I was recently speaking to the school of business at San Diego State University about writing white papers and interviewing pros.

One of the students asked a great question, “If interviewing is so important and experts are so busy, how do you get their attention?”

Big smile, “Great question!”

I had been explaining that the best content lives in other people’s heads. Our jobs, as writers, are to mine that data.

I explained that knowledge workers spend almost half their time researching and reading. So it makes sense to go to them early in a writing project and pick their big brains.

So, here are a few helpful tips to nail down a person and get the interview:

• Call them first: This allows the element of surprise. You can ask them to pick a time where they can spare 20 minutes or so. Then call them back at that time. Emails are easy to ignore. A live person is much harder.
• Come by recommendation: Ask someone you know to pre email the contact to let him or her know you will be calling.
• Be persistent: Explain the importance of the project and keep calling until you can nail the person down.
• Be prepared: Do not waste any time when someone finally grants you some. Ask good questions and make sure you have some basic understanding of the topic.
• When all else fails, do an email interview: By emailing questions, the person can respond on his or her schedule. However, email does not allow immediate clarification questions that are natural in a live interaction.

How do you land that busy expert?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Freelance Writing, Writing White Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.