Stop Leaving Your Experts on the Bench

Most companies are sitting on a gold mine and they don't even know it.

The people within their own organizations — the ones who have spent years in the industry, who could talk for hours about the nuances of their space without a single slide, are largely invisible to the audiences that most need to hear from them. They're your subject matter experts (SMEs), and they're generally one of the most under-leveraged assets in content marketing.

That's always felt like a missed opportunity. And in a world that is being increasingly flooded with AI-generated articles and think pieces, it's starting to feel like something more urgent.

We might be heading somewhere uncomfortable.

There's a version of the content marketing future that I keep thinking about. We're seemingly headed toward a world where we generate content with AI, push it to channels where other AI digests it, and let agents talk to agents so your agent sees what my agent wrote and executes tasks accordingly. A loop that starts with machines, ends with machines, and has people somewhere in the background just being generally "informed."

Phew.

I don't think that world is entirely avoidable, unfortunately. But I do think there's a counterpunch — and a big piece of it involves people already within your organization.

The conversations you can't manufacture.

When I was at Forter, we invested heavily in building out programs around our internal SMEs. We mapped out unique visual identities for company brand-agnostic video podcasts, did market research on content already in the space, scripted shows and interview guides, and helped them shape their POVs into something shareable.

The most important piece, though, was the foundation. We spent the time building out a plan and "pitching" it to the SMEs, complete with branding, goals, guardrails, and the strategy for how we felt it could be successful. And most importantly, we outlined their level of involvement and how we would be right alongside them.

In other words: it wasn't a plane we tried to build while we were already in flight.

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Toward the end of my time there, I started getting feedback that it was "working." Clips were making the rounds with key prospects and topical episodes were starting conversations that, in a few cases, the SMEs said to me directly they "didn't feel would've happened otherwise."

That's the thing about this kind of content and the conversations it can help create: you can't fake it. An AI-generated article can cover a topic, and even be somewhat good. What it can't do is put your experts on screen or in-person, having conversations, sharing insights that no generalist — human or otherwise — can replicate.

Where most companies get it wrong.

The teams that get this wrong tend to make one of two mistakes: they pick the wrong SME for the format, or they shove the right SME into the wrong box. Both of which kill the content before it even starts.

Getting this right means working with the SME to understand what they're good at, what they're comfortable with, and building around that — not forcing them into a template designed for someone else.

Structure also matters here. When there's a good foundation in place and expectations are shared ahead of time, the creation of content becomes the easy part. And as for SMEs who might be a little hesitant? It's almost always a matter of repetition. When the foundation is set, often their confidence problem solves itself. They feel like they have a true creative partner, not more being added to their workload or a production schedule to hit.

And that's where we, as content marketers, come in. This is where we butter the bread. We can't just hand someone a microphone and hope for the best. We have to ghostwrite, build interview frameworks, and handle the logistics. By making this easy for them, we get the best from them and free them up to focus on the one thing we need from them: their knowledge.

What it looks like when it works.

When SME-focused content is strategic and thoughtful, it's mutually beneficial.

For the SME, it builds credibility and an audience. It starts conversations, and creates something that they can take pride in — it has their name on it and gives them a sense of ownership, in turn leading them to bring ideas to the table and steer conversations. And it also reaches people who, by the way, happen to be exactly the audience your company cares about.

For the organization, it's building trust and credibility by association. Your logo is attached to someone your industry already respects. The content may be theirs, but the audience sees who they work for. Over time, that thought leadership and the brand become hard to separate.

And once there's an audience — even a modest one — the door is open. To community. To events and speaking engagements. To branded experiences bringing together the people who have been consuming the content. And the SME? They've become more than just a contributor. They've become a reason for people to show up and a trusted source.

This isn't a response to AI. But it's more important because of it.

I believed in this thought leadership-focused content strategy before the surge in AI slop permeated our feeds. But I do think it matters more now.

People want to talk to people. They want to have some sense of being in the room with someone who actually knows what they're talking about. This isn't something you can optimize your way into; you must build toward it, slowly, with the right people and the proper runway.

The companies doing that work now are going to look a lot better in the coming years. The ones waiting for a shortcut — or just leaning on AI to turn their company's social and blog into an always-on feed of low-density, uninteresting content — are going to have a lot of quickly-generated and efficient stuff that nobody consumes.

Got experts on the bench and not sure where to start? Let's talk.