Writing good interview questions for marketing or corporate videos
Interviewing key people who are part of your business, for example staff or customers, can effectively work in both marketing and corporate videos.
Interviews allow people to tell a story in their own words. The story could be about a successful project completion, or your start up achieving a milestone within your business plan, or a new product launch. The stories are endless. Everyone has one, or more!
It’s important to ask the right questions. The story shares a message and asking the right questions and getting terrific answers will help get your audience interested, engaged, and to get that all important message.
Tips for preparing for your video production
Tip 1: Prepare a working script. A working script covers keys points to be covered in the story. By preparing a working script as part of the video production process, we imagine what people might say. This process helps us write the best questions to get the best answers.
Tip 2: Do your research. Discover the background of the interviewee in relation to the topic you are discussing to add depth to the questions. By having background information, you’re likely to use information from their responses to further add to the conversation, perhaps adlib with an additional question or two that adds depth to the topic.
Consider the talent used in your video production. Is their speaking voice clear and easily understood? Do they speak too fast? Ideally, we need interviews and voice overs to be easy to listen too, the message and story easy to understand.
Get a chance to hear how the interviewee/s talk and respond to questions. Do they offer quick yes/no responses without any detail? Or are they verbose, perhaps a bit rambling, in how they respond?
Tip 3: Ease into the interview. A friendly chat before the interview starts will help break the ice. Interviews can be an intimidating experience.
How experienced is the interviewee? Many first-time interviewees, or even those who are more experienced, can feel intimidated with the interview process. A good tip is to strike up a rapport with the interviewee before the recording starts to help them relax.
There’s usually a lot happening within the scene or venue with the setup of sound checks and lighting. In the process of getting the production side of the interview sorted, any chance to break the ice and strike up a rapport, between interviewee and interviewer, can be the valuable key to open a responsive and engaging interview. You could hear good information to add to the conversation or question/answer process
Tip 4: Keep questions short and sweet. Focus on one idea in each question for the interviewee to respond to. This will help to keep focus, the information on point.
Tip 5: Add a personal and emotional question or two. Asking how the person feels about what is being discussed will contribute to the effectiveness of the interviewee. For example, in a corporate video that puts the spotlight on one of your staff, a question about how that staff member feels about getting the specific training to excel in their work, or how they feel with achieving the highest number of customer service accolades, will go a significant way to charming the audience.
Tip 6: Ask the interviewee to repeat the question in their answer. Including the question within a response adds context and can help both the audience get the full picture as they watch and listen. This also helps in post-production of the video: when editing the video down in length, the interviewer’s question could be cut during post production editing but the interviewee’s answer would remain, with full meaning and context. This contributes to successful messaging and assist the entire production process.