Introducing subject matter experts (SMEs) to your content creation process?
It’s always hard to implement a new style or process for the first time. I personally find that seeing how other brands and content teams are doing it helps to make things clearer.
So, in this article I’ve put together 10 examples of brands who are doing a great job with subject matter expert content.
Top subject matter expert content examples
Let’s take a look at a few examples of subject matter expert content from some SaaS companies you’ll know and love:
- Clay’s ‘build in public’ blogs
- Sylvera’s research write ups
- Lattice’s interwoven expert quotes
- Ravio’s FAQs article
- Watershed’s expert-led webinar series
- Ahref’s one question interview
- Kamma’s expert-backed original research report
- Clay’s expert guest post blogs
- Ravio’s ‘ask a people leader’ call outs
- Ashby’s expert interview podcast
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Clay’s ‘build in public’ blogs
Build in public content is a popular format these days with startups. It involves sharing behind-the-scenes information about how a company operates.
It’s particularly common for founders or CEOs to build in public via their LinkedIn profile, sharing insights into how they are thinking about creating and growing the company.
Clay has brought this to their blog too, with articles like this one on ‘How we assessed our growth marketing bets at Clay’ by Bruno Estrella, Clay’s Head of Growth Marketing.
It’s written entirely in the first person and document’s Bruno’s approach in deciding which tactics to implement to accelerate Clay’s growth.
Given their primary audience is marketers, it’s a great piece of content to share, and the first person perspective of Bruno’s first-hand experience makes it even more valuable.
This is a regular format for Clay, with their sales and marketing team often authoring problem-solving blogs which focus on first-hand experience – another example is this one on ‘how to increase prospect retention’ from partnerships lead Stefan Kollenberg.
Sylvera’s research write ups
Sylvera is a climate tech startup focused on carbon project ratings.
They have a team of in-house research scientists who are regularly running research projects across the world, aiming to improve the accuracy of carbon measurement techniques.
They regularly share write ups of the findings from these research projects on the Sylvera blog, in a great example of harnessing internal experts for quality content.
This blog, for instance, shares findings from their forest biomass research.
It includes educational sections – explaining what forest biomass is, or the different methods for measuring it.
With sections which explain the research projects Sylvera is undertaking, and their progress so far.
It’s written by (or ghostwritten for) Pedro Rodríguez-Veiga, who is a Senior Earth Observation Research Scientist in Sylvera’s team.
Lattice’s interwoven expert quotes
I’ve been admiring how Lattice uses subject matter experts for a while.
Every single educational blog they publish is littered with quotes from at least one contributing expert, often several.
These quotes are neatly woven into the fabric of the writing, informing and shaping the argument, without it needing to be explicitly called out as an expert interview or guest post.
Here’s an example from a blog about exit interviews, which uses a conversation with executive coach Debbie Nathanson as the basis of the discussion:
But then also adds additional expert voices throughout to add different perspectives on some of the areas of discussion, like this inclusion from HR consultant Matthew Burr:
Ravio’s FAQs article
I recently worked on an article for Ravio which aimed to overcome some of the trickiest parts about running a compensation review, titled: ‘Expert insights: Key questions on compensation reviews answered’.
I interviewed three compensation experts to get their perspective on the biggest challenges in a compensation review, and how to overcome them. The resulting article has a brief introduction, and then three sections – one for each expert.
The sections are written in an interview style, with questions and then the subject matter expert’s response below.
I also worked with the experts to draft LinkedIn posts for them to share the final article with, helping to increase the reach of the article through collaborative distribution.
Watershed’s expert-led webinar series
Legislation is often an important topic to cover in B2B content, especially in areas where regulations are fast-evolving like company climate reporting and disclosures.
But, unless you have an established and knowledgeable legal team, it’s unlikely to be a topic that you have enough internal expertise to cover in-depth.
Collaborating with subject matter experts solves that problem, which is exactly what Watershed has done for their webinar series on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) – bringing together internal team members with legal experts and experienced sustainability leads to provide valuable educational content without tripping up on the legal details.
Ahref’s one question interview
Ahrefs is a content giant – and so they should be, given their product is an SEO platform.
They have a ton of content, but I recently came across a blog where 8 SEO hiring managers share the one interview question they would ask a candidate.
It’s nothing revolutionary as a format, but it does a great job at bringing together multiple subject matter experts in a neat way – because everyone’s answering the same simple question, but informed by their own expertise and experience.
Each expert is quoted with the interview question they gave, as well as what they think a great answer to that question would be. There’s then a tip for each one from Ahrefs, which gives them an opportunity to highlight relevant product features.
Kamma’s expert-backed original research report
Kamma’s report ‘The State of the Climate Transition for UK Mortgage Lenders in 2024’ is a piece of original research and analysis. It contains data trends from an analysis of 85 climate transition plans by UK mortgage lenders, as well as a survey of ESG leads.
I leveraged subject matter experts in several different ways to produce a high-quality report:
- Survey responses. The survey was circulated to a group of ESG leaders working at mortgage lenders in the UK. Their responses gave a valuable additional dataset to support the report’s findings.
- Transition plan analysis criteria. The analysis rests on a set of criteria which determine what makes a credible climate plan. Each climate plan was assessed against that set of criteria. I have a lot of experience in the climate space, but I’m still no expert on transition planning, so I relied on internal and external subject matter experts to refine the list of criteria used and ensure a robust methodology.
- Expert commentary. This was the first report on this topic that Kamma had published. To add credibility to the report and the methodology used to analyse lender transition plans, I asked experts at the Green Finance Institute (GFI) if they would review the report and share any feedback or commentary. This was valuable both in giving pointers to improve the analysis, and in giving us an expert comment to launch the report with.
Clay’s expert guest post blogs
This subject matter expert content example is another one from Clay (unsurprisingly really – they’re killing the content marketing game), a straight guest post blog from an expert outside of Clay’s team.
It works well because it shows that Clay is plugged into the wider network of industry experts and influencers – they are part of that community and are trusted as a brand and as a product by those experts. That’s always going to increase the trustworthiness and credibility of Clay’s brand.
Plus, it brings the trusted expertise and first-hand experiences of those external experts into Clay’s branded content, which makes for content that is incredibly valuable and engaging for their target audience.
One example of this is a blog titled ‘How to validate cold outbound offers by finding message-market fit’ written by the founder of growth marketing agency Growth Engine X, Eric Nowoslaski.
Ravio’s ‘ask a people leader’ call outs
Ravio’s aim is to be perceived as a go-to resource for tackling compensation problems and understanding market trends. With this, subject matter experts are a vital part of the content strategy to ensure accurate, credible content.
A format that Ravio often uses is to create a piece of content that aims to resolve a specific pain point for their audience. The article will include best practice approaches, and feature advice from experienced People and Reward leaders to add authority.
One example of this is an article I wrote on how to deal with salary band outliers.
The bulk of the article is a step-by-step guide by the Ravio team on how to fix the problem of under or overpaying employees. Throughout, blue call out boxes highlight the perspective of Isha Smith, Global Head of Rewards at Soundcloud – backing up the advice given by Ravio’s article through Isha’s expert advice and real experience.
Ashby’s expert interview podcast
Podcasts are a perfect format for interviewing subject matter experts to get their insights and experience on subject areas or specific problems.
There are loads of examples of B2B podcasts today which do just that.
A couple of examples that I think do a good job are the Offer Accepted podcast by Ashby and the Content Briefly podcast by Superpath (which is probably the only ‘professional’ podcast I actually listen to).
The trick is to keep it a conversation, letting the subject matter expert focus on sharing their experience and what’s worked for them, so that it provides valuable insight for people who aspire to be experts in that field too.
When podcasts try too hard to be a marketing or sales channel, shoehorning the product into the conversation or spending too much time on sales ads, it stops being a valuable listen and becomes just another brand podcast.
Tabitha Whiting: High-impact content for high-impact startups 
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