The “in” thing nowadays is blog interviews. You can surf the blogosphere and easily find a ton of bloggers doing it. Why? “Maybe’ because it’s a good way to boost your blog’s traffic. Before, it seems that only reputable bloggers can do interviews with big people. But now it has become different as almost anyone can easily hold one. Not only that, these days you don’t need big people, you can interview random people and still look like you’re doing it finely.
My Rant with Interviews
Personally I’m not a fan of these interviews (although I got interview quite a many times). I find it as a lazy blogger’s way to sneak some traffic w/c will not really convert in the end. Either way here are the main reasons why I think its lame:
1. Lazy, Generic and Annoying Questions
There is nothing more annoying for me than to see generic questions get asked like “Tell something about your blog”, “What’s your advice for the readers here” and stuffs. While you cannot avoid asking the same questions with different people, it’s a completely different case when you just intentionally have a pre-made question for all your potential interviews.
Remember, each and every blogger has their own persona, different experience, expertise and tone. Don’t be lazy, ask questions accordingly!
2. Interviewing People that Don’t Add Value
The main purpose of an interview is for the interviewee to share something valuable to the readers of the interviewer’s blog. I don’t mean to be offensive but the hard fact is that you cannot just interview random people across the board and expect your audience to get interested in it.
It’s also important to stick your niche. If your blogging about blogging, you need to interview credible probloggers, not just any bloggers out there blogging on different niches.
3. Gullible Interviewees
Again you are going to disagree with this but I would just like to be honest. I find it absurd that these big people let these unknown bloggers interview them. Unknown bloggers are those who are just getting started, with 10m+ Alexa ranking and stuffs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying someone is not qualified to do an interview if he/she is just getting started. What I mean is that there must have some sort of credibility first before you can interview people. Just like in guest posting, you have to look first on the guest poster’s site before accepting the post if it’s good.
And as for the interviewees, I think it’s also important to think on whether accepting the interview can benefit other blogger’s audience (if there’s actually an audience) and benefit themselves as well. I don’t see the point of spending an hour answering questions when no one is really going to read it. I know you know what I mean.
Final Words
In doing interviews it’s essential to become creative and stand out from the rest. One person who does it fairly well is Michael Dunlop from IncomeDiary.com. The guy interviews people well and I myself enjoy all of his lengthy interviews with prominent people in the industry.
Just becoming different and not lazy can make a huge difference.