So you’ve exhausted your initial podcast guest ideas. You’ve emailed and googled and searched more than you ever thought you would, and now you’re coming to a dead end. I’ve been there. While working for a women in technology community, I was responsible for interviewing female tech founders every week and there was no excuse for not connecting with anyone. Needless to say, having this responsibility pushed me to move past my interviewee dead end, and when I did that. I found some very innovative ways of finding interesting interviewees and booking them for an interview.

How to Find Podcast Guests

looking for podcast guests

1.Search Twitter for Keywords

Twitter is a hub for people who get things done. They’re talkers with a message to share and they aren’t afraid to get straight to the point. This was a resource I went to continually to find interviewees. Think about the millions and millions of Twitter users. Your potential podcast guests are among them.

Now to get to the finding, search keywords related to your desired podcast guest in the search box and click on accounts to see Twitter users. For example, I would search ‘women in tech’ or ‘tech startup’ or ‘app founder’ and searched through hundreds of possible interviewees to look for the right fit. Are you interviewing female entrepreneurs? Think about what kind of business owners you might want to interview and search away. You could try ‘subscription box founder’ or ‘marketing strategist’ or ‘#ladyboss’. To find the exact kind of person I wanted, I would search through the accounts Twitter brought back for women and then check out there page to see what kind of following they had and how good their website looked.

It’s Your Turn-

-Decide what keywords might lead you to your guest

-Search them on Twitter and choose accounts only

-Keep trying different keywords until you fill your guest list

 

2. Peruse Medium

This is another sneaky tactic I used. The thing is, the people on Medium want to be heard. You’re more likely to get a yes to your interview request when you’re asking someone who is looking to become more visible. If people are writing articles on Medium, chances are they really want to be noticed. Get out the keywords related to your guest again and search for them on the Medium search bar. You’ll also want to choose accounts. When you scroll through these guest options, you’ll see actual thought leaders who want to talk about what you want to share on your podcast. You can search for job titles that are relevant to who you want to interview or stick to topics.

It’s Your Turn-

-Open up Medium.com

-Search for a topic or keyword

-Click on a profile to see their work

 

finding guests for your podcast

 

3. Skim Through List Articles

Now this one is taking you back to Google, but maybe in a different way than you’ve done before. If I were looking for female founders to interview and maybe specifically looking for more recognized entrepreneurs, I could search something like “successful female founders” or “rising female founders”. Searches like this will take you to lists writers have compiled of female founders. By searching through several of these articles I found numerous women to contact and importantly, they were women that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. Looking at these list articles is almost like having someone do the research for you. Seriously!

It’s Your Turn

-Search Google with keywords that are likely to turn out list articles

-Do the skimming and find your next guests!

 

How to Book Podcast Guests

how to book podcast guests

 

1. Finding The Email

So you’ve found a handful of guests perfect for your show. Awesome! Getting a hold of them is the next challenge. My secret is one that may be a little underhanded, but all’s fair in podcasting, right? What I do to get in touch with the guests I find is email a cold request to theirname@theirwebsite.com. You may or may not be amazed to know that doing that has gotten me in touch with some incredible people. Hello, Envato CEO. Some people will have their assistants monitoring their email, but most will get back to me personally. If you’re requesting them to do an interview to share their advice with your community, chances are they’ll say yes. You’ve got to just try this one.

It’s Your Turn-

-Don’t have your dream guests email? Take a lucky guess.

-And then, thank me. (Just kidding, get them on your show!)

 

2. Writing the Email

Oh, the cold interview request. How daunting. First of all, you’ve got to save your time and start with a template. I’m not saying you should simply copy and paste the whole email, but it is a good place to start. Get your podcast mission and interview request down nicely and use that over and over again. Just leave space for a few sentences on why you admire the potential guests and what you’d like them to share with your audience. And please use their name!

It’s Your Turn-

-Work on your interview request email template

-Personalize the template EVERY TIME

-Hit send

 

And there you have it! I swear by these tips. And I want them to work for you too. 

 

Happy Podcasting!