How Subject Matter Experts Fuel Great Content

If your organization or company provides intellectually intense work like legal services, building online banking platforms or even nanotechnology, your subject matter experts are what set your organization apart.

But subject matter experts (also known as SMEs) are also usually shunted away, quietly doing their incredible work, with little promotion or attention from their organizations, their peers, and especially, the general public.

So, it should be no surprise that nearly half of all Americans believe scientists are poor communicators of their expertise, Pew recently reported.

Yet every now and then, a communications guy like me is given permission to pierce that veil and help subject matter experts tell their stories.

For 32 years, I've been crawling down Subject Matter Expert rabbit holes to understand what they do, why they do it, and – most-importantly – how they do it. I've scuba dived with a paraplegic dive instructor. I've followed SWAT teams on drug raids. I've traveled in a converted school bus to write about a death-metal group (a VERY special group of SMEs, for sure). I've followed trash collectors on their routes. I rode aboard the autonomous vehicle shown above.

In that time, I've come to appreciate subject matter expertise, and what it can do for an organization or an entire world, in terms of improved productivity, better working conditions, and an improved quality of life.

One caveat: Make sure your supervisor knows the time-intensive nature of following these protocols. Most people – bosses included – have zero patience for the work this process requires.

Goodbye, Rubber Chicken; Hello, Subject Matter Experts

A few years ago, one of the nonprofits I've worked with – the Dallas Regional Chamber – joined me in making that realization, when the covid pandemic threatened to end that organization.

Prior to covid, the organization threw 1,000-person rubber-chicken shindigs, where the Captains of Industry could mingle, network and chitchat.

Obviously, when a global virus hit and started killing more than 1,000 people a day, big social gatherings went out the window.

The Dallas Chamber's president – Dale Petroskey – saw the distrust that covid was sowing into science, the media, authority, and expertise in general. He wagered that the Dallas Regional Chamber – which boasts members such as Toyota North America and AT&T – could tap into its members' institutional expertise, to become a trusted source of information.

As the organization's only dedicated in-house writer, I was on the tip of the content-production spear. Overnight, we shifted from in-person mixers to a subject matter expert-driven content generation. We became an exclusively online provider of useful information from our members' subject matter expertise. I interviewed and/or wrote about conversations with experts in establishing healthy workplaces, talent-attraction experts and even Dr. Anthony Fauci, who oversaw the U.S. response to covid.

The strategy worked: Our members were better informed. Their subject matter experts were given their days in the sun. Our membership revenues flowed healthily. We didn't lay off a single employee.

(There’s good reason that the phrase “SME consulting services” has excellent search engine optimization rankings.)

Subject Matter Experts Have Earned their Stripes; You Must Earn Their Trust

Getting access to those subject matter experts requires an extremely high level of trust. Such trust doesn't come with slipshod, careless work. That's why I developed a methodology for collaborating with subject matter experts that involves extra work, but helps allay trepidation that SMEs might feel in exposing their passions to an outsider.

Subject Matter Experts are Key to Building Trusted Content

Prep work, capturing data and fastidious attention to detail are keys to successful subject matter expert interviews and writing about their subjects. Here's how they break down:

1. If the discussion is private, ask if it's OK to record the conversation

   It doesn't matter if the legal jurisdiction you're in allows only one person to know if they're being recorded. Having both parties know a recording is happening is a courtesy that should be honored. And when you're recording, make sure to use a high-quality voice recorder like this one:

   
   

   

   
   

   Its microphones are sensitive enough to capture any nuance of voice and will allow transcription software to more accurately conduct its work. I used a recorder similar to the one shown above – with an XLR cable – to tie directly into audio systems at public events, so I could capture every syllable subject matter experts uttered for posterity. I used to joke that it was my taser, and if my SMEs lied, it would zap them. That recorder captured speeches ranging from Here's the Amazon link to that recorder.

   
   

2. View Their Works/Read What They Wrote

   Most accomplished subject matter experts have made something they’re proud of, or have been featured somehow. Make it your job to find it and read it, or at least check it out They will appreciate that you cared enough to do the prep work.

    

3. Treat the discussion like a good conversation, not an interrogation

   There's a lot of hate for small talk and I get it. But talking about what you ate for lunch or a movie you just saw helps break the ice and makes both the interviewer and interviewee feel like you're having a human conversation. At the same time, keep in mind that there's a hard-stop time. And don't feel like you need to be the SME's best friend before the clock runs out.

    

4. Engage in active listening

   Any good conversation/interview has give-and-take. Use your discretion, but I encourage you to interrupt answers every now and then when someone says something especially surprising or interesting. Attempt to reiterate key points to make sure you understand them. Write down important numbers and dates for further research and for creating a timeline.

   
   
   
   

5. Identify Subject Matter Experts' challenges and difficulties

   Usually, subject matter experts have overcome some fearsome logjams, technical challenges, or problems in their work. Ask the SME to define the problem(s) they dealt with, how they overcame or are overcoming them. This is a chance to crawl into the weeds with them. By all means, geek out in that problem. Make sure to define how that challenge or problem impacted people besides themselves. Remember: The best stories have the best villains (shown above). Often, the SME's villains are problems. Ask the SME to describe their process for solving the problem, if they had to make adjustments, and the final result. What would they have done differently, in hindsight? Who did they work with, to solve the problem? Did they write anything down/publish anything, about that work? Is there any publicly available data that could help you build a timeline or a chart to illustrate the story? What next challenge are you addressing? If you can, relate a personal experience to what the SME is talking about. By adding humanity to your interview, it becomes less transactional and more personal. By the end of this intensive interview, the subject might feel like they're vested in your writing good content. They're now collaborators in the work. And that's how it should be.

   
   

6. Capture the essence

   After the interview, grab a coffee and write down what struck you most about the conversation. The idea is to capture the big ideas before they escape. We journalists describe it like this: If you just saw/heard something crazy, and then walked into a bar, how would you describe it to the bartender? Also write down what you didn't quite understand.

   
   

7. Listen to the tape

   It's an ordeal to listen to yourself stumble over questions on tape. But that's the price you pay to hear everything you missed the first time around. I can't tell you how many times I found important information during a second listen of an interview. Sometimes, they've changed the trajectory of an entire article. Listen. To. The. Entire. Tape. Unless you don't have time. And still listen to the tape.

   
   

8. Call for automated content generation backup

   Upload the audio file from your recorder to Otter.ai (which offers limited free transcription services). Yes, Otter.ai is a form of automated content generation. You’ve got to check its work, but it will save you time and frustration. Note that this is one time in this process that I recommend calling in artificial intelligence for backup.

   
   

9. Send over the facts, Jack

   Note that I didn't say send a complete copy of the story over. It's not a good habit to send sources entire articles to review before publication. If you want to get highfalutin, that's called "prior restraint," and it's pretty creepy. Some organizations or companies demand to see the completed story before it's published. When that happens, often, those same people will rewrite entire articles. All your work – both yours and the SMEs – can vanish into a mush of PR nothingness. Real news organizations don't play that kind of ball. Either way, there's no reason for it to happen.

   
   

10. Take a bow

    All this prep work has resulted in a work both you and your subject matter expert can be proud of. Their obsession and years of toil have been memorialized properly. You've done your job by painstakingly executing each step, as described above. Send them a link to your collaboration with a note of thanks.