Here’s the step-by-step process of conducting e-mail interviews.
- Communicate with the public relations department/secretary, as the case may be.
– Introduce yourself through an e-mail or give a call, explaining what we do and your position in CW
– Let them know the purpose of the communication, i.e. an e-mail interview with the subject.
- After you get the go-ahead of the interviewee through the PR department, tell the PR official/secretary that you’ll be sending a questionnaire for the interviewee to go through.
- Settle the timings with the PR person/secretary, telling him by what time you’ll be sending the questionnaire and within what time frame the answers will be sent back to us.
- Prepare the list of questions for the PR official/secretary to discuss with the interviewee
– Do thorough research on the interviewee, see if he/she has been in news lately
– Frame questions based on current happenings and news on the company/interviewee
- E-mail the list of questions to the PR official/secretary
– Ask the official/secretary when the answers will be e-mailed back to you.
– Let him know that after you get the answers, you still might cross-check certain facts, quotes etc.
– Let him know that you’ll be quoting the interviewee on the answers he provides
- Tell the PR official/secretary that the answers are going to be published ‘on the record’.
- Clear any issues coming out of the answers being ‘on the record’.
- After you get the e-mailed answers, edit and format them properly.
– Answers may or may not be shown to the interviewee, depending on whether they’ve requested or not, and what sort of story the answers are meant for.