How to Find People to Interview for Research

Find interviewees by looking for detailed complaints, not for lots of members. A forum with fifty active people who describe their problems in paragraphs is worth more than a group of ten thousand who only post links. You want the people who write too much, because they are the ones who will talk.

Recruiting is a numbers game with a gentle tone. Reach out to more people than you need, keep the message short, and make the time cost obvious. A quarter of the people you ask will say yes when the ask is small and specific.

Places that produce good candidates

Community forums, niche subreddits, and the comment sections of channels that cover the same problem are the obvious spots. Less obvious ones work better: support threads where people describe a broken process, review pages where buyers explain why a tool failed them, and question sites where the same thing gets asked every month.

Your own inbox counts too. If you already run a channel, the people who email long questions are volunteering for an interview without knowing it. Reply and ask for fifteen minutes.

• Search communities for repeated questions and message the writers.
• Read one and two star reviews to find frustrated users.
• Mine support threads for people describing a workaround.
• Invite the people who already send you long emails.

Interview the person who wrote four paragraphs about a small problem. That is exactly the person who will click your video.

The outreach message that gets replies

Keep it to three sentences. Say who you are, name the specific thing they wrote that caught your eye, and ask for fifteen minutes at a time they pick. Specific beats flattering. Mentioning their actual words shows you read the post, and people respond to that far more than to a generic compliment.

Do not pitch anything in the first message. A research call is not a sales call, and people can smell a pitch from the subject line. Ask about their experience, thank them, and let the relationship sit.

Key takeaways

• Chase detailed complaints rather than large audiences.
• Look beyond forums into reviews and support threads.
• Keep outreach to three specific sentences.
• Never pitch during a research call.