How NOT to Get an Interview Booking

I’m often heard quoting movie lines and today I can’t help but think of Vince Vaughn’s character in the movie, “Wedding Crashers” when he delivers the line, “A friend in need is a pest.”

You have music you want played or a book you want reviewed or promoted, and you’re looking for anywhere and everywhere to get some publicity.

Nowadays everyone thinks of options such as Facebook ads or podcast interviews.  The latter, of course, is my sweet spot, notably with my milestone 300th episode of “Now Hear This Entertainment” set to be released on Wednesday (November 6th).

While I have been very successful in proactively booking guests over my more than five-and-a-half years of doing the show every week, yes, there by all means have been guests who’ve pitched me, and I accepted it.  Sometimes this has even been a past guest coming back around and telling me of their latest development that they think merits coming back on NHTE.

The first tip here is, if you are looking to get re-booked on a show (radio, TV, podcast), it’s best if you’ve maintained some level of contact since you were first on.  If you’ve worked on some degree of a relationship with the booker, it won’t just look like, “I’m only contacting you now because I need something.”

Second is to refresh your own memory of what that show was – what the format is, what they do or don’t do on the show, and so on.  If you have a new single out and you contact me to say that you hope I’ll play it, you obviously don’t remember that I do long form interviews.  I’m not a DJ who just “spins records.”  And shame on you because now I’m less interested in considering having you back on.

Thirdly, realize that the host isn’t going to want to talk to you about whatever was already discussed the first time you were on the show.  Your pitch needs to include, “Not only did I just release a new (single, EP, album, book, etc.), but, since I was last on your show,” followed by talking points on exactly what you have been doing since that prior interview.

Next on this list of tips is, your level of contact – quantity-wise.  To go back to the Vince Vaughn quote, if you’ve been around my company and/or my podcast (or even this blog) long enough, you’ve heard me talk about my four Ps approach: patient, polite, professional, but persistent.  Don’t confuse that last one for being a pest, though.  Here’s what I mean…

I often post 60-second videos on the Instagram account for the podcast, showing the recording of the intro for the upcoming episode of NHTE.  In other words, it’s a trailer for an interview that hasn’t been released yet.  So, if you comment on that post or story by telling me, “Great interview,” that shows me that you’re just being a pest because obviously you didn’t digest the fact that the interview hasn’t even come out yet!

The same applies to the post I put on that same Instagram account every Monday.  It’s always a quote from a past episode of NHTE.  So, if within seconds of me posting that you again say, “Great interview,” I know you’re just trying to pester me about getting an interview.  You didn’t go back and listen to the interview being referenced in the post containing the quote from it.  (A spinoff of this is, don’t put a comment like that and also say, “Check your messages” in it.  There’s no sincerity in that approach.)

Fifth on this list is that if the first time you were on the show you didn’t promote your appearance anywhere, that will neither score points nor give the host any confidence that you’ll do so the second time around.

If some of this sounds like too much work, take a step back and ask yourself, “Isn’t it worth it,” and, “If I don’t do it, who else will?”

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