How To Incorporate Subject Matter Experts Into Your Brand Content

Efficient content marketing responds to users’ questions about a topic. This is frequently a business challenge or point of curiosity. In order to effectively engage and drive interest for your business through your content, although, you need to strike an influential tone about the topics which you discuss.

Often, however, particularly with technical topics, content writers struggle to get to a level of expertise which they need in order to ensure that your company comes across as an expert regarding a topic. Partnering with subject matter experts (SMEs), either via informal conversation or an interview, is an excellent opportunity in order to add depth as well as authority to your content.

Referencing authorities and respected thought leaders may fill in the knowledge gap which content writers may have regarding a topic and add authority to your brand.

SMEs Are Extensively Experienced Within A Particular Niche

For example, technology or health care. Frequently, some of the most experienced figures in a given niche may be internal experts in your own organisation. When you start them in your brand’s content, you are able to reach new levels of depth and insight.

That depth is able to lend your brand new credibility, authority as well as authenticity. Turning to SME knowledge shows to your audience that you know exactly what you’re talking about — and that your advice can be trusted.

That said, successfully engaging a subject matter expert in your content marketing takes a certain finesse. Like all partnerships, an SME relationship is founded on crystal clear communication and effective collaboration.

Building An SME Programme

Building out this type of programme may be a challenge as you are asking for these experts’ time and many of these people are often busy with other business-driven commitments. So this begs the question for your internal team: How do you make their taking part worth their while and encouraging them to remain involved in the programme?

The primary phase is to identify, educate, and onboard the subject matter experts. An instance of one company with a well-developed SME programme is Hortonworks, which is a leading provider of open-source data solutions.

Their content spans across a number of different industries, such as finance, health care, insurance, and manufacturing. The company’s content explores how big data analytics has an impact on each industry. Therefore, their content necessitates a pipeline of subject matter experts for each field.

Finding the correct knowledgeable voices to speak on topics is very important when putting together content around highly technical B2B arenas, which is why they seek out experts on topics from the IoT, streaming analytics, predictive analytics as well as machine learning. After classifying SMEs for each vertical, the next step is to onboard these professionals and then educate them on your content strategy as well as what being an SME entails.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to become a brand management expert? If you do then you need to do our Brand Management Course. Follow this link for more information.