As a marketing team, you need help from team members across the company to create high-quality content. Especially in technical B2B industries, a marketing writer isn’t going to have all the required knowledge to write content alone. Creating high-value content that will engage potential customers requires a team effort—with the content marketer doing the heavy lifting.
There are many points throughout the content marketing process where subject matter experts (SMEs) are invaluable. Here’s a bit about each of those stages and how to work with the team to get the information you need without taking up too much time.
Topic Generation
A content writer can only come up with so many topics. Sure, we can research competitors and get ideas from client meetings, but we need help from SMEs to brainstorm unique, timely, relevant topics.
SMEs are busy doing their work and helping customers; they’re not thinking about content. I haven’t found much success in asking generally, “Do you have any blog topic ideas?” It’s too broad of a question—what makes a good blog topic? Here are a few more specific questions I ask:
- What repeat questions do you get from customers?
- Are there any unique questions, problems, solutions you’ve worked on recently?
- Did you get any positive feedback from customers using your products/services?
- Are there any new product releases or upgrades?
- Have you read any industry articles lately that would make sense for us to respond to or write on a similar topic?
Asking more specific questions helps SMEs think in terms of the work they’re doing, not in blog posts titles.
An important part of the process is reaching out to SMEs. Because they’re not looking at everything as content, like us marketers tend to, we have to resurface the request consistently. For most B2B clients, asking quarterly or even just twice a year can go a long way, but it can also be something added to monthly meeting agendas.
A few strategies for requesting and collecting topic ideas include:
- Brainstorming meetings where you let the SMEs know the questions are coming, let them prepare, and then hold a group discussion.
- Requests to individuals by email. Group email requests rarely go anywhere.
- Asking your client contact to add the discussion to an existing team meeting agenda.
- A form with questions like the above examples for SMEs to fill out. This approach is very passive and is easy to procrastinate or ignore, so I only use it as a last resort.
Each time I ask for topics, I like to reassure the SMEs that if they present an idea, it doesn’t automatically put them on the hook for writing something. We want lots of ideas and we’ll work with the right SME to complete the content pieces. Further, I explain my content process and that I try to make it as painless as possible for SMEs to get me the information I need.
It’s also important to remind the SMEs how valuable their help is—that you know they have other work but that their help is vital to what you’re working on. Any time they spend helping on content is greatly appreciated.
Knowledge Extraction
“Extraction” sounds so painful. But when you work from a point of empathy and understanding, knowledge extraction with SMEs doesn’t have to be painful at all.
As content writers, we need help from subject matter experts. We’re content experts, but there are people who know way more than us about the topics we write about. The best content usually comes from working with these experts.
Here are my tips for working with subject matter experts:
- Make it as easy as possible on them
- Work how they work best
- Take up as little of their time as possible; use that time wisely
- Let them feel in control—they are
- Be understanding if they push back
- Address any of their concerns
Each SME is different with different types of involvement in the content process. Some are OK helping with article details but don’t want their names out there. Others are excited to share the content on LinkedIn. Some want to write out their responses, while others want to just get on a call and get it over with. See my post on internal vs. external processors for how to work with different types of thinkers.
I need subject matter experts to do my best work, so I try to adjust my working style to what they need. If they want to have me write questions and they respond to them by email, great. If they want to do a video call but want the questions ahead of time, also great. If they don’t want to think about it outside of the 30-minute call, all good. If they want to just do a voice call because they don’t like video, I’m in.
SMEs are a very valuable piece of the process, and I can’t ask or expect them to adjust to my needs. I’m thankful for any time and expertise they’re willing to share, so I’ll do it on their terms. I try to give them the tools that help them help me be successful.
Writing and Review
Subject matter experts are good at what they do—not necessarily at content marketing. That’s our job. I do offer to let SMEs do a first draft of a piece if they want to, but I tell them that most people have me write the first draft and then they can edit it.
Even as a writer, staring at a blank page is hard. Writing something from scratch is hard. I don’t expect others to try to take on that challenge, so I work to get the information I need to write a first pass—I try to do the heavy lifting.
When I’m writing a draft based on information from a subject matter expert, I usually try to group all of my questions and send them at the same time. Unless I run into a major barrier that keeps me from finishing a decent first draft, I’ll just highlight areas that need more information and use the draft as an opportunity to fill in holes with the SME.
In general, most SMEs I work with are happy to have me do the writing. They may have been asked to write blog posts before, and I don’t think I’ve ever had an SME who was excited to do that work. They wanted to focus on their area of expertise.
Once the first draft is done, I work with the client and SME on review. Some SMEs will want to review the article before it’s published; some won’t. I can work both ways. I like when the expert reviews the article after I write it because it reassures me that we have the facts right, but sometimes that responsibility falls to the client marketing content, which is fine. I just reassure the expert that I won’t publish anything under their name without their approval.
I have found this process—of me driving the writing and taking the hardest parts off of the SME’s plate—works much better than trying to ask SMEs to write something themselves. Hence, my entire B2B content marketing process.
Content Distribution
SMEs are helpful in sharing content, whether or not they helped on a particular piece. On LinkedIn, the social network where B2B content is generally most effective, personal profiles perform better than company profiles. I still post to company pages on LinkedIn, but ideally content is also shared on personal profiles of SMEs, marketing contacts, and other team members.
I never force anyone to be active on social media if they don’t want to be. I personally don’t use social media much—I just used LinkedIn a bit because of the nature of what I do. If SMEs aren’t comfortable with sharing content on their profiles or putting their names out there, no problem.
To help distribute content, I give clients everything they need to share content consistently. I even take care of content scheduling for a few clients. No matter how the content is getting scheduled, I keep a database (spreadsheet) of evergreen content that can be shared any time. That spreadsheet has 3 to 5 posts to promote each piece of content, including:
- Social post text
- Article link
- Hashtags to include
- Sometimes an image
Then whoever is scheduling social—SMEs, marketing contacts, me—can use that spreadsheet to quickly share relevant content each week with a simple copy/paste workflow.
Here’s a snapshot of the spreadsheet I keep for myself:
I write these posts in my own content creation process and can schedule my LinkedIn posts in a few minutes per week.
Wrapping It Up
Subject matter experts are important to the content creation process, especially in technical industries. As content marketers, we can help make the content creation process as painless as possible.