How to Interview Experts and Transform Their Knowledge into Compelling Business Content
At BrassTranscripts, we appreciate experts and the knowledge they're willing to share. Today we're talking with Elena Martinez, a content strategist who's spent fifteen years helping businesses extract expert knowledge and turn it into content that resonates. She's conducted over 500 expert interviews for companies ranging from scrappy startups to Fortune 100 enterprises, and she's learned what works—and what absolutely doesn't.
The Problem Most Companies Don't See
BrassTranscripts: Elena, thanks for sitting down with us. Let's start with the obvious question: why do so many expert interviews produce mediocre content?
Elena: Most people think interviewing is just asking questions and typing up the answers. That's not interviewing. That's transcription theater. The expert talks, you nod, you write it down, and then you wonder why the final content feels flat.
The real problem is that experts don't naturally communicate in content-ready formats. They think in frameworks, patterns, and experiences that make perfect sense to them. But your audience isn't inside their heads. You need to bridge that gap, and that's where most interviewers fail.
BrassTranscripts: What does that failure look like?
Elena: You get content that's technically accurate but completely forgettable. The expert drops incredible insights wrapped in jargon. They tell stories that would be brilliant with context but confusing without it. They skip over the details that would make everything click for a beginner because those details are second nature to them.
I once interviewed a cybersecurity expert who kept saying "assume breach posture." Technically precise. Strategically important. Completely meaningless to the small business owners who needed that advice. We had to unpack that phrase into something actionable: "Plan your security assuming hackers are already inside your systems." Same concept, totally different impact.
Preparation Determines Everything
BrassTranscripts: How do you prepare for these interviews?
Elena: I spend more time preparing than interviewing. Always. If I'm doing a sixty-minute interview, I'm spending three to four hours preparing. That sounds excessive until you realize that preparation is where you earn the right to ask the questions nobody else asks.
First, I read everything the expert has written. Blog posts, LinkedIn updates, Twitter threads, whatever exists. I'm not looking for topics to rehash. I'm looking for gaps. What do they keep referencing but never fully explaining? What questions do their audiences keep asking? What topics make them animated in casual mentions but they've never written the definitive piece?
BrassTranscripts: That's detective work.
Elena: Exactly. And it continues. I research their industry, but not to become an expert myself. I research to understand the terminology, the debates, the pain points their audience experiences. When you can ask a question that demonstrates you understand their world, experts open up differently. They stop performing and start teaching.
I also prepare my technical setup obsessively. Audio quality can make or break transcription accuracy, and bad transcription destroys the entire process. I use a dedicated USB microphone, I test my recording software beforehand, and I always have a backup recording device running. You cannot recover a brilliant insight from garbled audio. Our audio quality tips guide covers equipment recommendations and recording best practices in detail.
The Questions That Actually Work
BrassTranscripts: What makes a good interview question?
Elena: Specificity. Most people ask vague questions and get vague answers. "What are your thoughts on content marketing?" That gets you platitudes. "What's the biggest mistake you see B2B companies make in their content marketing, and can you walk me through a specific example?" That gets you a story.
The best questions start with what, how, and why. Can you walk me through... What happened when... How do you decide... Why does that matter... These questions force narrative answers instead of soundbites.
BrassTranscripts: Give us an example.
Elena: Instead of "What makes good customer service?" I ask "Think about the last time you contacted customer service and left genuinely impressed. What did that company do differently?" Now we're talking about real experience, not theory.
Or instead of "How do you approach strategy development?" I ask "Walk me through your last strategy project from the moment the client called to the moment you delivered recommendations. Where did you get stuck? What surprised you?" Real process, real challenges, real solutions.
These specific questions produce answers that feel authentic because they're rooted in actual experience. Your audience can tell the difference.
Listening Is the Actual Skill
BrassTranscripts: You mentioned listening. That seems obvious.
Elena: It's obvious and almost nobody does it well. Most interviewers are so focused on their next question that they miss the golden thread the expert just handed them. The expert mentions something interesting in passing, and the interviewer barrels ahead with their prepared questions instead of following up.
I keep my question list loose. When an expert says something that makes my brain light up, I follow that thread. "Wait, you just said something interesting. Can you expand on that?" Some of my best content has come from tangents, not from my prepared questions.
BrassTranscripts: How do you know when to dig deeper?
Elena: Listen for the moments when the expert's energy changes. Their voice gets more animated, they lean forward, they say "here's what's really going on" or "nobody talks about this but." Those are signals. That's where the valuable stuff lives.
Also watch for contradictions or tension. If an expert says "most people do X" but earlier they implied X doesn't work, that contradiction is worth exploring. Not to catch them in an error, but because that tension usually reveals complexity worth understanding.
The Transcription Advantage Nobody Talks About
BrassTranscripts: You're particular about transcription. Why does it matter so much?
Elena: Because memory is unreliable and note-taking is distracting. When I'm interviewing, I'm fully present. I'm listening, following threads, watching for signals. I can't do that effectively while trying to capture every word.
Recording and transcribing lets me have the conversation first and analyze it later. After the interview, I read through the transcript with fresh eyes. That's when I spot patterns, contradictions, and insights I missed in real-time. I highlight the strongest quotes, the clearest explanations, the most compelling stories. For research interviews specifically, our qualitative research transcription guide covers systematic analysis techniques in depth.
The transcript is also your fact-checking system. When I'm writing the final content, I'm not relying on my memory of what the expert said. I'm quoting directly from the transcript, ensuring accuracy. Experts appreciate that. They're more likely to share your content when they know you represented them precisely.
BrassTranscripts: How quickly do you need that transcript?
Elena: Fast. Ideally the same day. The longer you wait between the interview and writing the content, the more context you lose. Details fade. Your excitement dims. Fast transcription keeps you in the creative zone.
I use AI transcription for speed—under three minutes for a sixty-minute interview with BrassTranscripts—and then I do a quick review while listening at 1.5x speed. I'm not aiming for perfection. I'm verifying that key quotes, names, and technical terms are accurate. That review takes maybe twenty minutes. If you're experiencing accuracy issues, our troubleshooting guide helps identify and fix common problems.
Then I jump straight into content creation while everything is fresh. The transcript is open on one screen, my draft on the other. I'm pulling quotes, weaving in stories, structuring the narrative. When you work fast, the energy of the conversation carries into the written piece.
Turning Interviews Into Multiple Content Pieces
BrassTranscripts: One interview, multiple content pieces. How does that work?
Elena: A good sixty-minute expert interview typically gives me enough material for a 2,000-word blog post, five LinkedIn posts, ten Twitter threads, and three short video clips. Sometimes more if the expert was particularly quotable.
The transcript makes this possible. I'm not trying to remember what was said or hunting through audio files. Everything is searchable text. I can filter for specific topics, pull the strongest quotes, identify self-contained stories that work as standalone pieces. Choosing the right transcript format matters here—TXT for content creation, JSON for programmatic processing, SRT for video captions.
Here's my process. After transcription, I read through and tag sections by theme. Customer success stories here. Technical explanations here. Controversial takes here. Then I map those themes to different content formats.
The deep, nuanced explanation becomes the blog post. The controversial take becomes a LinkedIn post that sparks discussion. The customer success story becomes a Twitter thread. The technical explanation becomes a video tutorial script. Same source material, different presentations for different platforms and audiences.
BrassTranscripts: Doesn't that feel repetitive?
Elena: Only if you're lazy about it. Each format requires different treatment. Your blog post can include qualifications, context, and depth. Your LinkedIn post needs to grab attention immediately with a strong hook. Your Twitter thread needs to build momentum with each tweet. Your video script needs to be conversational and visual.
Same core insight, but optimized for how people actually consume content on each platform. And here's the thing: your audiences don't overlap completely. Someone who reads your blog might miss your LinkedIn post. Someone scrolling Twitter might not visit your website. Multi-format content meets people where they are.
The AI Advantage for Busy Teams
BrassTranscripts: Let's talk about AI prompts for transcript processing. How do you use them?
Elena: Game changer. Once I have the transcript, I use AI to accelerate the analysis and drafting process. But—and this is critical—AI is my research assistant, not my writer.
I'll feed the transcript into ChatGPT or Claude with a prompt like "Identify the five strongest insights from this interview with examples" or "Extract all the stories and anecdotes with timestamps." AI excels at pattern recognition and organization. It can scan a 15,000-word transcript in seconds and highlight what matters. Our AI Prompt Guide includes 37 specialized prompts for different content types, including interview analysis and content transformation.
Then I use those AI-generated insights as my outline. I read the relevant sections, add my own analysis, shape the narrative. The AI did the heavy lifting on organization. I do the heavy lifting on storytelling and positioning.
BrassTranscripts: What about generating full drafts?
Elena: I've experimented. AI can generate decent first drafts from transcripts, but they lack the editorial judgment that makes content compelling. AI will faithfully represent what was said. It won't necessarily know which parts deserve emphasis, which stories need more context, or which technical explanations need simplification.
My workflow is: transcription via BrassTranscripts, AI-powered analysis for structure and highlights, human writing for narrative and positioning. That combination gives me speed without sacrificing quality.
One more thing: AI is fantastic for generating alternative formats. Once I've written the main blog post, I can prompt AI to create social media variations, pull quotes, email newsletter snippets. That's where AI's repetition tolerance is an advantage. I don't want to rewrite the same content five times, but AI doesn't care. For content creators specifically, our podcast transcription workflow guide demonstrates how to generate show notes, blog posts, and social media packages from a single transcript.
What Makes Content Feel Authentic
BrassTranscripts: You mentioned authenticity earlier. What does that actually mean?
Elena: Authenticity means the expert's voice is recognizable. If you sent the finished content to people who know the expert, they should immediately think "yes, that sounds exactly like them."
This means preserving their communication style within reason. If they use specific phrases, keep them. If they explain things through metaphors, use those metaphors. If they're direct and blunt, let that show. Don't sand down the edges to make everything sound corporate and boring.
But authenticity also means editing out the verbal tics, false starts, and tangents that are natural in conversation but confusing in writing. "Um, well, you know, like..." Nobody needs to read that. Clean it up while keeping their voice.
BrassTranscripts: Where do most people overdo the editing?
Elena: They make experts sound like robots. Every sentence perfectly structured. No personality. No rhythm. No passion. Read your content aloud before publishing. If it sounds like a corporate press release instead of a human being talking, you've edited too much.
I aim for what I call "elevated conversation." More polished than raw speech, but still recognizable as a specific person's way of thinking and communicating. That's the sweet spot.
The Follow-Up That Everyone Forgets
BrassTranscripts: What happens after you publish the content?
Elena: This is where most companies drop the ball. They publish the content, share it once, and move on. Huge missed opportunity.
First, send the finished content to your expert before publishing. Let them review for accuracy and suggest any clarifications. This isn't about letting them rewrite everything. It's about respecting their expertise and catching any misunderstandings before they go public.
Second, make it incredibly easy for the expert to share. Create pre-written social media posts they can use. Give them image assets. Write the LinkedIn post for them. Experts are busy. Remove every friction point that might keep them from promoting the content.
Third, track performance and report back. "Your interview generated 5,000 views and 200 email signups" is much more interesting to an expert than silence. When experts see results, they're more willing to participate in future interviews.
BrassTranscripts: How do you maintain these relationships?
Elena: I stay in touch. I send experts other content they might find valuable. I introduce them to each other when it makes sense. I cite them in other work. Treating expert interviews as transactional—extract knowledge, publish, forget—is short-sighted. The best content partnerships last years.
When an expert knows you'll represent them well, promote the content effectively, and maintain the relationship, they become advocates. They'll recommend you to other experts. They'll participate in follow-up content. They'll share your work with their audiences. That's how you build a content engine instead of just publishing one-off pieces.
Starting Small and Scaling Up
BrassTranscripts: What's your advice for someone doing their first expert interview?
Elena: Start with someone you already know. A colleague, a client, a professional connection. Remove the intimidation factor while you develop your interview muscles. Practice your questions, test your equipment, get comfortable with the format.
Record and transcribe that first interview even if you're not sure you'll publish it. Review the transcript and see what worked, what didn't, where you could have asked better follow-up questions. Treat it as a learning experience.
As you get more comfortable, expand your network. Reach out to experts who've written content you admire. Your pitch doesn't need to be fancy. "I'm creating content about X for Y audience, and your expertise on Z would add tremendous value. Would you be open to a 30-minute conversation?"
Most experts say yes if you've done your homework and can articulate why their knowledge matters to your specific audience. They want to share what they know. You just need to give them a good reason and a clear format.
BrassTranscripts: Final thoughts?
Elena: Expert interviews work because people trust other people more than they trust brands. When someone reads content based on an interview, they're getting authentic expertise, not marketing speak. That trust is worth its weight in gold.
Invest in doing interviews well. Better questions, better listening, better transcription, better production. The quality compounds. One great expert interview can generate months of content, thousands of views, and relationships that last years. That's not just good content strategy. That's good business.
Ready to turn your expert interviews into compelling content? BrassTranscripts provides accurate transcription in minutes, giving you the foundation for authentic, engaging content that resonates with your audience.