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After the Interview

Call the receptionist and thank her, and ask if she got your stickie-note contact info. You'll need her help when listeners call and ask how to reach you.

Send the producer/host a thank you, saying that you really enjoyed the interview and that if they are ever in a pinch, you'd be happy to do it again. Subconsciously, this sets them up for asking you back for regular, ongoing interviews.

While you are thanking them, ask them if they ever read about you on one of the radio discussion boards. You are really not expecting them to say yes, but, since you mentioned it, and if they like you, they may just go and post a nice comment about you there. Exactly what you want.

See if the host (or better yet, the general manager of the station) will sign a letter of recommendation on their letterhead for you. Tell them that you'll be happy to write the letter for them, by emailing the text to them, or by getting some letterhead from the receptionist and printing the text on it yourself, and sending it to them for signing.

Ask the producer for an aircheck of the interview; you may need to remind them, as airchecks are somewhat of a pain for them (they only benefit you.) Some stations are great about providing them, however.

If you get a good aircheck, you may want to post it on your site. This is not only for consumers to hear, but also for stations that have not come on board yet. If you are brand new at interviewing, you really need to be able to convince stations that you won't flop in front of their listeners.

Contact the webmaster of the station and ask if they could put a link to your site from their site. The webmaster will probably need to get approval from the host, program director, or general manager. You don't care where the link is on their site; just having it will boost your site's rankings, since a station's site gets a lot of hits.

Ask the host or the program director for a referral to other stations in their cluster (group of stations in the same office). If you just got off of a great interview, it's sometimes possible to segue right into another interview with their sister station down the hall. If they don't have any other stations in the building, ask if their counterparts in other cities might be interested in having you, and who you should contact there.

Send the host a critique form. Include basic questions like "Was John Doe (you) loud and clear enough", "Was John Doe energetic enough?" Other things to ask... were you too talkative, not funny, too pushy, or just plain not interesting?

Here a little-known trick, taken from the music-airplay promotion world: Send the PD or host a quantity of your product for free, for on-going give-aways AFTER you are done (and include a note saying that one of the products is for the receptionist). If you made a good impression, and especially if you got a lot of calls during your interview, the station may want to continue the excitement after you are gone by doing a mini-give-away at the same time each day for a week... all the while continuing to promote you. Talk about a great add-on!

Tip from Larry James - I recently send 5 copies of my books for future giveaways and asked the station to record a brief promo: "Hi, this is professional speaker and relationship author Larry James. Be the first caller at 555-5555 and win a signed copy of my book, "How to Really Love the One You're With" on 94.3, The Point!"

Part 1

Radio Interviews 101 - Brian Farrish