In this episode, we break it down the eight essential tips for preparing your podcast guest to be interviewed.

First, we stress the importance of headphones (you’d be surprised at how many people skip this). Next up, we talk about the mic situation; because nobody wants to hear your guest’s laptop struggle to pick up their golden nuggets of wisdom. We also explore giving your podcast guest an outline of topics or questions. This helps them prepare and alleviates any pre-interview jitters.

Plus, we dive into how to promote their offerings during the episode. The real clinch of this episode, though, is bringing it back to the very real point that it's no-one's responsibility to promote your podcast episodes other than you.

Read the Blog Post >> How to Prepare to Host a Podcast Interview to Get the Best Out of Your Podcast Guests

Takeaways:

• Always ask your podcast guest to wear headphones for better audio quality, trust me, it makes a difference!
• Using a separate microphone instead of a laptop mic is a game-changer for sound quality, even a cheap one works wonders!
• Make sure to explain where your guest should record to avoid noisy disasters - quiet, comfy spaces are key!
• Share an outline of questions or topics with your guest ahead of time, it's courteous and helps them prepare!
• Encourage your guest to promote any offers or freebies during the episode, it’s only fair since they’re giving their time!
• Don’t forget to clarify who your audience is because assumptions can lead to awkward interview moments and miscommunication!

Episodes Mentioned in This Episode:

• Ep 121: Everything You Need to Know About Hosting a Podcast Interview
• Ep 96: Do You HAVE to Wear Headphones When Recording Your Podcast Episodes? with Ash from Shure

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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Podcasting for Indie Podcasters with myself, Verity.

I've just made the complete rookie error of recording or thinking that I was recording an episode.

And then I got to about halfway through and then I realized there was no light on on my microphone and realized that I hadn't actually recorded anything at all.

Luckily, I was only into the introduction of the episode, so I hadn't got too, too far.

A little bit annoying, but do you know what?

It happens to everybody.

On the previous episode, we looked at how you can best prepare to interview somebody on your podcast, and if you haven't listened to that epis, I'd highly recommend going back and listening to that before listening to this episode.

Because in this episode we are going to be looking at the eight ways to prepare your podcast guest to be interviewed.

So I think that this doesn't get talked about enough.

I think we do talk about interview preparation quite a bit in the podcasting world, which is great, and that's why I covered it in the previous episode.

And there are some really, really good points in that episode.

There was one section in particular where we talk about do you even need a podcast guest on your podcast?

Which I think is a very interesting take because often in podcasting we talk so much about how you need to get guests on your podcast, but we never actually consider do you need the guest in the first place?

In this episode, we are going to be looking at the eight ways you can prepare your podcast guest to appear on your podcast to be interviewed.

And I've seen different podcasters do this in different ways before.

Some provide a crib sheet, some just provide a bit of a conversation before the actual interview.

I was interviewed on one podcast once where they sent me an entire workbook, which was incredible.

I say entire workbook.

It was only about four or five pages long.

But it was all about how I could better prepare to be on their show.

And I was just like, wow, this is amazing.

This is just like, oh, it was beautiful.

I loved it.

So much prep that went into that.

So without further ado though, let's go into the eight points of how you can prepare your podcast guest to appear on your show.

First of all, I would recommend asking them to wear headphones.

They don't need to be expensive.

They don't need to be top of the range headphones.

They could just be the free ones that come with mobile phones.

But we know that wearing headphones helps to improve audio quality when you are recording.

I did do an episode a couple of years ago about why it's so important to wear headphones whilst recording to improve audio quality.

And I will have that linked in the show notes down below if you want to go back and listen to that episode.

But the first one is to ask them to wear headphones.

Number two is ask them to use a microphone that is separate to their laptop computer.

So what I mean by that is don't have them just talking at the computer and using the computer or laptop's microphone because you're not going to be getting the best audio from them.

If they don't have an external microphone, so be it.

You're just going to have to do probably a little bit of editing to up the sound quality of that.

That's no major drama, but it's just about making your life a bit easier in the long run.

And again, it doesn't need to be a really, really expensive microphone.

I will admit right now I am recording this episode on a tiny little £10 microphone.

I think it cost me £10, maybe £9 off of Amazon.

I'm not using my blue Yeti, which I normally record on, because I don't have time at the moment to set up everything.

But the point is, is that somebody could just get a $10 microphone to use.

Or even if they've got headphones like the Apple headphones where they've microphone that people can speak into on them.

You know the ones I mean, the headphones with cords still attached to them.

Very old school these days I realize, but they've got like a little external microphone as part of the corded part of the headphone.

I hope I'm making sense here, but again it just helps to pick up the audio quality a little bit better than if they were just talking into the built in microphone on the laptop or their computer that they.

I have heard of some podcasters who will send in the post a microphone to the person that they're interviewing and then it needs to be sent back to them.

If that works for you, if that's in your budget, amazing.

But I realize that's not going to work for everybody.

The third point is explain where is a good place to record because a lot of people don't actually know where is necessarily the best place for them to record.

So just get them to think about being somewhere which is quiet, maybe not a busy cafe, maybe not where there is loads of background noise, somewhere where the acoustics are going to be picked up nicely.

So maybe not a room where there's absolutely no cushioning or no Fabric, which is going to help absorb some of the sound as well.

But the main points that you want to emphasize is that that you are recording or they're recording somewhere that is quiet, free from distraction, and comfortable for them as well.

Because if they're not comfortable and if they are distracted, the interview is not going to be amazing.

Point number four is give a rough idea of the questions or topics that you're going to cover.

I talked about this a little bit in the previous episode, but if you've got a set list of questions or topics that you want to cover, just share these with your podcast guest ahead of the interview.

Some people like to fly by the seat of their pants in interviews.

I absolutely get that, and sometimes that's how you get the best out of lot of people.

But other people do like to prepare, and I think it's important to honor that, that if people do like to prepare, then you're giving them that opportunity.

And equally, if they're not happy with some of the questions, maybe they can enter into a conversation with you as to how those questions could be tweaked or amended to get maybe the best conversation out of them.

Point number five is ask if they have an offer or similar that they want to promote.

Maybe like a freebie or a download or something.

And this goes back to what I also mentioned in the previous episode episode that if someone is giving up their time to guest on your podcast, I think it's only nice to give them the time and space for them to promote an offer or freebie at the end of the at the end of the show.

This is called a call to action.

And as I've mentioned when talking about call to actions before numerous episodes of this podcast, it should be limited to one because remember, the more you ask people to do, the less they are likely to do.

So just stick to one solid call to action.

Seeing as you're having the guest on your podcast, let the call to action be about them.

So don't say, for example, oh, you can sign up to their newsletter, but you can also sign up to my newsletter.

Here's their freebie.

But here's my freebie.

It's too much for somebody to try and focus on likely that your audience just won't do anything in the end, make it clear to your guest as well where and when they can promote their freebie and offer.

So for example, I tend to only let guests share information about freebies and offers at the end of the podcast interview.

And that's because I don't Want any listeners to my podcast to be thinking, well, Garrity's just got this person on and all they're trying to do is sell to me.

You want your audience to feel like they're getting something genuine before they're being offered something.

Point number six is explain who your audience is to your guests.

This is so, so important because we'd like to think that anyone guesting on our show knows exactly who our audience is, but it's always better to tell someone than to assume.

Just because they are guesting on your show doesn't mean they've listened to every single one of your episodes, doesn't mean that they're engaged in your audience, social media or your newsletter, etc.

I think it's important to explain who your audience is because otherwise a guest might go into an interview thinking your audience has more or less knowledge on a topic than they actually have, and therefore the information that they deliver could be framed completely wrong, and then the content's just not valuable to your audience.

Point number seven is ask if anything is off bounds from discussion.

This might sound like a bit of a strange one, and I don't actually hear this talked about a lot when podcasters are giving advice about podcast interviews, but I do think it's really important to just ask your guests, you know, is there anything that you just don't want to discuss, or is there anything you just don't want me to ask you about?

And this goes back to the importance of sending over questions or vague outline for the interview ahead of the interview.

I have to say, I've never personally had anyone turn around to specifically say, I don't want to discuss X, Y, or Z during a podcast interview, but I do still think it's nice to just check in.

And I'm not saying that there's a big scandal that they don't want to discuss.

It could just be that they're like, actually, I want to keep this discussion purely about my business, and I don't want to talk about parenthood, for example, or I don't want to talk about, I don't know.

You get my point?

They might just want to stick the conversation in one lane and stick to that and not deviate.

And I think it's just courteous to ask about that before going ahead with the interview.

And the final point, point number eight is make sure that they know what's expected of them after the recording.

So once you've interviewed someone for your show, you've recorded, edited, hit, publish, it's no one's responsibility to promote that episode apart from you.

Okay, I'm going to repeat that again.

Once you have published your episode, it is no one's responsibility to promote that episode apart from you.

It is your podcast is your podcast episode.

It's the interview that you steered.

It is not the responsibility of your guest to promote the episode.

And the reason I say this is because I see it happen in podcasting in YouTube videos.

Time after time, somebody will have a guest on with a massive audience and assume that because that person has guested, they are then going to say, hey, I attended, you know, this podcast interview, I was on this YouTube channel, whatever.

And they're then going to promote it to their however many followers and then all those followers are then going to convert to following your podcast or listening to your podcast, et cetera.

It doesn't work like that.

As I said, it is your show.

It is your responsibility to promote that episode.

If you want your guest to promote your episode once it's live, I would really recommend sharing the link to the episode and any graphics that you create for them as well.

I always think it's courteous to create a graphic and say, hey, I've created this graphic.

Would you mind sharing it with your audience?

But remember that they are under absolute no obligation to promote your episode for you.

And I just think that's a really important thing to to consider because as I said, I have seen a lot of podcasters feel that they've been quite burnt because somebody has been on their podcast and they haven't promoted the episode and they were relying on that promotion to X amount of followers in order to convert those followers to listeners.

And it just doesn't work like that.

You need to get somebody on your show because you genuinely want to interview them because it provides a quite quality content, not because of who they can promote it to.

So those are my eight tips of how to best prepare your podcast guest for being interviewed on your podcast.

I hope you have found that useful.

If you are not already subscribed to the podcast, please hit subscribe or follow on whichever platform you are currently listening on so that you can listen to the episodes as soon as new ones come out.

Thank you so much for spending this episode time with me and I will see you next episode.