When you choose the sales documentary style of video you’re aiming to elicit natural responses from your interviewees that don’t feel scripted. To achieve this there’s a few little tricks to know when writing the interview questions.
Here’s our list of must-know tips!
Avoid Closed Questions
Most people know the difference between asking an open question or a closed question – obviously we’re looking get more than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – so phrasing your questions with terms like “Tell me about…” or “Can you explain…” or “How would you describe…” are answer-provoking ways of asking questions.
Avoid Long or Wordy Questions
When we edit this style of video together, we remove the voice of the interviewer so that only the interviewee remains, therefore it’s important for the interviewee to try and include some of the question in the answer to provide context. Keep this in mind when writing your questions – if you ask a long or wordy question it becomes harder to achieve that.
Choosing How Many Questions
Another thing to consider is how many questions to ask the interviewee. This is a question that varies depending a few factors – the importance of the interviewee, what they can contribute to the overall message and the confidence of the interviewee.
There’s no set rule on how many questions to ask, but from our experience, you don’t want to go overboard, you’re much better to have four to five really good and pertinent questions, than ten general ones.
Structuring the Questions
Just as with a script, you need to structure the questions that you write so that you get a cohesive storyline. These are the milestones that need to be covered:
Setting Context – who are we interviewing? Why are they relevant?
Introduce the Problem – what problem needs solving? What are the pain points involved?
Introduce Your Unique Solution – how can you, specifically, solve the problem? What is it about your methods that solve it better than anyone else?
Call To Action – what should people do? What action do you want them to take?
By following these steps, it will help you write more effective questions for your interview subjects.