Your company is sitting on a goldmine of content. And you’re probably doing nothing with it.
While you’re burning through brainstorm sessions and chasing content calendars, your best people are solving real problems in real time. Your engineers troubleshoot. Your ops managers optimize. Your customer success team answers the same five questions that could become your sharpest content.
But instead of capturing that expertise, you let it walk out the door at 5 p.m.
Here’s what’s actually happening: You’re asking marketing people to write about technical topics they’ve never touched. You’re outsourcing thought leadership to freelancers who’ve never talked to your customers. You’re creating content about your industry from people who don’t work in it.
No wonder it sounds generic.
The Problem Isn’t Your SMEs. It’s Your Process.
Most companies approach subject matter experts wrong.
They ask SMEs to “create content.” They schedule “content strategy meetings.” They hand over a blog template and say, “Write something about your expertise.”
Of course they say no. That’s not their job. And frankly, they’re right.
But here’s what SMEs will do: explain things. Answer questions. Share what they know—if you make it ridiculously easy.
The trick isn’t asking them to become content creators. It’s asking them to do what they already do every day: make complex things clear.
The 15-Minute Capture Process
Stop overthinking this.
One SME. One question. One screen recording. Fifteen minutes. Done.
Minutes 1-2: Setup
Open whatever recording tool you have. Loom, Zoom, your phone—doesn’t matter.
SME states name and role: “I’m Tom, head of facility operations.”
You give them one question. The kind they answer in meetings anyway.
Hit record.
Minutes 3-12: Let Them Talk
No script. No talking points. No direction.
Just let expertise flow.
They explain like they’re talking to a new hire. They use examples from the field. They reference real situations, actual problems, specific fixes.
Don’t interrupt. Don’t redirect. Don’t ask for “more marketing language.”
Their language is better than your marketing language.
Minutes 13-15: Context Drop
SME gives you one sentence of context: “This is about why sensor placement kills energy budgets.”
They drop the file in your shared folder.
Done.
Your SME just created raw material for a month of content. And they never had to “do content.”
The 5-Asset Multiplication System
Now comes your job: turning ten minutes of expertise into five content formats.
Asset 1: The Power Clip (60 seconds)
Find the strongest minute. The moment where everything clicks. The insight that makes people stop and think.
Clip it. Post it. LinkedIn, YouTube, newsletter—wherever your audience lives.
Asset 2: The Quote Card
Pull the most quotable line. Turn it visual. Imagine:
“Most people monitor humidity at intake. But crystallization happens everywhere else.”
— Tom Chen, Facility Operations
Perfect for social. Perfect for sales decks. Perfect for email signatures.
Asset 3: The Teaching Post
Take their explanation and package it for LinkedIn. Keep their voice. Keep their examples. Just make it scannable.
“Why sensor placement destroys energy budgets (according to our Ops Manager):
→ Most facilities only monitor at the front door
→ But humidity varies 15% between zones
→ That variance costs you 20% more in energyThe fix: Multi-zone monitoring. The savings: immediate.”
Asset 4: The Blog Arsenal
Save their best insights for long-form content. When you’re writing case studies or how-to guides, you’ve already got expert commentary ready.
No more generic filler. No more “industry best practices.” Real insight from real experience.
Asset 5: The Sales Language
Give your sales team the exact words your SME used to explain complex concepts.
When prospects ask about monitoring, your reps don’t fumble with features. They say: “Think of it like this—most people only check the weather at their front door. But what matters is what’s happening in every room.”
That’s not marketing speak. That’s expertise, translated.
Why This Works (When Everything Else Doesn’t)
Because it’s not content creation. It’s knowledge capture.
Your SMEs already explain things every day. In meetings. In Slack. On service calls. This just records it.
And when they see their insights showing up in sales calls—when they hear prospects quote their explanations—they get it. They start looking forward to the next recording.
Meanwhile, your content stops sounding like it was written by someone who Googled your industry last week.
It starts sounding like you actually know what you’re doing.
Handle the Pushback
“They don’t want to be on camera.”
So don’t put them on camera. Audio works. Screen recording works. Voice-over works.
The point isn’t their face. It’s their brain.
“We don’t have time.”
You don’t have time not to do this.
Fifteen minutes of SME input creates weeks of authentic content. Show me a more efficient content system. I’ll wait.
“What if the audio quality isn’t perfect?”
Good. Perfect audio sounds like a marketing video. Imperfect audio sounds like a human being who knows what they’re talking about.
Guess which one people trust?
“What if they say something wrong?”
Then edit it. But honestly? Your SMEs know more about your industry than whoever’s writing your current content.
Your First Recording: This Week
Stop planning. Start capturing.
Pick one SME. Pick one question customers always ask. Hit record.
Try these prompts:
- “What’s the biggest mistake people make with [your solution]?”
- “How would you explain [complex topic] to someone who’s never heard of it?”
- “What’s obvious to you but confuses everyone else?”
- “What’s changed in our industry that people don’t realize yet?”
The Compound Effect
Here’s what happens when you do this consistently:
Week one: You capture one insight.
Month one: You have four pieces of authentic expertise.
Quarter one: You have a library of real knowledge that sales uses in actual conversations.
Year one: Your audience sees your company as the source of clarity in your category.
That’s not marketing, exactly. That’s media.
Media companies don’t chase attention through campaigns. They earn authority through consistency. They turn internal expertise into external trust.
Your SMEs are already solving problems. This process just makes sure that wisdom doesn’t disappear into the ether.
Fifteen minutes. Five assets. One authentic voice that sounds like someone who’s actually done the work.
That’s how you turn expertise into authority.
Stop talking about it. Start recording.
