Content Sharing and Repurposing – Interview Transcripts

If you’ve followed along with this series from the beginning, interviewing people as a way to create content is not a new idea. I touched on it in the podcast and publicity articles.

There are a few reasons we want to interview people:

  1. We don’t know everything, so we bring in an expert to share new ideas with our audience.
  2. We don’t know everything, so we bring in an expert so we learn new things.
  3. Interviewing people expands our business network with something more than a superficial “thank you” message when connecting on social media.
  4. Your interview guest will share the interview with his followers because it reinforces that he is a recognized leader. That’s great exposure for you and your guest.

While interviews I’ve done have been audio-based, you can just as easily do a text-based interview. You send your questions via e-mail and they respond by a certain date.

By this point, you already know to share the links to the interviews in the social networking channels.

But for the purposes of this series on content sharing and repurposing, we want to look at how you can repurpose audio interviews.

If you’re doing audio interviews, you’re already a step ahead of most people. But we can do more.

A lot of people miss great opportunities by leaving interviews in audio form.

There are a number of services that will transcribe your audio – or video -  interviews.

Casting Words is a service I’ve used. It’s not free, but I felt the price was very fair. But they’re far from the only company doing this.

With most of these types of services, expect to do a little clean-up work as it’s almost impossible to get a 100% error-free transcription. But doing a little clean-up is better than doing the whole thing yourself, especially if it’s a long interview.

So what do we do with the transcriptions?

  • You can include a link to it next to the link for the audio version for people who prefer to read rather than listen. If that link takes people to another page on your site, that doesn’t hurt when it comes to search-friendly content for your site.
  • You can put the transcription into a nicely designed PDF and offer it as a bonus for signing up to your newsletter. Or offer it for free on your resources page.
  • You can offer the interview – or parts of it – to a site that covers the topic you’re talking about.
  • You can offer it to your interview guest to share in whatever way she sees fit to so it reaches people outside of your audience.

And while you can do this with interviews you conduct, don’t forget to do this when you’re a guest. Just be sure to ask if they’re OK with you doing that.

The technical side of interviews

The whole idea of interviewing someone may be new to you. If so, here’s some information to get you started.

Keeping things as simple as possible, I use Skype to record my interviews. On the Apple side, there’s a great program called Call Recorder that will record both audio and video. I only use audio for my interviews. When I’m done, the included tools allow me to create an MP3 file for uploading to my site.

On the Windows side, my friend and one of my first interview guests, Traci Hayner Vanover, uses Pamela Recorder Pro.

With Skype, you can talk with anyone in the world. Since it does rely on the Internet, you may have connection glitches. They come up from time to time and you can usually edit them out later with any type of audio editing program like the free Audacity.

If you want to go old-school, FreeConferenceCall.com allows you and your guest(s) to call into a number with your regular phone line and have the conversation recorded.

I used that setup for my first interview a couple of years ago and I have to say I wasn’t thrilled with the quality which was your typical phone-line quality. On the other hand, it’s a free service, so it’s hard to complain too much. But Skype is also free and the quality is better, so that’s what I’ve been using ever since.

Behind-the-scenes with the interview process

When I invite someone to be interviewed, I already have a sense of what their expertise is. But I leave it open if the guest has a current passion for some area, and then we develop the questions from there.

As a courtesy, I do provide most guests with a list of the questions to look over. That way, they can prepare for it or suggest changes.

I also stress that for the best sound, guests need to be speaking into a microphone (usually part of a headset) and not use any built-in computer microphone which tends to pick up more surrounding noise. People aren’t going to listen to an interview if one or both people are hard to hear.

I always want my guest to look good and have an enjoyable experience. That’s just the right approach in general. But a benefit is that if the guest is happy with the end results, they’re more excited to promote it to their followers.

It’s impractical for me to give a complete technical course on how to do interviews. I just want to give you the basics for you to consider and enough information to get you started in the right direction.

Like anything new, it will take time, patience, and probably a few stumbles before you’re comfortable. But it’s worth the effort.

Other articles in this series:

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Your Starting Point

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Twitter

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Facebook

Content Sharing and Repurposing – LinkedIn

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Google Plus

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guides & Reports

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Books & eBooks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guest Blogging

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Article Banks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Blog Hubs

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Magazines & Newsletters

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Print Marketing

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Podcasting

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Video

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Webinars

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Presentation Hubs

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Press Releases and Publicity

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Content Sharing and Repurposing – Press Releases and Publicity

While I wasn’t from the era where some reporters wore a hat with a press tag, I spent plenty of years in a radio station newsroom gathering and writing news stories, and out in the community covering stories.

Some of those stories originated from press releases. Back in those days – meaning before the Internet was so easily accessible for everyone – you were at the mercy of the local newspapers, radio stations, or television stations. If they didn’t think your press release was any good, it got filed in what we called the rubber file cabinet. (That’s non-subtle code for the trash can.)

And unless you had someone following-up, you really didn’t have a good sense of whether or not media outlets were using your press releases.

Today, you can send a press release to any number of hub sites and have it live within 24 hours. And because it’s the Internet, the press release rarely goes away. I’m still getting occasional hits from a press release I wrote for my business in 2005.

As a bonus, a proper press release – especially on one of the more popular press release hubs – is often good for search engine results.

For what you consider to be more important items, I’d put a press release on a site like PRWeb.com, which is a paid service. I think it’s one of the better sites. For other news items you might use a free service like PR-Inside.com.

One of the reasons my 2005 press release got so much attention, especially when it first came out, was that it automatically got pulled onto sites that used press releases for their news feeds based on certain keywords.

In other words, my press release went beyond the site I had placed it and was being picked up on sites I didn’t even know existed.

While I’m just focusing on press release hubs, please don’t forget to send your press releases to relevant media outlets like your local paper or sites that are related to your niche.

How to write a press release is beyond what I can cover here, but PRWeb has some good resources. Or a Google search can bring you plenty of helpful links.

As for topics, that could be its own, separate conversation. Unlike the “old” days, your press release today doesn’t have to be something that traditional media thinks is important and worthy of fitting in limited air time or page space. Here are some quick ideas for press releases:

  • New products/services
  • New hires in your company
  • Awards for your company
  • How your product/service ties into something currently in the news
  • Speaking engagements

I’ll be honest… the first press release I did for my business really wasn’t newsworthy. Just as experiment in dipping my toe into the world of online press releases, I wrote one about a Photoshop class I taught for other direct market designers.

Having come from a news background, I knew my press release wasn’t really “news” in the traditional sense. But I didn’t care because I could put it up for free without anyone saying I couldn’t.

And that press release? It’s the one I mentioned earlier from 2005 that still generates occasional hits.

Taking it to the next level

If you just shot out regular press releases, you’d be ahead of most other small businesses who won’t bother. But step it up a level by creating a Press Page on your site.

This is where Traci Hayner Vanover was a big help. She was a guest on my original Magalog Guy podcast for the Leveraging Publicity episode and we used my press page as an example. At the time, my press page was pretty sad. It just listed the press releases I had created.

As you’ll hear in the interview, Traci had lots of great advice of how a press page could be and do so much more. We also talked about how to generate ideas for press releases.

The other advantage of a press page is how it looks to people who might want to interview you. (And consider that a teaser to a future article in this series.) We’re back to our good friend, perception. When other people see how active you are in the area of publicity, you’re seen as more credible than those who aren’t doing any publicity.

Take it from someone who interviewed people all the time… someone who shows they’re familiar with the role of publicity and is media friendly is someone the media is happy to deal with. That can be a huge boost for your business.

It might be wise to take a moment and see what role press releases and a press page might have in your content marketing efforts.

Other articles in this series:

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Your Starting Point

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Twitter

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Facebook

Content Sharing and Repurposing – LinkedIn

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Google Plus

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guides & Reports

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Books & eBooks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guest Blogging

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Article Banks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Blog Hubs

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Magazines & Newsletters

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Print Marketing

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Podcasting

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Video

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Webinars

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Presentation Hubs

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Content Sharing and Repurposing – Presentation Hubs

Last week we talked about webinars.

If you put in the work to create a digital slide show for a webinar or some other purpose, this week’s focus is going to be a pretty easy content channel to take advantage of.

We’re going to talk about presentation hubs.

First, let’s make sure we’re still together on the reason for content sharing and repurposing.

As great as our sales copy might be, people aren’t going to return to our sites week after week just to re-read it. And people aren’t always ready to buy the first time they find us. Some purchases can take months or years, especially in the business-to-business arena.

When we create helpful and informative content, often using a blog as our starting point, we give people a reason to keep coming back to our site, or subscribe to our mailing list. We’re also building trust so we’re seen as a valued resource, not just another salesperson.

Then, we want to take existing content and make it work harder for us. We can do that by either sharing that content through social media, or repackaging it in other forms. For example, you could take blog articles and repackage them into a book.

By doing this, we accomplish quite a number of things, one of which is getting our name, ideas, and expertise into more places than just our website. This extends our reach which is always a good thing in business.

When the content is helpful or resonates with people, they’re more likely to want to do business with you, or at least put you on the short-list of people they might do business with.

Last week, we talked about taking content and creating a webinar. Usually, we need to create some slides for a webinar. But once you’re done, do you just file your slides away on the hard-drive until another speaking opportunity comes up?

No way!

Sites like SlideShare.net allow you to upload your presentation to share with others, giving you another channel where you can be found. Maybe you’re just uploading your PowerPoint presentation as simple slides. Maybe it’s video.

In my case, I’ve put my magalog webinar slides on SlideShare.

Obviously, without my notes, the slides are of limited value as-is. But your slides might be so complete, it’s enough for viewers to get all the information they need.

There’s still value in slides that don’t tell the full story. If someone is searching for an expert on magalogs, just having my slides available tells people I’m a resource they might want to use with their audience.

And in the case of SlideShare, by going beyond the free service, you can upload videos that could incorporate your voice and, thus, a more complete presentation.

In a similar vein to what I did in an earlier article, I want to challenge you to go to presentation hub sites and see if there are slides related to your niche. If not, you can be the first. If there are, you’re already behind.

If nothing else, check out sites like SlideShare to get great ideas on how you might put together a presentation.

If you need help with the layout of your slides so they look as professional as possible, feel free to contact me.

Other articles in this series:

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Your Starting Point

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Twitter

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Facebook

Content Sharing and Repurposing – LinkedIn

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Google Plus

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guides & Reports

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Books & eBooks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Guest Blogging

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Article Banks

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Blog Hubs

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Magazines & Newsletters

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Print Marketing

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Podcasting

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Video

Content Sharing and Repurposing – Webinars

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