How to find the right guests for your video series

If you have been following the episodic marketing series, by now you should have a show strategy and an idea of what you want the topic of your show to be. The next item on the list is finding a suitable guest to invite to your show.

Something that is very important to note is that there is a difference between finding guests for your podcast show and finding the RIGHT guests. Ideally, you want to select guests who are fully relevant to the topics that you want to cover and the show strategy that you're after. There are many ways to choose a guest for your show but we are going to be looking at selecting guests based on:

1. The kind of guests
2. The type of topics
3. The type of show

This post is a part of our ongoing episodic content framework series where we discuss the four essential steps to creating an original video series for your company and at this stage, you should already have the makings of a show strategy, a concept for your show, and a set of topics that you can discuss within your episodes.

Only one thing is missing, who is going to talk about these topics?

So just a quick note first of all, you don't always NEED to have guests in your show. You could do a one-man/woman show where there would be just one person to the camera and then you could discuss the topic that you had in mind. Or you could invite people who are outside your team or department to join you on your show. They would technically be insiders since they are employees of the company but they would make for great guests as well.

The kind of guests

Now, that we have that out of the way, the classical definition of guests means people who are outside your immediate environment which in this case would be your company. But when it comes to selecting guests for your show, you don’t have to limit yourself to thinking about influencers alone or people who are thought leaders in your industry. You could also expand your guest list to include people who are your existing customers. 

1. Your existing customers 

This can be a simple way of getting guests for your video series especially if you already have a growing list of customers. You only need to make sure that you select clients who are capable of having a discussion on your chosen topic.

2. Your prospective customers

Or you could use guest-hunting as an excuse to meet new people and build a sales pipeline. This is a great way to go after prospects by using your show as an opportunity to co-create something of value together. And the good thing is, you definitely would be adding value as well because you are giving them a platform to share their experiences and knowledge. So, it is an amazing idea to reach out to people even if you didn’t know them before because this is a great way to give them value first by inviting them to your show. We all know that people tend to be more receptive to requests when they believe that someone has done something nice for them and so we are definitely advocates of this method because it is one that can lead to gaining a guest for your show guest as well as a revenue-generating customer in the long run.

The type of topics

Asides from focusing on the kind of guests that you need, another way to choose guests for your show is to think about the topics that you've created. Your topics should naturally be inspired by the things that matter to your audience and you want to make sure that you’ve done extensive research on your target audience to achieve this. If you decide to pick topics without doing some background research on your audience, then you might end up not offering anything of value to them. But also note that this is show business right, so it is very important to figure out how to give your audience some quality content while finding ways to make it engaging and entertaining. 

When it comes down to the topics, you also want to think of guests that would be a great fit to talk to. By that, we mean people who would be comfortable discussing your topics or who might have had some form of experience with these topics that would make for interesting conversations and content. This is important to note because guests who have knowledge of your chosen topics will have the ability to speak on it with an understanding that comes from having familiarized themselves with the subject matter. So keep this in mind when searching for suitable guests.

The type of show

The type of show that you do also plays a part in deciding what guests to invite. For example, you could decide to go for a podcast talk show like most people would because it's pretty straightforward, easy to get started and it adds a lot of value to people. This would not require so much from your guest but if you're going for some of the more advanced show types such as a reaction video series, you might want to get somebody who has really interesting reactions or somebody who given their stature, would have something very interesting to contribute to the show.

Finding an engaging podcast guest can be a bit daunting but ultimately, just think about the topics that you have chosen and try to keep things objective by not only inviting people that you get along with but also those who will actually do these topics justice.

And that’s it for topics! Next, we are going to be looking at the production stage where we will discuss AV Setup and Recording tips that can be more than useful for you when starting a video series for your business.