1. Tell the writer about the interviewee’s specialty and personal characteristics, the kinds of information to elicit, and what you want out of the interview. If I know that I’m trying to get information from an engineer on how the company’s technology was developed, I’ll steer him/her away from discussions of product marketing and trade shows. When you provide this kind of background, you save yourself time and money in the long run, even if you have to brief the writer a bit.
2. Tell the interviewee what you’re trying to accomplish in the interview and in the written piece. Most interviewees never get this picture. The writer can provide it during the conversation, but it’s awkward, and you as marketing manager are in a better position to describe the goals in terms that will mean something to your co-worker or customer.
3. Take part in the meeting or call. It’s a good idea to be part of the conversation yourself, especially with a new writer or a new project. If your writer has done six case studies with your customers already, and you’re confident about the work product, then there’s no need to attend. But if you’re asking your press release writer to interview an investor, you should plan to be a fly on the wall to keep the conversation going the way you want it to go and help the writer through unfamiliar territory.

Yes, of course, it makes perfect sense. But so does flossing your teeth, and a lot of people don’t do that either. This is really cheap insurance on the project for which you hire a new writer.

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I suppose some writers have remarkable memories and capture everything needed to write up the content into an article or paper. They’re a technical version of those waiters who can remember every detail of an order from a party of twelve, who wants the veal rare, who doesn’t want ice in her water, and which dressing everybody wants on his/her respective greens.

I can’t do that. Can you?

Some of my writers take copious notes and begin writing the piece in their brains while the interview is still underway. My father-in-law was a journalist who used to do that, then drive home and dictate the story over the phone to a transcriptionist. What a gift.

Other writers – like me – use a digital recorder. Interviewees don’t mind, as long as you observe their rights and let them know you’re recording them. We take notes furiously, jotting the time at particularly valuable utterances for verbatim transcription later, and fervently hoping that the batteries don’t die before the interview is over.

The hardware is relatively cheap and more reliable than tape, especially for writers who move the files to a PC. Sony makes excellent software for moving through and transcribing text quickly.

I talked to my colleague and high school classmate, Gene Gable, about using a recorder. “You’ve got to get out of that habit,” he counseled. “It seems like a good idea until – as happened to me – something goes wrong technically and you realize that you haven’t given your brain enough credit, and your notes aren’t sufficient and there’s a deadline on your heels. If you take good notes and you’re not distracted by things like today’s prime rate or your Twitter account, you’ll find it’s not that hard to build a good piece without the recorder.”

What do you think? Can you tell the difference between a piece written from memory and one written from a recording?

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