This is a terrible picture i took on my phone.
1.Arrange your interviews in advance with specific time slots
Or they probably won’t happen. Arranging to interview someone along the lines of “Yeah, just come and grab me in the break” pretty much doesn’t happen. Fair enough, they’re not there to be interviewed by you, they’re there to have their minds expanded,visit stands and network with peers.
2.Know what it’s for and what you’re going to do with it
Online video can act as attention-level content, can be used to drive traffic, convert leads, maintain share of voice, and a half dozen other things. Or it can sit on your youtube channel while you count views. Know what you want it to do, and have a plan for where you’re going to put it.
3.Only interview the buy side (and your sponsors)
This is what makes doing it right hard. My ex-CEO, who didn’t leap out of his skin at me in a positive way very often, leapt out of his chair when I suggested to a group of young newly employed grads that if you just do whatever is in the interest of the buy side from ops to conference programme, your event will always be successful.
Likewise, the sell side are all lovely people, but by definition they rarely lead the industry, they respond to what the buy side wants, therefore they want to know what they think. And natch the buy side also want to hear from their peers, so if you put up content featuring the buy side you get everyone.If you put up content only featuring the sell-side the buy side assume they’re going to be sold to. I’m sorry, sell-side but it’s true.And lord knows it saddens me to speak like that to y’all, cos I owe you so much…
4….and obviously only senior people
Which is why 1. is important.
5.Ask each person to give a testimonial, after they’ve answered your industry-questions
A client who shall remain nameless did a very good job of doing this in a soft-pedal way recently, asking “why they attended” rather than “what they thought of the speaker lineup”. The former will give you a much more natural sounding response, and will probably generate a positive endorsement. Nudge it if not…
Bonus points: The person who knows the sector best does the interviewing, and asks follow-up questions
I once saw Nouriel Roubini interviewed by a young conference producer who answered every response with “uh, ok” and moved straight on to the next question.Seriously.You had an exclusive interview with Nouriel Roubini and and you may aswell have mailed him the questions and had him answer them on skype.
Disagree? Tell me below…
