For content marketers, coming up with relevant, high-quality content on a daily basis is challenging. But it doesn’t have to be! Interviews are high-value tools that offer a variety of benefits to busy content marketers:

• They inject fresh ideas. Asking questions is easier than creating new topics from scratch, so let the answers to your interview questions provide the content. Interviews also provide a different voice, which offers a nice change of pace for your readers.
• They serve multiple purposes. One interview can be broken down to provide content for multiple places — newsletter articles, blog posts, reports or white papers, and social media. And if the interview is long or goes in an unexpected direction, you may be able to adapt it into a multi-part series or save portions for later use.
• They offer free access to expert advice. Interviewing gives you an opportunity to learn from and build relationships with industry leaders. Plus, interviews boost your credibility as readers associate your business with these well-known experts.

These perks may sound impressive, but in order to realize their full benefit you need to make sure your interviewing skills are in top shape. Good interview preparation pays off in the form of a better rapport with the interviewee and better, more usable responses.

Use these tips to get the most out of your next interview:

• Consider what is on your audience’s mind. You need to know what’s relevant to your readers. What are they saying on social media? What questions do they ask you most often? What’s changing in your industry that might be especially newsworthy? Anything current that catches your readers’ interest makes a great subject for an interview.
• Target your interview topic. Identify the readers who will benefit the most from your expert, then tailor the questions to help solve their challenges. Or, if you’re interviewing someone on a broad topic, consider asking additional, specific questions that could be targeted to a smaller segment of your audience or repurposed for other materials.
• Prepare your questions. Write a list of questions beforehand so you can guide the interview and keep it purposeful. Think about how you’ll format your content after the interview: Will it be in a Q&A layout or a traditional article? This may determine how many questions you need to ask and their level of detail.
• Prepare the interviewee. If possible, send your questions to the interviewee prior to the interview. This way he or she can be prepared to give more detailed and thoughtful answers.
• Post-interview. Go through your recorded interview and highlight the most important parts. Some pieces will help you develop a cohesive article, while shorter insights are a great fit for social media posts.

Interviews may seem like a guilty pleasure; after all, you’re getting great material without putting in tedious hours of brain-racking content development. However, they’re much more than a simple time-saver. Not only do interviews help relieve a burden for busy content marketers, but they also give your readers a fresh and engaging look at your brand. When done correctly, interviewing experts and industry leaders will make you a leading source of information for your target audience today and into the future.