Interviews are a mainstay of the media. For journalists, they’re an excellent way to check facts, get some nice quotes or structure an article. For free software projects looking for coverage, they’re an easy way to write your own article and get it published. But getting the most out of an interview can be a fine art; journalists can misunderstand or even misrepresent what you say, and you can ruin or make your image in the eyes of the audience. The third article in this series suggests some strategies to adopt to make every interview a marketing success.

Opportunities and hazards

Before I discuss how to conduct yourself in interviews, it’s worth considering why interviews are used. If you know what the journalist is trying to achieve, or what you want to achieve in doing an interview, then you’re better placed to develop a winning approach. The most important thing with interviews, given that you’re communicating directly with the journalist, is to remember that they will publish based on their impression of you, so be polite and helpful at all times.

Articles that have been well researched, with plenty of quotes and input from relevant groups and individuals, always read better

The most common reasons for an interview are for short articles. Journalists will often receive your press release or some other news item that mentions you and want to check their facts, get a response to some allegation or just get a nice quote. Articles that have been well researched, with plenty of quotes and input from relevant groups and individuals, always read better. So if you’re being interviewed for a short article, it’s your opportunity to get one or two points across in your favour. You can correct misunderstandings, give them a few choice soundbites and help them go beyond the information they’ve gleaned from press releases. Journalists are often very lazy, so you’ll have a good opportunity to feed them important information that they’ve not bothered to research themselves.

Another reason is to create a feature article based around an interview, or sometimes a series of interviews. This is an easy way for a journalist to structure an article, since they can just run through the themes that you talk about and write it up. They can be far more readable than a block of prose if you come across as friendly and interesting. And if the journalist makes the effort to write it up properly (as opposed to simply formatting the question-answer structure) then they can present you and your project in an informal manner, be it warm or hostile.

Whatever kind of article, the journalist will be looking for certain information from you. If they’re friendly, help them out. If they’re hostile, be wary and try to stick to your key messages without annoying them; we all know how annoying it is when people refuse to give straight answers. The crucial point, as ever with guerrilla marketing, is to stick to your key messages. Even a friendly interviewer can trick you into talking about something you don’t want published. You’re always within your rights to refuse questions, or to simply avoid contentious issues, but doing so will annoy the journalist. It’s a fine line that you have to walk.

The essential interview checklist

eInterviews

Not surprisingly, the most common form of interview for free softies is by email. These are easy, a gift to you and to friendly journalists. You get to spend time considering your response, drafting and refining it until you’re absolutely happy with the tone and detail. The journalist gets to simply copy and paste your responses, rather than transcribing recordings or trying to read rushed scribbles.

Before you start the interview, perhaps when you’re first asked if you’d like to do it, find out what the audience is. With this information you can tailor your answers, for example to other developers, to a user magazine or to academics. Also ask what the focus of the article is and why you’re being interviewed for it. Work out how you want to frame your responses or, in the case of a feature article, how you want to frame the whole thing, taking into account what the journalist seems to be after, in order to avoid being antagonistic.

Once you have your frame worked out you need to pick your key messages. By now you’re probably getting bored of reading this—“how hard can it be to pick three things”, you say? Well in the case of interviews it’s much harder because the journalist won’t know what your messages are, and he or she will ask you lots of things that don’t map onto your messages. So you really want to be clear about what they are, and how you can make anything the journalist throws at you fit them.

Once you have the questions, read them, re-read them and read them again. Think about what the journalist is trying to learn from your answers, and either help them out if they’re sympathetic or warily respond with your messages if they’re hostile.

And that’s it. Email interviews are really fairly simple. Give the journalist your key messages whilst making them think you’ve given them exactly what they want, and you can’t go wrong.

One step up: talking to journalists

Being interviewed over the phone or face-to-face is a lot harder, though the same basic lessons apply. Because you haven’t got time to think the questions over, go and make yourself a drink, come back and carefully draft your response, you need to be much clearer about your messages, your frame and your goal.