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How to Interview Someone for an Article

Over the course of a few hundred interviews, we’ve learned a few things. For one, interviewing doesn’t always come naturally. It can be intimidating, time-consuming and awkward.

But learn to embrace the interview and wonderful things happen. Writing becomes faster and easier. Your content gains the competitive edge—expertise and authority—required to rank and stand out. You begin to build a network of experts from around the world, people happy to improve and advocate for your work.

To help you become a better interviewer, I chatted with Whitney Rhodes, a former journalist and Animalz alum. She shared four simple strategies—covering research, interviewing, writing and publication—to help you interview someone for your next article.

1. Shelve the Ego and Ask the Questions Your Reader Would Ask

As an interviewer, your job is not to become a subject matter expert. Instead, you are a conduit for your readers’ questions.

This is different from how many writers prepare for an interview. The natural tendency is to research the topic as much as possible to avoid asking “dumb” questions and approach the interview as something like a peer. Instead of wasting precious interview time on questions that a quick Google search can address, many writers would rather use their newfound knowledge to steer the conversation in interesting directions.

But there are flaws in this thinking:

When conducting research or preparing interview questions, use the reader as your guide. Don’t rely on your intuition to brainstorm good questions—ask, “Is this something my reader would care about? Does it make sense, given their level of experience?”

2. Hold a Conversation, Not a Q&A

Your research will yield a list of questions, but those questions shouldn’t be used as fodder for a rapid-fire Q&A session.

Good interviews function more like casual conversations—you’re guided by questions but able to change course when new ideas and opportunities present themselves to you. That means:

Holding a conversation requires more focus than simply peppering your SME with black-and-white questions, and that’s where recording and transcription become essential. By using a recording device—a microphone for face-to-face interviews or software like Zoom for video calls—and recording your conversation, you can free up the “note-taking” part of your brain to focus on the conversation: responding to ideas, asking follow-up questions, and building rapport.

3. Sculpt a Persuasive Argument from Your Raw Material

The interviewee’s strength lies in their knowledge and experience, not in their ability to present a well-ordered argument. That’s your area of expertise.

Many interviewers write articles that mirror the flow of their interviews, but it’s a mistake to assume that your interview reflects the best way to structure your article. Your SME is likely not an expert in persuasive writing. Your task, as the writer, is to pick and choose from the interview’s raw material to create the most compelling, logical and MECE argument possible.

After the interview, follow this process:

At the end of this structuring process, there’s a chance you’ll still have some information “gaps”—parts of your argument that need more information or social proof. This is a normal part of a successful interview, and the solution is straightforward: send follow-up questions to plug small gaps, or for bigger structural omissions, schedule a follow-up interview.

4. Make the Interviewee Sound Smart(er)

Once written, you’ll need sign-off from your interviewee (especially if you’re writing bylined content). Thankfully, you have a trick up your sleeve—you can use your writing to make your SME sound really smart.

As we explored above, your job is not to dump your SME’s quotes verbatim on a page—you need to structure them into something logical and compelling. That process can introduce friction: with every interview, there’s always a risk that the SME won’t recognize their ideas in the finished article. You can mitigate this risk by:

If you’re worried about getting buy-in for your finished article, remember that as a writer, you are offering your interviewee a hugely valuable service: you are giving shape to their ideas and articulating them in the clearest, most articulate way. Make your SME sound even smarter, and you’ll have an easier time getting your finished article published.

Interviewing Is Your Competitive Edge

Many companies view interview-driven content as a nice-to-have. But today, more than ever, interviewing is a necessity. The search results are getting more crowded by the day, stuffed with copycat content written by authors with no real experience in the topic. Firsthand experience is the most powerful differentiator at your disposal. In an ocean of theoretical arguments and armchair commentators, readers want to listen to the experts.

Embrace that mentality—and the better interview strategies covered here—and interviewing is no longer a checklist item or another hurdle on the path to your finished article. Instead, it’s your competitive edge, something that harnesses the power of true expertise to create better content.

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