will notice if you’re trying to do the right things, but they will notice if you’re just bad. Eventually, you will develop your ‘interview self’ and easily inhabit conversations as this ‘other person’ that’s really 85% you.

Check out this AMAZINGLY BAD interview with metal band Killswitch Engage in which the interviewer has no ideas who he’s talking to and fails to build rapport, only alienating the band (who take it all very well, considering).

How can you bring out your guest’s personality?

Let them speak (it’s all too easy to dive into the conversation and cut them off)
Ask personal questions, not private questions. Read the room. Sometimes asking about someone’s children may be appropriate. Stick with questions about what they think - their ideas and opinions.
Ask them about their experiences
Ask them about their hopes
Ask them about their predictions
Ask them about their preferences
Explore things they’re clearly interested in and passionate about
Mirror them and match their energy. They will be more inclined to show more of themselves if you show them you like that self.

8. Emotion

People want to know how people feel. Even in a B2B podcast about widget manufacturing, we want to hear how the interviewee feels about innovation, efficiency and the future. This is also a great way to bring personalities to life and build rapport.

Be careful of your own emotions. If you lay out something very emotional, they may not agree or feel uncomfortable, which can derail an interview, especially at the start.

While conflict and combat can be engaging to watch, the chances are you don’t want to end up in a personal row with a doctor on your company’s healthcare podcast. If you disagree, be diplomatic and detached, don’t respond personally or emotionally.

Try to be and try to elicit positive emotions:

Joy
Gratitude
Hope
Pride
Inspiration
Awe
Affection
Surprise
Confidence
Enthusiasm
And even love.

9. Something new

People love novelty and - at its core - your content marketing should aim to deliver something new: new ideas, new facts, new people - even new ways of saying old things.

Questions might include:

‘What’s next for…?’
‘What’s the latest on…?’
‘What has yet to be covered…?
‘What’s the one thing no one is talking about?’

10. Stories

Humans love stories. Not only do we love them, but our brains love them - they’re structures that easily carry concepts, facts, morals and emotions in a format that we remember. Bring your interviewees’ expertise to life with anecdotes. You might tell your own story and ask them for their own.

11. Good sound

Whether you’re transcribing audio for text, podcasting or creating video, audio quality is the most important technical aspect of an interview.

For all interviews outside the studio:

Ensure you and your subject have good internet connections
Get subjects to sit near the microphone (phone or laptop) to reduce reverb
Ensure they’re in a quiet room and all notifications are turned off
Ask them to record a voice note on their phone in addition to Zoom/Teams/Google audio/video. Phones often have better microphones and can mitigate issues caused by poor or intermittent internet.

A note on transcription apps

Until about 2020 interviewers had to transcribe their interviews ‘manually’: playing back recordings and stop/starting while typing out their words. This usually takes around three to four times longer than the interview itself. My old editor used to call it a ‘time vampire’.

Then, a few years ago, transcription tools became good enough (and free enough) for me to use. Imagine it: what would have taken me 4 hours, now took one hour. And, let’s face it, transcribing is no one’s favourite task.

Problems:

Transcription tools get some things wrong, especially technical language and acronyms. Things can often detail the meaning of a whole sentence meaning you’re not sure what was actually said. It is interesting how little of a sentence needs to be wrong for the entire meaning to disappear or change.
This is compounded by the lack of accurate punctuation which further buries meaning. Anyone in the legal profession knows how consequential a single comma can be.
Anyone who regularly interviews people knows that what people literally say and what they mean are often different, whether they misspeak, restart sentences or include lots of extraneous words. This means that the actual meaning of what someone says can be lost in their own words - especially in the output of a transcription app.

To demonstrate my point, here is the auto-generated transcript of a Google meeting I had with a subject recently:

“I don't know what and it all fairness. I had a probably fit in a wheelchair because I was that bad I couldn't walk virtually and luckily I went to a veterans meeting here and something I'd never ever attended before and I got talking to somebody in Northern Ireland veterans so show and I asked about That is there was there any why as a veteran I could get bumped up the kid on and they said in Northern Ireland. There was absolutely no way. but The King Edwards the seventh veterans charity. Why did I speak to them to speak they could help?”

The words are there, but the meaning isn’t.

For all those years of transcribing, I wasn’t just transcribing words, I was transcribing meaning. I was hearing words and then writing their meaning. I was editing out the fluff and errors and distilling the meaning.

As such, I don’t use transcription tools. Even a perfectly ‘heard’ and punctuated transcription will include all of the extraneous colloquial verbiage, and no one wants to read that.

Some people nip and tuck an auto-generated transcript by running through the audio and editing as they go - the best of both approaches.

JAMES GILL

CONTENT. PEOPLE. IDEAS.

olddocbenway@gmail.com