Think of the last celebrity interview you heard or saw. Chances are, it’s one that didn’t go so well. A lack of chemistry between interviewer and star, perhaps. Or the questions asked weren’t researched thoroughly enough. It’s viewing or listening you can’t take your eyes or ears off, but not what you want when talking to your senior subject matter experts – the ‘celebrities’ of your business.
These are the people who’ll care the most about any content or copy changes you make. Making their input invaluable. How you approach and speak to them could mean the difference between simply doing something new, and doing something game changing. You want the latter, obviously.
So before booking time with your senior experts, here’s our guide to making every minute count. No awkward moments, no off-topic distractions, just an interview memorable for all the right reasons.
It’s said success only comes before work in the dictionary. So it follows that solid preparation makes for candid, insightful interviews. Whenever we speak to senior people (and we do this a lot), we’ve found five essential things make interviews relaxed, productive and enjoyable.
Following these steps will help you make the most of everyone’s time. Crucially, it’ll also mean you capture all the detail you need for whatever project you’re working on.
We all know it can be frustratingly difficult to get time with senior people. They’re the stars of your business, after all: the experts who know it inside out – every product, service and customer need. So understandably, they’re in demand. They’re also very busy. Dropping a casual meeting invite into their inbox will typically see it get buried. What you need is a proper scheduling tool.
We’ve tried out a bunch of scheduling tools and services, free and paid-for. The one we love best is Microsoft Bookings. Why? Because we use Microsoft Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel, and do our video conferencing through Teams. Your company may well do the same. So it makes sense to use a scheduling tool that works with all the software you already know how to use.
Here are our five reasons for choosing Microsoft Bookings:
It’s unlikely you’ll go into a meeting with your senior people without having some idea of what’s set in stone, and what can be negotiated or changed. The last thing you want is what we call ‘discussion derailment’: the meeting’s focus drifting off to places it quickly becomes hard to row back from. Be honest: we’ve all been in those meetings.
If the brand messaging is already in place (or in play), make sure everyone knows this before any interview begins. Same goes for things like the value proposition and tone of voice. Your senior subject matter expert is a mine of invaluable information and experience. Don’t go chasing iron ore when there are diamonds to be uncovered.
Decide with your leadership team and other key parties what is and isn’t up for debate during your interviews with senior subject matter experts. Establish with your interviewee what’s decided, settled and unchangeable. Doing this helps you both to stay focused on what really matters: the depth of knowledge and understanding in your experts’ heads.
A meeting without an agenda is like a car without its brakes. Sure, you can get it going easily enough. But when it careers off down a slope (taking everyone with it) you know it’s going to end badly. Or worse, with a date in the diary to discuss all things that weren’t covered in this meeting.
Let anyone who’ll be involved in the interview know precisely what to expect. Tell them that, unless there’s a good reason not to, you’ll all be sticking to the agreed agenda. Send the questions you plan to ask with the scheduling invite. Have any supporting documents shared in advance with everyone who needs them – this should include the copywriting team.
What you’re aiming for is a slick, streamlined process to keep the interview on track. The less friction there is, the best chance you have of gathering detail that makes for accurate, consistent content.
We think this is a great way to go about structuring your meeting agenda.
As the interviewer, leading the discussion and keeping it on topic is all down to you. So it’s essential that you’re fully up to speed on whatever that topic is.
Here’s a checklist to help get you ready:
The more prepared you are, the more you understand the context, the more informed and precisely targeted your questions will be – which is crucial when what you want is an insightful discussion.
No matter how well you take notes in meetings, something almost always gets missed. If the detail that’s left out is vital, it’ll leave a very obvious hole in the work you later present to your business’ senior subject matter experts.
Here’s where technology – AI, especially – is very much your friend.
Start by recording …
The obvious place to start is with the recording of the interview. If it’s happening face to face, you can capture it by setting up a mobile phone on a desktop tripod. Or if audio is all that matters, many voice recorder apps now have an interview mode – just set your device down in between you and your interviewee, hit record, and have a natural conversation knowing everything’s being captured.
(PRO TIP: Do check everything really IS being recorded. Even the best of us have occasionally failed to hit the big red RECORD button.)
… then transcribing
Things are even easier if your meeting is online. Both Zoom and Microsoft Teams have functions that can record your conversation. They can transcribe it, too. You may not think this matters (you’ve captured everything, after all). But try picking out manually all the key parts of the discussion by stopping and starting the recording and typing notes. An hour of that will leave you in need of a lie-down.
This is where live (and post-live) transcription tools come into their own. By transcribing everything verbatim using some of the best transcription software around, they complement the notes you took yourself – leaving you feeling a whole lot more confident that you’ve got what you need.
Is it true many of the best business transcription tools struggle with accents, room noise, poor annunciation, interruptions and so on? Yes. But we’ve found that running transcriptions made by these tools through an AI like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot helps clean up less-than-perfect outputs.
Your senior colleagues’ time is valuable. But then, so is yours. So we can’t stress (yeah, we punned) enough the importance of good interview preparation.
Ultimately, when it comes to making sure your site’s content is accurate, consistent and true to your brand, all time spent in preparation is never, ever wasted.
24 Greville Street
London
EC1N 8SS
22 Montrose Street
Glasgow
G1 1RE
Registered in Scotland
SC304330
