Episode 13 – (Case study) How to create content when you don’t have in-house expertise

In the last episode, we spoke about how “Interviewing experts” is one of the most effective strategies for creating valuable content. In this episode, let me take you through a case study, where I implemented this strategy.

Challenge

The client was catering to a very specific audience – Talent Acquisition Departments in Enterprise IT Services that had more than 1000, but less than 5000 employees.

The client did not have the in-house expertise of creating content. 

Very few people in the inhouse team had even worked for an IT Service company of that size.

And hence the team was not equipped to produce content.

So how do we have a blog then? How do we put together a YouTube channel? How do we put together a podcast… when we don’t enough have the expertise to produce this content?

The Solution:

The solution that we eventually agreed on, was ‘The Interview Experts strategy”. The idea here was to interview the experts in the Talent Acquisition departments of IT Services Companies. Each interview was then going to be dissected in multiple pieces of content, that would go live in different formats on different channels. 

Process:

We started this initiative by involving the Customer Success team. They had the easiest access to the client. Together, we identified the ‘early adopters’. 

In other words, we started reaching out to the clients, who fit in the following criteria –

1. The clients with whom the Success team had the best relationship
2. The clients who have always been friendly, and are usually open to having conversations.

Interview Preparation:

I started off as a really lousy interviewer. With time, I got better. 

I started asking better questions. I became less conscious of the camera.

This is the process that I followed more or less, as far as preparing for the interviews is concerned – 

1. Get to know more about the guest who is going to be interviewed by talking to the Customer Success team.
2. Indulge in online research to find out more about the guest and the organization that he is a part of.
3. Find out the blogs that the guest has already written. Check his website, if he has one.
4. Listen or watch the interviews that the guest has already given

These insights are enough to get you started. During the interview, I was intuitive enough to take it to a direction that I felt was good enough to create value.

Content Creation:

The interviews were conducted on Zoom.

Here was the process to create smaller pieces of content, after the video interview was conducted –

1. I used to listen to the whole interview and transcribe the interview myself.
2. I used to process this transcription and make it a story. This story was then written and published as a blog on the website.
3. The audio file of the interview was made into a podcast, and hosted on Anchor.
4. The video was then sent to a video-editing freelancer. The freelancer would then create 4 to 5 short video clips, which would also go live on the website. The idea of these small clips was to give the audience smaller bits of content to consume. 

With time, this initiative certainly opened new doors for the client, not just in terms of getting new interviews, but also in terms of better relationships and new business.