Tools Required to Conduct Interview on Your Blog

Updated October 6, 2023

Unless you had your head in the sand you might have heard about Oprah Winfrey Show. This talk show hosted by Oprah Winfrey had run for over a decade. Till now it remains as the highest-rated talk show in American television history. What make this show standout from the crowd is by talking different sides to the story of helping people learn how to “live their best lives”.

In this article I’m mainly focusing on different methods of interview a blogger can conduct on a blog that keep his blog ahead of the pack. Let’s see some of the ways of conducting interview online.

Video interview
Podcast interview
Email interview

Table of Contents

Video interview

The videos you create to publish online don’t need to look like professional Hollywood productions. Online audience is totally different to the audience on TV. As Gideon Shalwick says: “TV viewers expect Hollywood style productions, while YouTube viewers for example, expect videos with a real life component to them.”

You can host video interview in 2 ways either by recording from your“studio” or by recording the video online using skype call recorder. If your guest and you are not at same location geographically, skype recording is recommended.

Recording on your studio

It sounds somewhat costlier but actually not. You don’t necessarily need to own a recording studio. You can record the video anywhere you wish to do, at your homes, parks, beaches or any other beautiful places. Making videos from different places make them more exciting. The hardware requirements are

HD Camera- recommended for high quality video.
Digital Voice Recorder with microphone.
Lighting System(Optional)
Xshot Camera Extender (Optional)- a nice tool for video creation that look like you are being filmed by a professional videographer.

If you prefer to film outdoors make sure to shoot from a location where enough sunlight is available or you may need a lighting system for creating a quality video.

One tip to hold the attention of the viewers and to make amazing visual impact is to keep the camera moving while you are talking. By using an Xshot Camera Extender you can create moving videos. It actually helps you to shoot from different angles and depths without a professional videographer.

Recording using Skype Call recorder

If you want to interview a person who is far away from you, you are suggested to use Skype call recording. Unlike shooting at studios these videos might not look like a professionally produced one.

For conducting an interview just fix a call, confirm the time and call your guest by Skype. Using Call Recorder for Skype(Mac) or Vodburner (PC) you would be able to record both audio and video.

Tools required for this kind of video interview production are

Internet connected computer- use a high speed internet and make sure both of yours internet will not get interrupted during the call.
Skype with add-on call recorder:Install it on your computer and record the interview with side by side or split screen modes.
Webcam and microphone.

Podcast Interview

The word podcast is derived from two words iPod and broadcast. If you are not living under a rock, you might know about iPod, a portable music player introduced by Apple Inc. Hats off to Apple Inc., they were successful enough that their brand was wrapped into a term for a new tech product.

Nonetheless to say that audio files are used for podcasting and most popular podcasting audio format is mp3.

Today audio broadcasting on the Internet is termed as podcasting. The reason that it gets connected with the name of iPod was because people used to download podcasts from iTunes to their iPods. But today you can listen podcast even from your computer.

Podcasting is different from just downloading the music files from internet.It is all about creating audio files and syndicating them online by RSS just like your blog so that your feed subscribers could easily keep track of your podcast. Instead of getting files by searching, it will come to you through syndication.

The tools required for podcast interview are:

Internet connected computer
Skype with add-on call recorder
Microphone
Podcasting plugin by TSG for WordPress- This plugin help you to add a dedicated Podcastingfeed with full iTunes support and it also includes audio and video player for in-post listening/watching

Email Interview

This is the easiest form of interviewing and it costs you absolutely nothing. You just need to contact a person you want to interview and send your questions via email and he/she can simply reply it. This is how email interview works.

On my blog I used to interview young successful entrepreneurs by this method. I love this method because there is no problem like scheduling the time for the talk, recording etc.

If you want to interview some big guys in your field show them a few other interviews you’ve done so they will be more likely to have an interview with you. I personally prefer to keep interviews very simple. I used to ask 6 -9 questions, fewer the questions easier to answer and more likely you are to get a response.

Another way to get response from big guys is to done question interview. Rather than interviewing a person you can send it to many persons and sum it up into a blog post which will work similar to conducting a survey with experts. See an example here. This kind of interview can be used as a great tool for case study in any situation.

Author Bio:- ShahzadSaeed owns a tech-blog where he runs interview series with young successful founders and entrepreneurs called Friday interview. He also provides guidance who wants to learn web coding.

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