Vanity Interviews are Hurting Your Business

Media is fun and interviews are a great way to answer common questions about your business and showcase your personality. But the vanity interview is one that could not only be a complete waste of time, but also harmful in other ways.

What is a vanity interview? It’s one where the host(s) do not have a strategy or plan for publishing and promoting your talk and thus all the time and effort you put in is wasted. If the interview never goes live, it’s not only a bad business practice that signals you’re working with an amateur but also a frustrating waste of time.

How to avoid vanity interviews:

1. Only work with interviewers who are represented by a media outlet or who have an established platform.

The reasoning here is simple, if an editor won’t say yes to your interview based on the pitch (i.e. “I’d like to interview a health coach for women over 50 who overcame cancer and now eats kale 3 times a day”), then that same editor is unlikely to listen to you talk for 60 minutes and decide to publish the piece.

2. Know when and where and how the interview will be released

Any interviewer worth their salt will be able to tell you the website where your interview will be release, a date or range of days and the format up front. This ensures that you don’t show up for a video interview fresh from the gym.

This one tip will help separate the professionals from the amateurs – it’s the difference between an interview on Mixergy and an interview with a dude who wants to be “the next mixergy” but doesn’t have the audience, website, technology or tools.

3. Ensure the audience is a fit for your business before you say yes

Instead of jumping up and screaming “yes!” as soon as you get an invite, ask a few questions. Who is their audience? What struggles do they have on a regular basis? What areas are you an expert in that the host does not cover?

While you don’t want to speak on the same subjects as your host, presenting it with a unique spin or perspective is great. At the same point, make sure the topic is related to your business – the whole point of media interviews is to showcase what you do, not everything you don’t.

If you’ve done one of these vanity interviews, then you know the pitfalls I’m talking about. You invest the time, energy and attention into a great interview only to find out it only exists on a hard drive somewhere and will never see the light of day. It’s frustrating and feels like a waste of time.

At best you feel foolish for wasting time, at worst you feel manipulated and lied to.

I’ve been there before and while it’s never fun to find out that your interview isn’t going to be published, it’s a good lesson to learn. You may think you’re doing all the right things for marketing, but an interview that doesn’t goes live is marketing that doesn’t work.

Before saying yes ask good questions, get specific answers, and ensure the audience is right for you. Otherwise you might just become frustrated and give up interviews altogether and miss a bigger opportunities down the road.