Having an interview show is by far the most labor-intensive type of show for one reason: the guests. It’s always difficult to manage other people, but when you’re a podcaster creating content, managing more than one guest, let alone 4 per month, can sometimes feel like herding cats.

As a result, the guest experience you’re giving may not be as smooth as it could be. And when guest experiences aren’t smooth, the person being interviewed can often be left wondering if your interview was the best use of their time.

We know you don’t want that.

Your readers will also be more motivated to click play if they can clearly see and read what about this interview might speak to them.

Here’s how to make sure you’re doing the best possible job at showcasing your guest and the content that you’ve created together, so that they know you’re proud of your interview and your listeners can appreciate just how awesome the conversation really is.

1. Branded Photos

Yes, you’re definitely going to want to use a headshot to market the episode with your guest. But if your graphic is ONLY that person’s headshot, you’re missing a huge opportunity to allow people to relate their face to your brand. When we take the time to interview and promote someone, we want potential listeners to know that they enjoyed their time with us, that they’re also proud of the content you’ve created together.

In addition, it looks much nicer to have all your guest headshots in a consistent look to your brand, either cropped the same size, filtered the same way, or placed in a branded frame.

Note: I did this, at first. The first 50 episodes I ever did were marketed with plain headshots only, and it made my Instagram look like a women’s entrepreneur directory/dating site. I had to delete them all and rebrand.)

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2. Pull quotes

Speaking of branding, one thing that is particularly nice to do is to create a few templates and use a special quote from your show. These quotes make your guest sound like a genius, and they are really nice to post on social media as supplemental content for just basic episode information. When they look good and have something powerful on them, they’re very sharable. The guests will usually share their quotes as well! You can easily create these on Canva, or our design studio can create a template or 2 for you to choose from. You’ll want to make 2 or 3 so that the quotes aren’t the same look every time you post.

3. A succinct guest bio.

Some people have bios professionally written and include every accomplishment they’ve ever achieved. But your reader doesn’t need to know all that. If the guest’s bio is particularly long, edit it down to the parts that are specifically relevant to the topic of your show. This way they don’t have to weed through their Bachelor and Master’s degrees and can get right to why you’ve chosen them to be a guest and what they’ll learn on your show.

4. How to learn more about your guest.

It’s a lot of work to get every single social link for your guest. That’s why many people include this information on an intake form. Intake forms are a great way to have everything sent to you in one shot – and then you have everything you could possibly need for promoting them properly in your show notes.

5. A guest grid.

I love going to a podcast website and seeing the most popular or most interesting guests right on the homepage. This is pretty easy to accomplish by creating a section in WordPress that will display posts of a certain category, like “featured” and then categorizing all the popular or interesting episodes as “featured” to show in that section.

6. A lead magnet.

Remember those quotes you pulled? Well after 20 or so interviews, you should have enough knowledge nuggets to create a pretty nifty e-book. You can create a presentation and make each one a pretty mini-poster per slide, or make a list and categorize them. In fact, you can even plan ahead for this practice by asking them their advice on your interview intake form.

Oh, you don’t have an intake form? In the Podcast Success Academy, we’ve created a super-helpful template for you to use as your interview intake form. Membership is FREE – so log in and download the template now!

Hopefully, the suggestions above have gotten your mind whirling as to how to make the most of your interview show. Your website is really a showcase – a selling tool for each episode. \

We also have a great FREE course in the Podcast Academy about how to make the most of your website real estate – it’s called 7 Mistakes You’re Making On Your Website and it shows you exactly how to make sure EVERY page is a sales page for listeners.

You’ll grow your audience and have people pitching themselves by the hour in no time!

Next Steps:

Download the Intake Form Template From The Podcast Success Academy Now

Grab the Course: 7 Mistakes You’re Making On Your Website

Join Podcast Websites and allow us to support you in building a website that helps you grow and be successful at a much faster rate! Book a one-to-one call today!