Writers and the power of the email interview

The email interview is a powerful, and often over looked, method a writer can use to promote themselves, their book and their blog. The format is pretty straight forward. The writer approaches a blog and offers themselves up for an interview. A blog owner writes a few questions and emails them to the writer. The writer then writes their answers, emails back and it’s all done.

Advantages:

• Bloggers are always looking for blog posts.
• If the email is constructed carefully it should be just a cut and paste job for the blog owner.
• Everyone wins. The blogger gets traffic from the writer’s blog, whilst the writer gets exposed to new readers.

Words of warning:

• Be wary of the length. Long posts should be avoided if at all possible. However, interviews are a grey area but too long is always bad.
• Think about the audience. The questions will dictate the tone of the interview but the writer should pitch to their audience.
• Link and link again. The interview should contain links to the writer’s blog and website. This is the deal. Don’t be ashamed to add a plug for your latest project.
• Link back. It is essential that the writer blogs about the interview, the swap of traffic is part of the deal.

This is a great example of an email interview from Caroline Smailes.