I've talked about getting qualified experts to comment on current events and using your network of friends and acquaintances for find people with specific experiences or expertise for interviews. What do you do when you want to interview a specific prominent individual?
The short answer is that you figure out who is the gatekeeper for access to that person and work through them. For a top executive, that's probably their executive assistant. Most of the executives I have known would be absolutely lost without their executive assistants telling them where to go and when. These people set appointments and make sure the boss gets there when they're supposed to be there. They screen phone calls and decide who gets through and who doesn't. They pass on requests for meetings -- or they don't. You want this person working with you, not against you.
FOr a celebrity, unless you have a personal contact that can faciliatate access for you, your best bet is usually to go through their publicist. It's the publicist's job to decide which publicity opportunities are a good idea for the celebrity's image and which will be effective promotion vehicles for the celebity's latest project.
As a professional writer or journalist, you have something of value to offer to the executive whow ants to get his company's message out, or to the celebrity who wants to promote their latest project. They may have a favorite charity that they really would like to promote. You need to remember that by interviewing them, you are providing a service to them as well.
You should make it clear to the gatekeeper that you are in a position to provide a service. Tell them where the interview will be published. Who is your target audience and why they would be interested in the celebrity's or executive's message. "My column (or beat) is targeted toward successful, young professionals and I thnk they'd be interested in hearing about your new technology," or "My primary audience is the parents who control what music and movies their teenage children watch." Ideally, you'd be able to match your target audience with their target market.
Do a little research before trying to schedule the interview and figure out what the potential interviewee wants to talk about. Do they have a new book or movie? Did their company just announce a new product line or a superlative quarterly report? Who do they want to hear about this new project? Do they
In other words, figure out what's in it for them and mention that thing as something you'd like to talk about in your article. That doesn't mean that this is the only thing you'll ask about in your interview, but make it clear that they will have the opportunity to get theri message out as well.
In this position you are the salesperson and the marketer. You are also the product. You need to figure out a message that will appeal to exactly two potential customers (the gatekeeper and the potential interviewee) and convince them that an interview with you is in their best interest. Even the best salesperson doesn't close every sale. Sometimes you'll get a resounding "No" or worse yet, your call won't be returned.
Every salesman will tell you, that out of every ten people there are three who would absolutely love to buy your product. To find those three, however, you have to ask all ten. So keep at it and don't be discouraged by rejection. Learn from your successes and your rejections. Refine your approach and go get the next one.
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
ROR: Maximizing your return on research
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have a number of "beats" or automatically recurring assignments at the Yahoo! Contributor Network. All the news beat articles that I submit end up published at Yahoo! News. One of the beats is an open topic Question and Answer format beat meant for original interviews. It is the one that pays the most upfront. It's a beat I proposed, and for which I negotiated the upfront rate.
Lately, I have been getting additional interview assignments outside of my regular beat for Y! News. These interview assignments tend to be more highly targeted. Sometimes they'll ask for an interview with someone who possesses a particular expertise and, at least once, they even asked for a specific individual by name. Obviously, these rely on my ability to get in touch with the specific individual requested in order for me to complete the assignments.
These assignments tell me in the details that I am the only one receiving the assignment so if I don't want to claim it or can't get the sprecific individual to agree to an interview, to email them back and let them know so they can plan accordingly. The first one of these I received, I refused as the offered upfront was less than my standing offer for my Q&A beat. When I pointed this out, they increased the offer and I accepted.
Once I have my interview material, there are often several different angles the article can take or it might be one longer article covering several topics that were discussed. Generally, I shoot an email back to the Y!CN contact who requested the interview and propose several different angles. For example, recently I was asked to interview someone who had direct involvment with the space shuttle. I managed to get George Whitesides who was the Chief of Staff for Administrator Bolden at NASA until around the middle of 2010.
After a great discussion, I had what seemed like four possible main thrusts for an article. Since the original assignment said that Y!CN had reason to believe that they might get featured placement on the front page of Yahoo.com for the assigned interview, I wanted to run the angles by my contact to see if one was preferred given their front page plans. My four proposed angles were:
I though they might want option #2 and/or #4. My contact said he'd ask the Yahoo! front page people what they wanted, but he, personally thought they were all excellent.
So, without dragging out this story any longer, my Y!CN contact said that he didn't get a preference from Yahoo! so I should write up all four angles (without duplicating any of the actual interview material). That meant four separate upfront payments totalling $120 for this interview (plus the usual ongoing page view royalties).
This kind of multiple payout for these interviews has happened several times recently and it changes the financial equation and makes them much more worthwhile. While page view bonuses can exceed the upfront payment, sometimes by a wide margin, there is no guarantee of that, and sometimes they don't do well at all. I prefer to get a decent upfront so that if page views don't come in as expected, my time is still covered.
The Bottom Line
Whatever kinds of research you do, look for ways to use that research in multiple ways. Don't just respin it, nobody wants to read the same thing restated, but apply different aspects of what you learned to different angles. Getting multiple quality articles out of your research makes it economically feasible to spend more time doing higher quality research which, in turn, increases the quality of your articles and their usefulness to your readers.
Lately, I have been getting additional interview assignments outside of my regular beat for Y! News. These interview assignments tend to be more highly targeted. Sometimes they'll ask for an interview with someone who possesses a particular expertise and, at least once, they even asked for a specific individual by name. Obviously, these rely on my ability to get in touch with the specific individual requested in order for me to complete the assignments.
These assignments tell me in the details that I am the only one receiving the assignment so if I don't want to claim it or can't get the sprecific individual to agree to an interview, to email them back and let them know so they can plan accordingly. The first one of these I received, I refused as the offered upfront was less than my standing offer for my Q&A beat. When I pointed this out, they increased the offer and I accepted.
Once I have my interview material, there are often several different angles the article can take or it might be one longer article covering several topics that were discussed. Generally, I shoot an email back to the Y!CN contact who requested the interview and propose several different angles. For example, recently I was asked to interview someone who had direct involvment with the space shuttle. I managed to get George Whitesides who was the Chief of Staff for Administrator Bolden at NASA until around the middle of 2010.
After a great discussion, I had what seemed like four possible main thrusts for an article. Since the original assignment said that Y!CN had reason to believe that they might get featured placement on the front page of Yahoo.com for the assigned interview, I wanted to run the angles by my contact to see if one was preferred given their front page plans. My four proposed angles were:
I though they might want option #2 and/or #4. My contact said he'd ask the Yahoo! front page people what they wanted, but he, personally thought they were all excellent.
So, without dragging out this story any longer, my Y!CN contact said that he didn't get a preference from Yahoo! so I should write up all four angles (without duplicating any of the actual interview material). That meant four separate upfront payments totalling $120 for this interview (plus the usual ongoing page view royalties).
This kind of multiple payout for these interviews has happened several times recently and it changes the financial equation and makes them much more worthwhile. While page view bonuses can exceed the upfront payment, sometimes by a wide margin, there is no guarantee of that, and sometimes they don't do well at all. I prefer to get a decent upfront so that if page views don't come in as expected, my time is still covered.
The Bottom Line
Whatever kinds of research you do, look for ways to use that research in multiple ways. Don't just respin it, nobody wants to read the same thing restated, but apply different aspects of what you learned to different angles. Getting multiple quality articles out of your research makes it economically feasible to spend more time doing higher quality research which, in turn, increases the quality of your articles and their usefulness to your readers.
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