This serves as a guide for current ESCUnited writers to learn how to conduct and organize interviews of potential and selected Eurovision artists during the season. This is not THE way to do this, but the process that has been used across numerous seasons with reasonable success.
How to start:
To begin the process you will need to determine who or whom on the team will be taking lead on coordinating interviews for the season. This person will need to do the following:
- Create an organizational document of competing countries that includes a schedule of their known artist announcements dates and liveshow dates
- Recruit ESCUnited staff members to join the interview team for the upcoming or current ESC season
- Assign countries to interested staff writers or coordinate sign-ups
- Search through the social media of artists or broadcasters to find contact information (Youtube about pages, Facebook pages, Instagram bios, etc) and update the spreadsheet accordingly
- Establish timelines for each country’s interview process and communicate to staff writer assigned to country
- Ensure that outreach is being completed according to the timeline and interviews are being written once complete
Once you have outlined who will be coordinating the interview process you are ready to begin the process of reaching out to artists and/or their management teams via email.
The process of outreach will be:
- Staff writer will draft an email to the participating artist(s) to invite them to interview with ESCUnited. Depending on the staff members comfort level you can offer this via Zoom or offer only a correspondence interview (example email below)
- Once an artist or management team has accepted the invitation, the writer will need to create a list of questions to ask the artist. Standard protocol has used 7-10 questions.
- Advice: Try to ask questions of the artists that show actual interest and aren’t your standard “Tell me about your song” “Why did you enter to compete” etc questions. Make it unique and also you can gain inspiration from interviews they have done in the past with other news outlets and/or podcasts, social media, etc.
- I will write a list of possible bank questions for reference at a later time.
- Once questions have been completed send these to the artist/management team for answering. It is easiest to send these in either a google document or word document for them to type directly on. Also please send a “complete by” date to ensure there is enough turnaround time to post and ask for photos to be sent for the featured image.
- Once questions have been answered and returned, the writer will need to create an article on the website for the interview. The article format varies but below are examples:
Finally once the article has been written, the writer will post it to the website and share it on social media. Whenever possible try to tag the artist’s socials in the social media caption for X and someone can manually tag the artist in the Facebook Comment section.
Example Email:
Hello there!
My name is Connor Terry and I am the Head of Content for ESCUnited.com, a popular international Eurovision news website. I wanted to reach out about the possibility of arranging an interview with CeaseTone ahead of the Songvakeppnin semi-finals.
In the past we have done these as correspondence interviews, where we send a google document with 7-10 questions and then you can just answer them in your own time. Once done, we’ll publish the answers as an article on our website for our readers to view, like this interview here: https://www.escunited.com/kristin-sesselja-interview-me-and-tiril-met-at-a-songwriting-camp-last-may-in-oslo-and-instantly-vibed/.
All in all, it usually takes less than an hour of your time to complete the questions. If you’d like to participate let me know and we’ll start the arrangements. If not, we wish you the best of luck in the selection!
Connor Terry
Head of Content for ESCUnited
What to do for Zoom interviews:
Sometimes broadcasters or artists will ask to conduct an interview on zoom and that’s okay! If you are comfortable to accept it then say yes. If not ask another staff member or ask if you can do correspondence instead. Zoom interviews are not scary – they are like recorded conversations.
To prepare the process is identical to that of a correspondence interview:
- Staff writer will draft an email to the participating artist(s) to invite them to interview with ESCUnited.
- Once an artist or management team has accepted the invitation, work together to schedule a date and time for the call and send a zoom link via email.
- The writer will need to create a list of questions to ask the artist during the zoom interview. Standard protocol has used 7-10 questions.
- Advice: Try to ask questions of the artists that show actual interest and aren’t your standard “Tell me about your song” “Why did you enter to compete” etc questions. Make it unique and also you can gain inspiration from interviews they have done in the past with other news outlets and/or podcasts, social media, etc.
- I will write a list of possible bank questions for reference at a later time.
- Arrive to the zoom interview just a few minutes (10 ideally) early to ensure technology is working. Once the artist arrives you can say a cordial hello and ensure they are ready for the interview. Then press record.
- Begin asking your questions in whatever order you would like. Treat it like a conversation, have fun and show interest in their responses. Examples of how this looks like are all over the Youtube page.
- Advice – These interviews will be timed. The most time I have ever gotten with an artist was 20 minutes, the least was 5.
- Have a list of high priority questions you want to ensure are answered, then a list of “as needed” questions
- Manage your time wisely and guide the conversation
- Following the interview, the writer will send the video file to the person(s) responsible for the YouTube account to have it edited and uploaded to the website.
- If time permits, the writer can also draft a summary article on the website of the interview.
- Whenever possible try to tag the artist’s socials in the social media caption for X and someone can manually tag the artist in the Facebook Comment section.
And with that congratulations you have successfully prepared for the interview season here at ESCUnited! Best of luck. <3