![]() Tips for this essential marketing and copywriting service We’ve heard it pronounced “Smeee.” We’ve heard it pronounced “S-M-E.” Either way, it refers to “subject-matter expert” or SME. As experts, SMEs are often tapped for their wisdom. That’s what this article is all about. Why would you need to conduct a SME interview in the first place? It depends on the assignment. Here at Copel Communications, we’re often tapped to ghost-write thought-leading articles for business leaders. This is a classic case of “call in the SME.” Or you might be crafting a strategic situation analysis for your company or another company. You need to know the lay of the land. Consider using a SME when you need to get well-informed opinions about topics such as:
Note, importantly, that we said “opinions” above. This is huge. The whole idea of interviewing a SME is to get opinions, more than facts. Think about that. For “facts,” you could basically go on Wikipedia and seemingly get your questions answered. That’s not worth much, and it’s certainly not unique. The whole advantage of a SME is that this is someone who is toiling at the front lines, at the very bleeding edge of their area of expertise. So naturally they’ll have strong—and well-founded—opinions about all of the topics listed above. And that’s what you want to get from them. Every opinion they offer, of course, will be couched within the context of the facts that surround it. Such as “This new technology is the hot new darling of Wall Street, and the valuations of companies who manufacture it are going through the roof.” That’s the fact. Then comes the opinion: “But as far as I’m concerned, this is all smoke-and-mirrors; it’s another dot-com bust just waiting to happen.” If you’re not asking “Why?” right now, you need to hone your interviewing skills. Succeed in advance Clearly, the example above is made up. But it’s typical. We encounter these types of exchanges all the time. And they’re the best part of the interview. We’ll take ten minutes of opinion for every one minute of facts. Not only that, we love to probe in instances like this. Dig deep. Keep asking “Why?” Get your SME riled up, indignant, and on their high-horse. This stuff is solid gold. All of the above, of course, assumes that you’re already hip-deep in the interview. So let’s back up a little and help you set it up in the first place. Conducting a good SME interview is all about preparation. You want to be totally prepared. Some checklist items to consider:
The medium for the message Not long ago, we did all SME interviews by phone. Post-pandemic, that’s changed. There’s a lot more video going on. But that doesn’t mean that you need to use video. Let’s consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of each:
Key takeaways Depending on the assignment, you might nail the interview in one shot. Sometimes it will go so well, you’ll effectively get two interviews’ worth of information out of a single one. And sometimes the opposite is true: You’ll only get half of what you need. In that case, you’ll need to book a follow-up to complete the assignment. All of this, incidentally, is work. That’s in addition to having, and employing, “soft skills” such as putting the subject at ease, especially when they’re a highly technical person who might not be terribly social or outgoing. This is where we come in. We know how to do great SME interviews, because we do them all the time. We also craft the materials—everything from white papers to blog articles to case studies—that result from them, to our clients’ benefit. Need help with that next SME interview or the deliverable it will inform? Contact us today. We’d be delighted to discuss your needs.
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![]() A simple fact of the consultant’s life is that most work is performed under the veil of secrecy. You can’t even review input until you sign a nondisclosure agreement or NDA. How, then, can you tell the world about all the great work that you do? In this article, we’ll address the thorny issue of NDAs and anonymization. We’ll also explain the numerous ways you can share and leverage that story, once it’s safe to tell. Defining success Before we get to the issue of scrubbing success stories of sensitive client information, we have a prerequisite to discuss: Success. We’re not going to tell you how to do great work for your clients. That’s your job. For our purposes, we’ll assume that you do it, and do it often. We’ve talked about sharing your stories of success. But what exactly is “success”? It may be very different for Client A than Client B. It depends on the goals they’re pursuing, the constraints under which they’re laboring, the target audience they’re serving, and so on. But that’s not the lens through which to view this. You need to take a more selfish approach. Who do you want to sell to? Who are your sweet-spot prospects? Answer that question—and then revisit the “success” of Client A. If it’s congruent with those of your target audience, you’re set. If not, you need to make some choices. You’ll need to either consider other clients/success stories, or perhaps other angles/challenges/outcomes of the original story. Don’t put the effort into telling the world a story if your world doesn’t care. How to anonymize data for safe storytelling We recently interviewed a subject-matter expert (SME) for a white paper, concerning a client engagement/success story. The SME shared with us tons of sensitive data about this client and the specific challenges they faced. No company wants this kind of information publicized. As you can guess, this was all under strict NDA. But our job, as we’d mentioned, was to transform the story into a white paper for broader consumption. You might think that this was a problem. But in fact it wasn’t. As it turned out, the “embarrassing details” were simply too specific to that customer’s situation to really matter to anyone else. They didn’t pass the “sweet-spot prospect” test. Which is great, because they were so specific that they would’ve been tough to disguise. What did pass the “sweet-spot prospect” test, however, was the context in which they resided. The broader issues which they represented were universal pain-points for prospects in this sector. Knowing that, they were a goldmine for the white paper’s input. You’ll find the same thing as you work. You really don’t have to worry too much about the “identifying data,” simply because it’s too arcane for a broader audience. Conveniently, it’s the exact same stuff you’d have to censor. Sharing the story There are different flavors of white papers. Some, such as those often promulgated by the big-box consultancies, offer to show trends in a given market, function, or vertical. Others are simply thinly-disguised case studies. Those are the kinds we’re interested in here. To transform your raw SME input into a compelling white paper, think about it from your prospective client’s point of view. If the pain-points you’re addressing are universal, then think backward from them: “If I were Prospective Client A, and I had this problem, what terms would I search on to try and find the answer? What topics would make me sit up and take notice? Could I find best-practice case studies of others, in similar situations, who were able to surmount these same challenges?” Answer those questions, and you have the approach for your white paper. Make it readable Some—okay, most—white papers are unreadable. They fall squarely into the MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) category. Which is tragic, because they may well have great information starting on Paragraph Two, given that 99 percent of readers have tuned out by Paragraph One. So tell a story. Tease. Set up the problems. Make them believable, relatable, and (apparently) insurmountable. Quickly tag your characters (we wrote an entire article about this which you’ll like) so that the story is compelling and that it’s easier for the reader to follow. Then be humble. It’s a given that your company is the one that helped to bring about the great outcomes. But share the glory. Give credit to the hardworking people on the client side and all their great input and ideas. Heck, the white paper will have your logo on it, so it’s instantly apparent that you were the catalyst. So you can afford to be humble in the text. Leverage We’ve been saying “white paper” a lot in this article. But in an age in which content is king, you needn’t limit yourself to one venue or deliverable. Once you’ve crafted the story, there are lots of ways to share it. There are blogs. Press releases. Social media. Presentations. Direct mail. E-blasts. The list goes on and on; it’s just a matter of tailoring the same story to different audiences and media. Need help with that next success-storytelling challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help you—just as we help others like you, all the time. |
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