Interviews for Articles: How to Find Someone to Interview

You may be interested in finding a great interview that will add weight to your writing but not know where to look. Well, the first place that you should look is online. Getting an interview from someone online may be as easy as simply find a relevant web site and emailing its owner. Usually if they are interested, they will reply within 24 hours. Of course, you will need to make sure that whenever you request an interview, you find the appropriate contact information to send this email to. This is not as difficult as it may seem. All you need to do is look for a page that is labeled "Contact Us," "Media," "Press" or "Public Relations." You should also know that it is fine to dream big. However, it is the smaller web site owners that are more willing to agree to your interviewing them. This is because they are always looking for new ways in which they can spread the word about their services.

There are 2 great sources for finding interviews:
1. ProfNet is a source where you can get expert opinions. There are litterally thousands of professionals in every field imaginable gathered here. You will surely find some who are more than willing to be interviewed. However, you are going to need to do some planning ahead when you use this web site because you have to be validated as a journalist. Of course, you are also going to need to have some time available for posting a query and gathering responses from the people who you wish to interview. This really is the place to go whenever you want to interview an expert.
2. Another great source for finding interview subjects is the "Interview Requests" section of Writers Weekly. Not only will you appear on the forum here, but your interview request is also going to be mentioned at the end of the web site's weekly newsletter. If you are looking for opinions from "average" people, then this is the place to go.

After you have found someone that you would like to interview, you can do an email interview, which would be convenient for both you and the person that you are interviewing. This works especially well if you are shy or if you simply do not like talking on the telephone. There is only 1 drawback to this type of an interview: the person that you are interviewing has to do the majority of the writing work, which you would have done otherwise. Your only other option is to call the person on the telephone and interview them in this way. For a telephone interview, make sure that you have a good tape recorder handy that will record both yourself and the person whom you are interviewing. As common courteousy, you should also tell the person that you will be tape recording them before you even begin the interview.

Now that you know where to find someone to interview and how to interview them, the rest is up to you. Make sure that you have a list of questions written down that you would like to ask the person that you are interviewing before you ever talk to them. This way you will look like the professional that you are.

Good luck and happy writing!