Long-form interviews are a powerful tool for creating engaging content, building your reputation, and maximizing your output through repurposing. This lesson explores how to get interesting guests and effectively leverage interviews to grow your brand and online presence.
Short-form vs long-form
On one hand, there's a lot of talk about shortening attention spans and the predominance of short-form content. On the other hand, there are 4-hour interviews with millions of views. So which is it?
Simple math will show you that it's only logical that short-form content has more views than long-form content, the same way as more people make more 5-minute walks than 3-hour hikes every day. It's much faster to watch short-form content, so it's watched more. That's it. It's also a fact that it's much easier for meh-quality short-form content to get a certain amount of views than meh-quality long-form content. If you want to go long-form, make sure it will be worth it for people to watch or listen to.
Creating long-form content has one huge advantage: you can use it to create a lot of short clips, and you don't have to put in that much effort. It's not unfair to say that it takes the same amount of time to write and record a 10-minute scripted monologue as it is to do a 2-hour interview. There's also a limited number of these monologues that you can make - unless you have an opinion about everything out there or your expertise in a given subject is so deep that you can talk non-stop. Interviews are much easier - you just prepare a set of questions, get an interesting guest, sit down, and two hours later, you have a great piece of content. Every person is different, so there's always something new to talk about.
Doing a 2-hour interview will give you a chance to create 15 clips easily. Some will be just 20 seconds long, and others can be 7 minutes. That's 16 pieces of content compared to maybe three that you would get out of the 10-minute monologue. Now, let's compare the output from 10 of each. That would make 160 pieces of content from interviews versus 30 pieces of content from 10-minute monologues. That's quite a difference.
💡 Keep in mind
If you produce quality content, being brutally effective and diligent with recycling can accelerate your career like you wouldn’t believe.
Not that fast
Hearing this, one may ask what dummy would do 10-minute monologues when he can do interviews that would take him the same amount of time but produce more than five times more content.
The most basic reason is that you will have almost zero chance of getting interesting guests when your channel has no content, no followers, and you're a no-name. You may get someone who will take pity on you, but it's unlikely it will be a notable person who will bring you a lot of views. So the first step to getting interesting guests is to build an audience and a name for yourself. You can only do that by producing monologues where you share your expertise and opinions.
The second point is that interviews aren't only about the person being interviewed - the host plays a significant role, too. Who would you rather see to interview Elon Musk - some Johnny from the block or Richard Branson? Go on YouTube and look for interviews with any well-known person - notice how the number of views changes based on who the interviewer is. You don't want your guest to be the only reason why people watch your interviews - you want to play a role in that, too. But again, to do that, you have to produce solo content first.
Then, as your brand and reputation in the online space gradually grow, you will have an easier time getting to interview higher-profile guests. Maybe you'll even get to the point where you can only do interviews and be able to fill your whole social media posting schedule with them. Unless you plan to become a full-time influencer, we highly recommend you keep posting your solo pieces, too, because, after all, you still want to demonstrate your primary expertise to your audience and potential clients. You don't want them to start considering you a journalist.
Maybe there is a way to keep doing interviews only, but you'll have to be very intentional about the interview topics and play a significant role in them. You won't be just asking simple questions and listening to the answers, but actively participate and make it more of a conversation that will allow you to clip some segments when you're talking about your thing, so you still have something to post to show people that you're actually a practitioner.
What to clip?
When your interview is produced, you'll have to decide which parts you'll cut and post as separate clips. Obviously, you should go for the most interesting parts without consideration for the clip length. Each clip should cover only one topic - it's not a problem if a guest goes off-topic for a while, but try to keep it compact. If you have to, cut out the off-topic part. When choosing clips, consider how you'll title and "brand" the video - the title and thumbnail are crucial. These two things (and your name) are the only factors that will decide whether someone watches the video or not. Most clipped parts from the interviews are advice, opinions, powerful quotes, life stories, regrets, or mistakes.
Your guests will too appreciate you publishing 12 pieces of content featuring them instead of one. You can make this a part of your pitch when inviting them - show them on previous guests how well you can work with content and how you can maximize the impact of whatever time they will dedicate to the interview.
Recently, there has been a trend of clipping the most interesting 10 - 15-second part of the interview and putting it right at the beginning of the video, with "coming up" written over the clip. This will show viewers what they can look forward to and give them a good reason to keep watching.
Since we're at it, here's one more tip: You can introduce the guest in three ways. First, you can ask the guest to introduce themselves, second, you can do it for them at the beginning of the interview, or third, you can record a voiceover with the guest's bio and put on screen a montage of the guest's photos and appearances on TV or in other podcasts.
💡 Keep in mind
If you want to name the video in a very clickbaity-way - especially if it's about a guest's mistake or regret - it’s good to double-check whether he’s alright with it.
Remember
👉 Long-form interviews generate significantly more content for recycling compared to short monologues.
👉 You’ll have to build some credibility before you can attract notable guests.
👉 Engage actively as a host during interviews to showcase your expertise.
👉 When clipping the videos, focus on key topics, opinions, advice, or impactful moments.
👉 Without a catchy title and thumbnail, the video will get very little clicks.
👉 Placing the best moment at the beginning of the video is a great teaser.
Homework
1️⃣ Be intentional about the topics of your monologues. If you want to attract a guest from a specific field, demonstrate in the monologue you’re worth talking to.
2️⃣ When you already have something published, create a list of guests you’d like to have on your podcast and contact them. If they decline or don’t respond, get in touch with them later and mention the progress you have made since then and the interesting guests you talked to.
👏 Onward to success!
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