We can call you on Skype. We’ll need your Skype handle, which is the name you use to log in. We do not need your password, and you shouldn’t provide it to us. You’re welcome to wear a headset with a microphone, and doing so will improve the quality of your voice, but as long as your computer hos a built-in microphone and you sit close to it, as long as you’re sitting in a quiet place, and as long as your Internet service is fairly robust, your voice will sound fine. At the appointed time, we’ll call you. We use software at our end that splits your audio from ours and allows us to vary the volume level of both easily and quickly. The main advantage of this approach is its simplicity. The disadvantage is that your voice will have a tad more echo than it might otherwise, hundreds of successful and popular podcasts use this approach every day, and it’s a reasonable and appropriate way to do a telephone interview for a podcast.

Here are some general tips that will help you sound more professional and enhance your credibility:

1. Find a place to sit during the interview that is quiet and free from distractions. It’s surprising how many interviews are compromised by the participants’ trying to respond to something on their own computer screen, so please turn off alerts about e-mails and messages during the interview.
2. Have a glass of water, a box of tissue, and a tube of lip balm handy when we begin.
3. There’s nothing wrong with working from notes; we do! If you write down the key points you want to cover as we talk, you’re more likely to stay focused on them. It’s even better if you share them with us before the interview. The reason we’ve asked you to feature you on the podcast is that we trust you to know what’s important to subsistence farmers, so we will be working to help you deliver the message you want to present.

If you have access to an iPhone 4s or newer and are willing to use it to make your voice sound better on the podcast, click here.