Interview Best Practices: Part III

This week, we are completing our series on best practices for winning interviews in PPM for radio, with these tips on how to plan and execute the guest’s big moment on the air.

THE TOP 7 PPM GUEST PRACTICES

1. Record the interview whenever possible. The benefits include:

• You can edit out the BS and anything that doesn’t engage the audience.

• You will be able to open with a captivating question to hook the audience instantly and control the flow of the interview with some smart editing. Starting with chit chat or a softball question greatly increases the risk of losing your audience for the entire interview.
• You can break recorded interviews into multiple segments to increase time-spent-listening. End the first segment by creating an information gap with a tease for the most powerful question you’ll ask the guest in the next segment.

2. Do a horizontal tease for big guests the day before the interview at the same time you’ll be doing the interview the next day (the majority of people listen or watch at the same time every day based on their schedule). Highlight the most provocative question that you’ll ask the guest, include a story about the guest, use audio, etc. You have to build anticipation for the interview to get people to remember to tune-in the next morning.

3. Tease the guest multiple times the day of the interview.

4. Tease with the most provocative question that you’ll ask.

5. Tease the guest segment with audio (a clip of their song, a controversial statement they’ve made, etc.) or video on television.

6. Reintroduce the guest on radio every couple of minutes for the benefit of the audience continually tuning in.
7. Replay great interviews or excerpts of them to expose great content to more of your audience.

Interviews have the reputation of being PPM killers, and when they are not properly prepared for and executed that warning is deserved. But by following these tips you can flip that and conduct interviews that result in audience spikes, longer TSL and more tune-ins.

Photo Credit: Pete Williams/Flickr