How to Prepare for a Podcast Interview (As A Host)

• Importance of researching your guests
• How to prepare great questions
• The need for a primer document
• Making sure your tech is in order
• Tips to make your guests feel comfortable
• What to do after the interview has been recorded

So you've landed a great guest for your podcast, and you want to make the most out of that guest opportunity so that you can bring as much value to your audience as possible and so that that guest will share it with their audience and grow your following.

As an interviewer, it's your responsibility to get the most out of your guest, to make sure that you're bringing your audience the best content.

Which is why in this video, I'm going to be sharing five tips on how to prepare for a podcast interview as a host.

And at the end, I'll share with you one bonus tip on what you should be doing after the interview has been recorded to get the most reach possible.

Let's do this.

Tip number one is to research your guests. So this will be something that you'll need to do with every guest to make sure that they're right for your audience, even if it's somebody you really like.

Like you listen to their stuff, you've watched their content before. If you don't have a really good understanding of what your audience needs, what kind of episodes they like to hear from you, then it's probably not the right guest.

So make sure they're the right guest and that they've ideally had some experience interviewing in the past. Or you can take a listen to the episode that they've guested on.

Check out their social media profiles as well. Do they generally share content around what your audience would be interested in? Maybe some of the people in your audience already follow them, and that's a good way of knowing that they're the right guest for your audience.

Another green flag is if that potential guest shares podcast episodes that they've been on. Because some guests don't, they only share their own stuff, which is fine. But if you want your podcast to benefit from their network, again, that is a green flag.

If they typically do share episodes that they've been on in the past, you can also ask them for a press pack. Not every guest will have this, but if they're a big guest, they should.

Tip number two is to prepare great questions. Now, you don't want your podcast episode to sound like it's scripted like your guest has prepared all the answers in advance and there's not really any kind of flow to the conversation.

It's just question, answer, question, answer.

But at the same time, you need to be prepared because otherwise you could find yourself running short on the episode and having no questions to ask.

Or you could end up recording the interview and then afterwards kicking yourself because you didn't ask that question that you know that guest would have been able to answer and given your audience incredible value.

So ideally, you want to avoid yes and no questions.

So for example, if you're asking a question like, "Do you think AI will take over jobs from the creative industry?" that could be answered with just a yes or a no. Ideally your guest, if they know what they're doing, would expand on that answer.

But you could find yourself with just a yes or no answer.

What you could ask instead is “How do you see AI evolving within the creative industry?” Or if you ask a yes or no question and get a yes or no answer, then think of a follow-up question that you could ask to get them to expand on that.

Like, “What tools do you see out there evolving in the industry? What jobs do you see people are already struggling to find because of AI?”

And I mean, it's just one example, one topic, but it gives you a good idea of the kind of questions you should be asking.

Try and structure those questions in a way that brings your audience value very early on in the episode as well.

There are so many podcasts that I listen to where the first question that the interviewer asks is something like, “So how did you get here? So tell me how you got into this industry? Or what's your story?”

And particularly if the guest doesn't have a huge amount of guesting experience, it could be a very hard question to answer concisely because they then have to think back on their whole story and dig out these sort of points that are interesting.

Some of it might not be. They might end up going on a 10, 15 minute tangent and by then your audience may have already tuned out.

So think about a question you can open with that brings a huge amount of value upfront and then maybe slow down and start going into their backstory later on, if that's relevant.

For example, an episode that one of our hosts put together recently, he interviewed somebody that had worked with Will Smith. Now he runs a business and he has a huge amount of insight and great story and everything.

But rather than going into that straight away, Matt, the host, the first question he asked was, “So what's it like working with Will Smith?”

Because that's something that most people are going to be interested in hearing the answer to. And it gets you sucked in straight away because you want to hear that answer.

And then once the audience is sucked in, once they've started their drive or their commute or their walk or whatever, they've listened to the first five, ten minutes, they'll want to continue listening to the rest of the episode.

But you do want to grab them right at the beginning.

Aside from those guest specific questions, make sure that you've got at least sort of 15-20 general questions that you could ask pretty much any guest in your back pocket that you can dig out in case the interview runs short.

Or maybe some of them are just great questions that you do want to ask every single guest.

Just a quick note, if you're guesting on other podcasts, then there's another video I'll link in the description below on how to prepare for a podcast interview as a guest.

Tip number three is to send a primer document. So this is a PDF document that you can send to every guest.

I send it to any guest I book. I recommend our clients do the same. And it just goes over all the most important things they need to know before the day.

This is something that I find a lot of podcasters aren't doing. I've had people guesting on my podcast that have been really pleased to see it because it's made things easier for them.

Rather than having to get on a lengthy sort of primer call to get them ready for the day, we just send them this document that usually covers everything.

So let's take a look at what this primer looks like and what should be on it.

This is what the primer looks like that I use to send to guests for my podcast Podcasting Amplified.

So it's just all on one page to make it easier for the guest to quickly scroll through and refer to on the day.

I've split it into four to five sections. At the top, we've got the logo for the podcast and the brand logo.

This just helps keep everything on brand and shows a bit of professionalism to the guest. Then there's a thank you again because they are doing you a favor really being on and taking their time to go on your podcast.

So just giving them a thank you for sharing their time.

Then in the Before the Interview section, we've got the time slot. I'm just letting them know that please ensure that you're available for the slot you've chosen and how they can reschedule.

Then recording prep, just letting them know that audio and video are going to be recorded and published online.

And to ensure they have headphones, a webcam, and a mic available.

It's really important that they do have headphones. A lot of guests, if they're not familiar with podcast recording, they might have the audio playing out their speakers which is going to go back into the microphone and cause a nasty echo effect.

Then I'm just letting them know that it's going to be a dynamic conversation. But there are some example questions below in the second section, "On the Day", so the interview plan, letting them know how long the interview is going to be and just so they know to relax and don't worry if they need to collect a minute.

The next section is just showing who I am, basically who they can expect to pop up on that call.

Although most of the time, I have already spoken to them in some way. Then these are some sample questions.

Now I can't, I don't want to have to do this primer for every individual guest. And if there is something specific, a topic that we want to touch on, I will have let them know already over email or however we've been chatting or booking the call.

But this is just going to give them some more general idea of what questions they can start thinking about now so that they're prepared for the day.

And then there's the After the Interview section. This is just what you expect of them basically after the interview.

So for most podcasts, we'll just let them know that we're editing the recordings, let them know when it's going to be released and shared across our socials, and just asking them politely if they could share it on their socials as well.

And then just a final thank you. So this is what you can send to every guest as you book them.

Tip number four is to get your tech in order, so make sure that you've booked your interview in rather than having to fumble around with invite links and stuff on the day.

That's something that you can send over to your guest whether you're using Zoom to conduct your interview or Riverside, presuming that this is an online interview.

Obviously, if it's an in-person interview, you'll have to book a studio or book some time wherever you're going to be recording that.

But if we're talking tech, if we're talking online interviews, then just make sure that you've got that link saved somewhere and you can save it on your end as well in whatever kind of guest management system you're using, whether that's a spreadsheet or a Trello board or something like that.

You want to make sure all your equipment is up to scratch.

You've got your headphones working, your microphone, your Internet connection is strong. And like we mentioned in that primer document, we want to make sure that the guest has all these things set up as well.

Again, as we mentioned in the primer document, the same goes for you. You want to make sure you're in a quiet area without too much background noise, plenty of natural light coming in ideally, or just plenty of light in general.

And make sure you have backups ready.

This is one thing that I find a lot of podcasters miss.

So you've got, you think you've got everything ready, headphones working, microphones working and all that, but then on the day something happens, and then you don't want to be finding yourself fumbling around wasting valuable interview time.

So if you've got the budget or if you just have something you can use spare, even if it's not perfect, if you've got a spare pair of earbuds, if you've got a spare webcam, if you've got another computer that you can use, or your phone, if you've got Zoom or something installed on your phone so you can swap to that in case your computer isn't working, anything that you can have a backup of.

I know it can be difficult for some to get all this equipment together, but if you can have a backup of any of this stuff, I highly recommend it.

If both sides of the interview have the tech know-how, I'd even recommend doing a backup recording.

So while you're recording on Zoom or Riverside, you've also got some audio software loaded on your computer, like Audacity or GarageBand, and you hit record on there as well.

So if for some reason Riverside fails or Zoom fails, then you've both got those files recording locally as well.

Tip number five is to make your guests feel comfortable.

So all those other things that we talked about, the primer, getting your tech ready, that's gonna help with this, but you still want to allow for extra time to do what I call the three Rs before the interview, and then a little bit of time at the end to thank them and everything.

So the three things that you should remember to do or to say to your guest before any podcast interview starts is rapport, reframe, and reassure.

So rapport is just a couple of minutes of rapport building. That would be some small talk, maybe referencing who connected you in the first place or just how are they?

If you have, if this's somebody you know, how's the weather, you know, just something to break the ice to get that conversation going. It doesn't have to be anything in depth, it's just to get the conversation going so you're not just going straight into interview mode.

The second R was reframe. So you're going to be reframing what the call is going to cover, what it's going to be about.

You don't have to go into a huge amount of detail, but it's good to have that in there just so everyone knows they're on the same page.

So I say reframe rather than frame because you've already framed this in the primer when you've gone through the general questions that you might be asking.

But what I like to do in the reframe is just remind them this is going to be around 45 minutes that we're going to be focusing on this particular topic, asking this in this question.

You've said you didn't want to ask this, answer this question, that's fine, just reframing that for them.

And then in case anything's been missed from either party, that's a good time to bring that up as well.

And then the third R was reassure. So this is just reassuring them that it's not going out live, that it's a pre-recorded podcast, that you can edit things out, you can cut things.

If they fumble, then just don't worry about it. They can restart their question again and your editor will get that sorted.

They can even say, you know, they're not comfortable with answering a certain question.

So it's just reassuring them not to worry about these things. Sometimes if people don't have much experience, they get worried about all sorts of things, about how they look, about the sounds that, you know, taps, and things about if they get a question wrong or something.

So just keep them at ease, let them know that none of it really matters as long as we get the content in the end.

When your guest feels at ease, they're going to feel more open, enthusiastic, and it's going to help them dive into topics that they may not have even dived into on other podcasts where they haven't felt quite so reassured.

So again, it can help them because they're going to be creating better content out of it, can help your audience and in turn help you.

And then finally, what to do after the episode has been recorded.

So at least within 24 hours of recording the episode, you want to send them another email or message just thanking them for being on, giving them an estimate of when the episode will be released.

Also, you can send them over a release form.

You don't have to do this. I'd like to do it just to be safe. It's basically a PDF document again that says you're signing away the rights to this episode.

We can distribute it on YouTube or anywhere on the Internet where you've agreed to distribute the episode.

And then it will just have a signature section at the bottom and you can both sign.

I'm sure that after the research you've done on your guests, you won't be having any issues like this.

But I just like to be safe in case anything comes back later on where a guest or maybe their PR team or their company or whatever decide that they don't want you to share that episode anymore or claim that you should never have shared it in the first place.

This is just to kind of CYA (Cover Your Ass) if you can.

I would also suggest creating promotional assets around the episode.

So rather than just sharing a link to the episode on release day, which often doesn't get a huge amount of traction, think about putting together a trailer with the best bits of the episode and leaving some cliffhangers in there that make the listener want to listen to the whole thing.

You can also put together some shorts with the best clips from the episode and share these with your guest and hopefully they'll share them on their platforms.

And if you ask nicely, they'll hopefully share those shorts and the trailer, or at least just a link to the episode is better than nothing with their audience as well.

If you're putting money behind your podcast, and I know a lot of podcasters who do want to put money behind their podcast to promote it, they'll buy like a YouTube ad or a Google Ad or something like that that links directly to the podcast episode.

And this can work, I'm sure it's worked for some if you've got a really targeted audience and you know what you're doing with pay-per-click ads.

But in general, a more targeted approach can be more effective.

So you can actually, if you've got a good relationship with the guest, you can ask them, “Can I pay you or can I fund you boosting one of your posts on social media?”

Because as you probably know, when you post something on Facebook, very few of your audience actually sees it.

They're probably not going to want to put money behind a podcast that isn't theirs.

But if you offer to pay to boost that post, and you know that that audience has a really strong crossover with your audience, that can be a really powerful way of bringing in new listeners.

You can also often guest back on their podcast if they have one, and even swap an episode.

You record an episode for their feed and they record an episode for your feed.

And then as long as there's crossover with your audiences, you could bring in a huge amount of interest from that.

But don't stress about it too much if, especially if you're new to interviewing, these skills grow over time.

And luckily with podcasting, because you have to create so many episodes, if you're doing a weekly podcast, then you'll quickly improve.

Maybe just focus on one of these tips at a time. If it's a bit overwhelming, all these new things that you might have hopefully picked up from this video.

Maybe think about one thing that you can change, whether that's the three Rs that you can do before each episode, the primer that you can put together to send out, or, you know, asking your guests to promote the episode if they're not doing so already.

Let me know in the comments section below if there's one thing that you could pick out from this video that you can do that you reckon will help with getting the best out of your podcast interviews.

Leave it in the comments. I'd love to know.

And for more podcast tips and tutorials, hit that subscribe button.

And as always, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.