Don’t Waste Opportunities: Do These Things for Every Guest Interview

Interviewing guests on your podcast can bring a whole bunch of benefits. But after making appearances myself on many podcasts, I notice that some are missing a key opportunity that you need to be aware of to get the most out of your podcast guests. This is profits through podcasting where we help health focused entrepreneurs generate leads and revenue for their businesses.

Through podcasting. I’m your host, Joel Oliver. So you probably heard me say before that in most cases it is beneficial to do a mix of solo and interview episodes on your podcast. That is absolutely true. But today we are just gonna focus on the interview side of things, the guest appearance type episodes.

If you do those, so you’re inviting guests onto your show. Having them share their insights or expertise. Now, what are some of the many benefits of this? Well, networking. You get to meet new people, build connections and relationships. You could get professional opportunities, okay? You could hire a person that you have on, they might hire you, or it could come as referrals within your networks.

You learn, you get to learn from their insights and their knowledge. You have 30 to 60 minutes of their time that you likely otherwise wouldn’t have had. You get to display authority by having your podcast at all. Especially as you bring on more and more notable people, it’s pretty cool that you are getting to talk to them and you are asking the questions.

And finally you can grow your audience by reaching their audience through being on their social media, that sort of thing. It is this final point here about growing your audience that I want to get into today. If you’re having a guest on you absolutely want to maximize that opportunity and leverage their audience, so you wanna make sure that their audience, if at all possible, sees them on your podcast and perhaps goes and takes a listen to the episode Ultimately.

We would love if they subscribe to your podcast or follow you on social media, that sort of thing. Now we’re gonna dig into some specifics on how to actually do this, but that’s the premise. If you’re having a guest on what can we do to leverage their audience and reach as many people in that audience as possible?

And the overarching point here, the way this is gonna work is you have to make it easy for them. Okay. If you take nothing else away from this episode, that’s what you need to remember. You have to make it easy for your guests to be able to share it. And that’s the point I was getting at at the opening of the show.

Far too many podcasts that I’ve been on, they never followed up to say, Hey Joel, your episode’s live now. Here’s the links. Here’s how you can share it. Could you please share it? That’d be great. Many have, I’m not saying no one does it, and it’s great when they do, but the ones who don’t. That’s who I’m talking to, because it’s those who are really missing the opportunity, and it’s why I wanna share it with you today.

So if you’re not doing any follow up with your guests at all, you need to pay attention. And even if you are, you’ll probably still get some ideas how to do it more effectively from this episode. So most of the people that you’re gonna have on as guests, I mean everyone, everyone’s busy. So they got stuff going on.

They’ve got other things to keep track of. They’re not gonna be checking back to see when their episode published. Is it out yet? How do I share it? How do I tell everyone? They’re probably doing other podcast appearances, so they can’t even keep track. They don’t even remember that they were on your show a month ago or whenever.

So this is why you’ve gotta make it super easy. And that starts with telling them. That their episode is live. And by the way, everything I’m gonna tell you here, you could set up in whatever productivity or task management software that you use, that’s the best way to do this. For example, we use clickup.

So when I load the workflow for a new guest episode, after we do the recording, I load up this workflow. It’s got everything in there, all the tasks from editing, to uploading it, to then notifying the guest, creating the social media posts. It’s all in the workflow. So you gotta develop this. And then it’s pretty much just there.

It runs every time. Okay, so we start with an email on the day. After the episode dropped. Then all the links are ready. We can collect them all, send them over. I’ve got this email saved as a template, so it’s nice and efficient. Basically says thanks again for your time for peering on profits through podcasting.

The episode is live. Here are the ways to share it and listen. And so there I include the website link. So the episode on our website. It also the Spotify link, also the Apple link. So they’ve got those options to share and listen. I also mentioned in the coming weeks, we’re gonna be sharing some clips on social media and we’re gonna be tagging you, so feel free to share and repost.

We include all our social links for them as well, if they want to follow along and usually. I’ll also mention a couple of other things, if you know any other guests who would be good for our show, let me know. Sometimes I might ask by name if I know there’s someone that I want to be put in touch with.

I’ll say this person specifically. What do you think? Other things like, here’s what our business does, if this might be of use to you someday. FYI. Ask for a five star rating on Apple or Spotify. Offer them to join your mailing list. But some people even like sending out physical gifts. So whatever you can think of, that’s the email portion as you heard.

I will also share clips on social media. And tag them. That’s a big one. Remember making it easy. So I’m hoping to get some engagement there. Often they will repost, they will share on their respective platform, or they’ll comment back on Instagram. You can even try a collaboration and see if they accept that, because it goes right into their followers feeds, which is pretty cool.

They could share these things in their stories also. Some people like to actually share the raw files. With the guests, so they have graphics or video clips. They could send it to the guest in that email, and the guests might actually upload them themselves to their social media, which is fine.

Personally, I prefer to post myself and tag them because I would like to get that mention, like to get them to repost it, and people can easily find my account then. But it’s still a possibility. So I do this on whatever platforms I can find them on, but we prioritize Instagram and LinkedIn personally. So those are most important for us. Just depends on where these people are, where your ideal audience is. I will of course also follow and connect with them because you’ve met this person now, right? You’ve had the conversation. You can begin a professional relationship here. You don’t wanna overlook this opportunity by not staying in touch. I. Follow along, comment on their stuff, keep them thinking about you.

And you might want to prioritize certain people over others, just depending on what your goals are and who you’d like to offer more value to and maybe able to help you. So bear all that in mind. But obviously if you get an opportunity to get a follow, maybe they’ll follow you back If you follow them, get a connection on LinkedIn, that sort of thing, you want to capitalize on that.

And when I send my LinkedIn connection request after the interview, I’ll usually include a quick note. Saying thanks for the interview, reminding them again of who I am, and that is the bare minimum I believe you should do. Okay, so everything I’ve mentioned up to this point, you should absolutely be doing that.

No excuses, but there are plenty more things that you can do, and I want to go through some of those ideas now, just because some of these might resonate with you, you might think they’ll work better in your case or might spark another idea. So let’s talk about that.

You can actually provide them pre-written posts for different social media platforms and even for their email list. So all they’ve gotta do is copy and paste it. And in that case, it’s usually useful to include an image or a video clip to go with it as well. But if you want them to make a social media post about you or tell people in their email list about you, how much easier can you make it than literally giving them the text and saying, copy and paste this.

Right. Another thing you can specifically ask this person, if they can mention you in their newsletter or on their blog, or if they have a media section on their website where they show past podcast appearances, whatever is relevant in that case. By the way, the website thing backlinks are incredible.

So if they have that, definitely ask. But if you don’t ask, you might be missing out on opportunities, right? They might be glad to put you in their newsletter, but if you don’t make them think of it, then may never happen. So Look for those opportunities with each person. Anything that they do to share the episode on their social media. So if they’re making a post about it, pop into the comment section yourself, and that way other commenters will see you. They might click into your profile, you might even respond to a comment or two. If someone is saying, this was a great interview, you can let them know.

Thank you. As well, gift the best value. Whatever you can do for this person, try to do it like include links to their business and their social media, especially in the show notes. Wherever you’re making posts about the episode, make sure they know that you’re trying to help them out. If they’ve got a referral program that you could be eligible for, try to join that. And you might get some commission from say, getting sales for them or just lets them know that you’re trying to help. Once you’re done with the interview, before they sign off, ask if there’s anything that they need help with.

Currently, they may be looking for clients, they might be looking for a recommendation for a service provider. Maybe they need some knowledge, anything like that. Maybe you could share useful video with them. Don’t make the whole interview experience all about taking from them. Think about what you can give back, not only during that time, but afterwards as well.

Next. Is there a possibility for a guest swap? Do they have a podcast and it’s a case where you could offer value to their audience if it’s a good fit? See if you can get an appearance on there. That would be fantastic. If they’ve got an online community, see if you can join in as a member and post in there.

Or get them to share more about you and their podcast appearance within that community if they’ve got a service that’s useful to you. Consider doing business with them. You can’t do this with everyone, but occasionally things will just align and you’ll want to, or there was something that you needed and this person does really well and they just spent an hour showing their knowledge to you and you think, Hey, that would actually be pretty cool to do together.

Or if they’ve got something small ticket, like a book, buy that and check it out. Even you could do that before the episode. And as I mentioned, it’s not gonna apply in all cases. But even if you don’t do this every single time, let’s say you get a. More noteworthy guest on or one you’re super excited about that you’ve been trying to get for a long time, consider then in that case, what could I do to make this extra special for them?

Next, further, repurpose your content. So for example, make a full blog post based on the episode and the guest’s insight. So you’re getting more value out of this by. Turning it into different formats. It’s not only a podcast episode anymore. We love to see it on social media. You can do blogs as well, your own newsletters, eBooks, whole bunch of things that you can make and repurpose your podcast content into.

Another thing you can do, follow up down the road. Let them know. Hey, the episode is doing really well. It’s getting a lot of downloads. People have had great things to say about your appearance. Just staying in touch, nurturing the relationship. Send them something they might be interested in after two or three months.

I’ve thought about you when I read this article. Try to send them a referral or introduce them to someone. Just keeps you in their mind and lets them see that you’re trying to add value to their life, and perhaps they’ll have something that they can help you with as well. And final idea, invite the guest for a live q and a.

Instagram or in your community, if you have one, like a Facebook community invite them in. Let them have some time together with your community who may want to ask them questions directly, gives them another opportunity if they have something to offer the community in terms of a business thing, like a program or a service, they can be in front of those people more as well, in addition to just your podcast.

Okay, so there you go. A lot of ideas, but as I mentioned, just start with the basics. There’s a bare minimum that you wanna be doing each guest episode by following up with the guest, and then there’s a whole bunch of other things that you may be able to implement as well. Final thought on all of this.

Whatever you do, be careful not to make this all too much, particularly if you’re sending them that email once their episode is live. Nobody’s gonna have time to read a massive email with a whole bunch of stuff in it. It’s just gonna come across as a big mess. So you can’t be asking ’em to do every little thing, right?

Focus on your biggest requests. Go with those. Or you could try experimenting, try changing it up per guest, depending on if you want to just experiment and see if you can get some data, like what seems to work better or with a particular guest if you think I really would like them to do this, or I really wanna be introduced to this person.

So let me make that my only ask in that email. So use a template, but remember that you can change it up and experiment and optimize. On a case by case basis, you don’t want it to be too long, so there you go. Now you can ensure that you are maximizing the value for both you and your guests when you do interview episodes.