Taking good notes during a podcast or another type of interview can take a lot of practice — you want to stay engaged with the person you’re interviewing, but you also want to make sure that you get good notes in case you need them later.
Taking handwritten notes quickly is a useful skill, but it can take some time to learn to do it thoroughly. When writing down a direct quote, it’s a good idea to put quotation marks around what the person said — that way, you’ll remember it’s a quote! In some cases, it’s a good idea to clean up the quote if it’s not grammatically correct — especially if you’re using it for your website or other marketing materials.
Taking handwritten notes is a good idea for a couple of reasons: you won’t have to do the whole interview again if you lose the audio, and it also takes a lot of time to scroll through audio to get what you need. Paper notes will be more streamlined since you’re not able to write everything down, so it’s helpful to have them. There are also transcribing services, like Otter, that can provide you with a written version of the interview.
Carrie Rollwagen