No Blogger to Blogger Interviews

February 7th, 2008 | by Scott

It appears that you're new here, if you like what you read, please subscribe to the news feed or sign up for the Leap eTips news and updates email list. Thank you for visiting :)

I want to preface this by saying that I have nothing against bloggers interviewing one another. In-fact, I’ve read some great interviews that were conducted this way and have been turned on to a lot of great blogs because of it.

What I mean by my title is that I personally don’t participate in blogger to blogger interviews from either side of the questioning chair.

There’s a couple of reasons for that. First, I don’t really consider myself to be “a blogger”. I use the blogging format to (hopefully) share some good information with those who are interested in reading it, but I’m far from being “on top of” or “in tune with” the blogosphere in general.

Also, I’m usually up against severe time limitations on a daily basis, so if I’ve got something worth saying I will make the time to write it up and post it here on the Leap. If it isn’t worth it for me to make the time to write it myself, I figure it probably doesn’t need to be said anyway then. In other words, I’d be a poor interview subject on the topics of blogging or even making money from blogs and web sites. Anything I’ve got to say about those topics is on the Leap already, or eventually will be.

I should also add in (to avoid any head swelling for myself) that I haven’t been asked to give many blogger to blogger interviews about blogging or making money online. It’s not like I’m turning requests down very often. There have been just a couple, and I’ve appreciated the interest but politely declined them all for the very reasons I’m laying out here.

As for me interviewing others, that’s just not my thing. I’m not really into researching people, which you must to conduct a good interview of someone. I have no inner journalist trying to break free. I often have questions of others after reading something they post on a blog, but I use the comments feature of their blog to ask them rather than using email and then turning that correspondence into an interview posting for my own site. That’s just my way.

The only interview requests I’ve ever accepted–and will continue to do so–are those regarding a specific project I or my company is involved in. For example, I recently did an interview for a small local newsletter about a localized social network project I’ve joined in on.

I’ve also answered some questions for people on Content Caboodle, the article publishing platform that pays authors for their work which I’m involved with.

I love giving these type of interviews because I prefer the interview format over just having a press release created and distributed. I think a good interviewer can probe deeper into what readers will really want to know, where a press release only gives the most flattering snapshots of the topic that the writer (or their employer) wants you to see.

Sure there’s a self-serving interest in doing a project interview. It is going to be free publicity for the project after all. But of course if you’re involved in good projects then it’s reader-serving as well.

By getting a good interview they may be turned on to something they otherwise wouldn’t have known about, so there’s a definite give and take to it, and again I think readers generally prefer a good interview over the cold press release format.

I know quite a few bloggers visit here so what’s your take on this?

Email this post