You, as an em✨ployee of your company, are an expert.&🍃nbsp;

No, no, no, don’t protest — y🌺ou have expertise and experience that no one else does, and ꧃your organization should share it with the world. 

Your marketing team needs to use your expertise to demonstra🍒te the abilities and vision of your business.  

So, while you might think of yourself as a sales manager, a product designer, a service lead, or any number🌳 of other roles, to your marketing team, you’re an ex🎐pert. 

168极速赛车官网:And they need your help.

A central tenet of They Ask, You Answer — an inbound marketing framework that drives both traffic and revenue — is that your marketing team provides thorough, candid answers to customer questions. These answers help build trust and move buyers down the sa💯les funnel. 

🌠In order to write more complete, compelling answers to these questions, a content team needs to lean on the expertise that already exists within the business. 

That’s 168极速赛车官网:where company subject ⛦matter experts come in. 

In other words, you.

Educating your customers with content

Imagine a customer has a specific question about something you sel🔥ꦅl. It could be about the specs on a particular piece of equipment, the meeting schedule for your service, or why you differ from your competitors. 

No✨w iജmagine that a vetted, comprehensive answer to that question already existed.

If that customer ask💖s that question in a search engine, the answer pops right up. If they ask that question during the sales process, your sales rep .

Think about how that would mak𝓰e tဣhat customer feel.

Impressed?

Validated?

Thoroughly satisfied?

Yeah, we think so too.  

Company subject matter expert𝄹s (or SMEs) are critical to producing this type of content with authority and precision. 

And alﷺl they need to do is give up a few minutes of their tওime. 

If someone on your 168极速赛车官网:content marketing team is hoping to interview you for a piece of content, you might be hesitant to get involved with a big undertaking. Not to worry. An interview is the ෴most efficient way to get your voic🌊e out there. 

Here’s what to expect, accordi🔴ng to Jen Barrell, a content training expert at IMPACT. 

(Note, you can watch a 15-minute discussion between Jen Barrell and me, or you can keep rea♌ding below. Or both!)

Why the SME interview is so effective — and so important

Jen works directly with IMPACT clients to help them 168极速赛车官网:effectively answer customer questions. 

To do this, content teams need to source questions from the sales team and keyword research, strategize which questions are the highest priority, and then optimize the resultinꦬg content for SEO.

Then, content wr🅠iters need to interview S💧MEs to get the best answers possible. 

Jen advises that these SME interviews should be a crucial part of any content marketing strategy. Unfortunately, new con꧅tent managers sometimes don’t realize this.

“Oftentꦅimes new content managers will feel like it's on them to do all the research for a piece,” she says. Instead, they should utilize the SME “to ask a couple of questions to get a little nugget of information” they need to get the article done. 

An🍎 SME lends detail and authority to a piece of content. (This is why journalists cite experts🍎 in any article they write.)

Whether a piece of content is addressing a company-specific topic or a broad industry issue, the SME is there to add commentary and explanation. In other words, expertise. 

Content interviews should require a very low time commitment💙 from SMꦫEs.

Jen advises her content managers to conduct 20-mi🧜nute interviews, which can be fit into even the busiest of schedules. For a company looking to get its SMEs’ voices out there, this is the mos▨t effective way possible. 

Despite requiriꦓng minimum time from SMEs, these interviews provide a ton🦹 of value. 

When ꧑the right piece of content is employed in the sales process, the effect can be enormous. “A really strong piece of content can help a salesperson trim five or 10 minutes off of a 🦩sales conversation,” Jen says. If you speed up every sales call by 10 minutes, that’s a huge boon for the company. 

What an SME can expect in a content interview

If we can all ag♛ree that the SME brings great v🍌alue to a piece of content, the next step is to explain the process. 

The steps your content manager will follow

As a content manager at IMPACT, I interview SMEs several times a wee✱k, and I alwaysဣ follow the same few steps. Your content manager will likely do the same.

1. Selecting an SME

A pieceꦕ of content can start in a few different ways:

• A topic from a brainstorming session.
• The result of keyword research.
• A request from someone on the sales team. 

Regardless of the source, I begin by deciding who would be a useful expert for a given topic. Obviously, the SME has to have deep knowledge of the subject matter, but I also take into account bandwidth𝄹 and frequency. 

In other words,🔯 your content writꦛer has chosen a particular SME for a good reason.

2. Reaching out and setting expectations

Once I’ve determined my SME and figured out the questions I’m going to ask, I send these questions to my interviewee along with a personalized one-on-one video ta🐓lking through the process. I make sure they have access to the document and that they have a few days to prepare. 

Here’s a video I sent to the very same Jen Barrell when I wa♕s about to interview her for an earlier piece of content:

Notice how I set expectations and relieve any stress s൲he might fe꧂el about the upcoming interview. 

I also cover other questions an SME might have:

• How we came up with the topic.
• Who will use it.
• What the final form might look like. 

3. Conducting the interview

The interv🍌ie﷽w itself should only be 15-20 minutes long. I book the entire 30 minutes, but I rarely use it. 

4. Getting final approval

After I writ𒊎e the article using the information I got from my SME interview, I send a draft for feedback and approval. As we build trust over time, the approval process becomes even quicker.

All in all, the SME sh💫ould be giving less th꧃an an hour of their time to a single piece of content. 

Helping the content team and the organization at the same time

There are real, tangible benefꦇits to having your company’s internal experts share their knowledge 🐓in content:

1. As the right content gets read, viewed, cited, shared, and linked to, the SMEs attached to that content become seen as thought leaders and industry mavens. 
2. When customers engage with content, they want to know that real people are on the other end of their purchase. By getting answers from real experts with names and faces, those customers are more likely to form a relationship with your business — and with your experts.

If an SME were to write a piece of content themselves, it could have the same benefits, but the time investment is substantially higher. When working with a content writer, you’re looking at 10 minutes 🌠of prep, 20 minutes of interviewing, and 15 minutes of approval.

If you, as an SME, are writing the piece yourself, 168极速赛车官网:you could spend 10 hours, start to finish.

So, when a content writer asks to interview you, as an SME, be ready to give your time. The be🍬nefits far outweigh the🧜 small dent in your schedule. 

And for th🧸𝓰ose content managers out there, Jen advises that each interview you do will be easier than the one before it. It’s all about building rapport with your subject.

“The whole process can be i🔥ntimidating, especially for first-timers,” she says. “So be clear with your SME as to why you’re doing what you’re doing.” The r♚apport will come when they clearly see the value of the output.