The Future of Content: Subject Matter Experts
In August 2016, we created Supported Content to do one thing:
Help businesses in the CX space create better content by connecting them with writers who actually worked in CX.
Most businesses writing about the CX space didn't have writers who had ever worked in CX. This created an identity crisis for content creators who either had to produce mediocre content or spend hours researching, interviewing, or studying CX just to be able to write about it.
And that’s still the problem for marketing teams today:
Marketing teams (and the companies they work for) are stuck creating unoriginal content that’s not actually useful to their audiences.
Fast forward to today and you’ll find that ChatGPT and generative AI only make this problem worse.
When used to generate new blog posts or marketing content, they tools spew out regurgitated content derived from existing articles.
Reflecting on this has only crystallized our core belief:
Subject matter experts create the best content for businesses.
Are you a subject matter expert?
Over the last seven years, we’ve paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to the experienced professionals who write for our team. If you’d like to learn how you can make money through writing for businesses, join our email list and stay tuned.
Subject matter experts create the best content
Why do subject matter experts create the best content? What are the big benefits?
There are tons:
SMEs know the ins and outs of your industry
You benefit from their experience and expertise (more on this below)
It incentives SMEs to learn about your products and share your content. In the age of the creator economy, this can be a big boost in distribution and growth.
Subject matter experts speak the language of your customers and know their pain points
You get the highest quality content, helping you build your brand and grow your business
Using subject matter experts as writers helps drive growth in ways that are hard to achieve if you’re relying on content marketing professionals to create everything.
Here’s how I say it in calls with potential clients:
“Our team speaks the language of your target audience. We are your ideal customer persona. That means we know their pain points, we understand their daily frustrations, and we get what they care about. There’s no guesswork involved.”
That might just sound like hype, but here’s a recent comment from a new client to back it up:
Let’s be clear on one thing: setting up your content engine so that subject matter experts do your writing doesn’t mean you just let people start publishing whatever they want on your blog.
That’s a recipe for chaos.
It simply means your marketing team members shouldn’t be responsible for all of the writing.
You absolutely still need a marketing team. But instead of spending hours writing, every week, your marketing team’s role shifts:
It’s more about strategy, less about grammatical correctness
It’s more about driving growth, less about herding cats
It’s more about ensuring ROI, less about hitting word counts
You call the plays, then you let your subject matter experts run the ball.
When your writers are your target audience, no one is better positioned to create content that resonates with readers.
They’re going to need less handholding and less time to get up to speed.
Heck, they might even enjoy the writing process.
Putting subject matter experts in the writer’s chair can transform your content marketing efforts (it can also transform the livelihood and careers of the folks doing the writing).
That’s why this is our core belief as a team, and that’s why every business should be using SMEs to create their marketing content.
Why SME writers matter now more than ever (E-E-A-T)
“But what about generative AI? What about ChatGPT?”
Good questions. The AI landscape is changing quickly, so I won’t try to make specific predictions about the future.
Here’s what I will say:
ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022.
Just two weeks later, Google updated its Quality Rater Guidelines for search.
What was the biggest change?
For years, Google had used three factors to evaluate their search ranking systems: expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. E-A-T.
But with this change, Google added another “E” to the picture: experience.
Trust is central, but expertise, authoritativeness, and experience are core concepts that support and show trustworthiness.
Here’s how Google defines those three things:
Experience: the extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic.
Expertise: the extent to which the content creator has the necessary knowledge or skill for the topic
Authoritativeness: the extent to which the content creator or the website is known as a go-to source for the topic
Using subject matter experts as your writers—including publishing under their names and letting them share real-life stories—directly impacts at least the first two of these factors.
Generative AI can never demonstrate true experience of anything—it’s just digesting information and spitting out new versions of it.
And while it might be “expert” in the sense of having access to loads of knowledge, it can’t demonstrate its expertise the same way an experienced human can. It can’t talk firsthand about problems it's solved and the impact it's had.
Will generative AI tools and content transform the way the internet operates and how people create and consume information over the next few years?
Most likely.
Can we predict exactly what that will look like?
Nope.
But clearly demonstrating first-hand experience and expertise are how you stand out and best position yourself to compete.
Using subject matter experts as writers is how you future proof your content marketing efforts.
Where we’re headed as Supported Content
We’ve loved working with our CX clients over the past seven years, and we plan to keep cranking out the best content on the interwebs for CX brands.
That means we’ll be growing our team to add new CX writers.
If you’ve got experience working in customer experience—customer support, success, or onboarding—and you’d like to use that experience to make money writing as a side hustle, we’d love to chat! Fill out this short form and we’ll be in touch soon.
We’re also actively taking on additional clients in the CX space.
From early-stage startups to established orgs to BPOs—we’ve worked with them all, and our team’s experience can help you achieve the growth you’re looking for. If that’s you, get in touch and let’s find time to chat soon.
On top of all that, we’re actively exploring expanding into other industries.
We’ve written for companies on HR tech, leadership, and remote work—and we’re working to repeat what we’ve done in CX across other spaces.
That means no matter what industry you’re in, we want to help connect you with trained subject matter expert writers that will take your content marketing to a whole new level. If your content feels disconnected from your audience and you’re ready to explore a different path forward, get in touch and let’s figure out how to change that.
Are you a subject matter expert?
Over the last seven years, we’ve paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to the experienced professionals who write for our team. If you’d like to learn how you can make money through writing for businesses, join our email list and stay tuned.
