Without solid and unique interview questions, you risk creating a boring atmosphere during a podcast interview session. Let’s face it; nobody likes boring questions. Not even the most pleasant, electrifying, and sensational guest in the world will offer any value to the listeners when asked boring questions.
Podcast listeners are used to straightforward, go-to questions like; what are your greatest fears, tell us a little about yourself, and what are your primary goals?
In this guide, we discuss five great questions to ask in an interview to help you learn how to conduct a podcast interview that will yield exciting responses from your guest while captivating your listeners.
Let’s jump in and look at some of the best interview questions to ask.
Best Interview Questions for A Podcast
1. What is your Enneagram type?
The Enneagram is a system that describes different personality types to show how people interpret things and how they manage their emotions. It describes nine personality types, each mapped on a nine-pointed diagram to show the relationship between each type.
According to the Enneagram, each personality is defined by a core belief that drives their deepest fears and motivations. These beliefs shape a person’s perspective and view of the world and the people around them.
In short, a question like this helps you and the listeners understand the speaker’s personality to know why they behave the way they do, from learning the core beliefs that motivate them to take particular actions to those beliefs that also guide them to make certain decisions.
Unique podcast interview questions also help explain the speaker’s behavior that may seem confusing and contradictory.
However, the truth is that questions like this can sometimes appear sensitive; hence direct questions won’t always work no matter how thoughtfully framed they are.
People are more forthcoming when you ask questions in a casual way. In this situation, you need to get creative with funny and unexpected questions that crack the guest and audience and make them willing to divulge such sensitive information.
Typical Enneagram questions will include:
- How do you handle stress?
- What is your love language?
2. What’s something people would be surprised to know about you?
Questions like this are often called icebreaker questions because they help ease guests into the interview. Podcasts questions like this stimulate guests to open up and share unrevealed facts about themselves.
An unexpected benefit of this type of question is that they often won’t require much thought because they seem to come naturally to speakers. However, the win-win outcome of this interview question is that it eases the guests and provides the audience with information they aren’t privy to.
3. What would be the book’s title about you if your worst enemy wrote it?
We describe this question as an offbeat question because they are usually tricky to answer. However, like the question about your Enneagram type, this podcast quiz is cleverly designed to uncover the speaker’s personality traits.
It is a strength and weakness-based question that defines the guest from the viewpoint of an enemy, and it throws more light on how well they deal with criticism and their knowledge about themselves.
What makes this question uniquely different and a good question for an interview is that people want to know how aware the interlocutor is of other people’s perceptions about them.
For an influential person or social media personality, the audience will want to:
- see the speaker’s viewpoint of others’ opinions about them;
- know that they are not nervous about the criticism;
- openly discuss it professionally and composedly.
Although it appears to be asking about negative traits, it is an opportunity for the guest to reaffirm their qualities that shows their personality in a positive light and one which enemies dislike most about them.
4. Tell us about your failures
Your podcast can become one of the most popular podcasts to listen to when you also ask about past experiences.
The answers could be as simple as falling short of capital which made them cut corners, or as devastating as losing the bulk of their resources to scammers, bad decisions or ill-health, and starting from scratch.
However, the outcome of questions like this is it motivates and inspires your listeners to push on and turn their failed experiences into success stories.
5. What do people misunderstand most about you?
Unlike conventional strength and weakness-based personality questions, this is one of the best interview questions to ask because it explains uniquely misconceptions about the speaker, from how they communicate to their relationships.
Suppose your speaker is an influential guest like social media influencers or professional and entertainment celebrities. In that case, a question like this will catch listeners’ attention because it helps discuss impressions they make when they converse with their friends and the public.
But here comes the catch: Even with interesting questions, most podcast sessions won’t achieve the traffic they desire
It all comes down to making your podcast user experience simple and accessible through transcriptions.
Millions of people turn to podcast sessions to learn new things and relax. Statistics show that between 2013 and 2017 in the USA, the population of podcast listeners significantly increased from 12% to 24%.
However, like music, listening to podcasts means relying on your ears to participate. This can be a significant barrier for many hard-of-hearing people who cannot gain access to podcast content when no supplementary transcripts are available.
By transcribing your podcasts using online transcription apps and services such as Audext, you can write an article featuring a person, expand your organic reach, and make your podcast known as an inclusive podcast that cares about its audience’s needs.
Conclusion
Interviewing is a skill, and it takes practice, commitment, and curiosity to tell and provoke a story people want to hear. The most important thing you need to remember is to ask unique podcast questions that rouse exciting answers from the speaker.
Also, making the user experience as seamless as possible through transcriptions is critical because it makes your podcast inclusive and accessible and gathers a larger fanbase. A software like Audext will provide quality text transcripts for your audio podcasts to help you grow a loyal and dedicated audience.
Hopefully, this article on the best interview questions to ask will make your podcast more interesting than the previous ones.