Write More, Sell More - Use A One Hour Interview To Generate Six Articles
Recently, I came across a source who allowed me to use the material from our interview as optimally as possible. The interview was only one hour long, taking place at his office. At the time of the interview, I was in the process of reviewing a mobile phone about to be launched, so I decided to test the camera feature, including the still photos and video during the interview.
So what are the types of stories that emerged out of the interview?
1. News article - This was a straight business-type story where I looked at the intricacies of running his organisation and the challenges he has to deal with. It was simple enough to do as that was why we agreed to meet in the first place.
2. Financial story - As the organisation is government-funded, I was able to develop a story that specifically on a multimillion rand fund his organisation manages. If he ran a small business enterprise, my story would have been able to done a story on funding trends in that sector. I would have focussed on how easy/difficult it was to access start-up funding, or venture capital to expand. What are the processes and challenges? How did he overcome them?
3. Profile feature- The CEO driving the organisation is new, but he’s an economist with a strong development background. So I thought a profile of him would be interesting. The same principle would apply if I was interviewing at stay-at-home-mum-cum -online enterprenuer. The reason you choose to interview the person is that he/she has done something interesting. Sometimes whatever it is they’ve done is the whole story. But sometimes, when you dig deeper, you find an interesting individual whose life is a story too.
4. The tool is a story - As I was using a new tool [mobile phone] in the interview, it made sense for the use of the tool to be a story too.
So I did the phone review as a separate article, as well as blogging about my experience using the phone. I also posted a short video of our interview on my blog, highlighting some of the important points I didn’t use in my articles.
Sometimes the story about the tool is not easy to sell. But as a writer, you can tell the story of the first time you used a certain brand of camera, or recording devise. You can even write a column about running out of paper , a tape recorder acts up during an interview or forgetting to change the tape while doing an interview. These are stories that deserve to be told, in the right forum.
5. Find an opinion/analysis angle/ social commentary in the story - It was easy for me to find social commentary in this particular story, as the source deals with a social development issue.
6. Find the “how to” in the story - This may be a consolidation of tips from your source on how to succeed as they have or how to do something they do. Or it may be a step-by-step guide from you, gleaned from your use of the information you gathered from the interview.
7. Write about your process - YesI know I said six stories, but the bonus story is that you can share your processes, and experiences as a writer. Maybe it will help someone write faster, improve their productivity.
Read about Damaria Senne’s adventures as a journalist, author, blogger at http://damariasenne.blogspot.com Damaria also blogs about the impact of mobile phones on the way South Africans work, play, learn and communicate at http://www.mydigitallife.co.za/mobilelife Read her business IT articles at http://www.itweb.co.za
Tags: blog post, increase productivity, interview, news, profile, prolific, review, write faster