Photo Description: A picture of the author engaged in an interview. She’s wearing a blue t-shirt with an open notebook and laptop in her lap. She has a pen in her right hand and her left hand is in motion as she’s speaking. Photo by Z. Boothe.
Week Three
I sent out a call for interviews on LinkedIn last week and was pleasantly surprised by the quick responses to engage! Although I haven’t hit saturation yet, I’m thankful that folks have been responsive to the topic and willing to talk to me about it (Note: If you want to talk to me about it, you can fill out this form).
For my first book, I did interviews strictly by word of mouth, and with close to 40 interviews all but two of them were 1-on-1 interviews. This time around I decided to take a different strategy:
First, I put out a cold call. It means more people know my topic which I feel puts me in the light more than I want but it also creates a bigger pool for me.
Second, I offered more than one way to answer the questions. Interested folks can also submit audio, video, or written responses. This will hopefully allow folks to respond on their own schedule and give them more time to think about their responses.
I will let you know the impacts of these different strategies…
One interesting note is that from the group of initial responders, almost all are responding from the lens of “parent/guardian.” I’m wondering if it is due to the topic and level of safety to talk from your personal lens rather than from the lens of your employment.
Although the majority of folks who responded identified that they would be responding as a “parent/guardian” my first interview was with a teacher. It was a really great conversation and I appreciated the level of detail and thoughtfulness in their responses. After one round, I’m still happy with my questions but knowing myself, this may change down the line as I see patterns.
Week Three Complete.