Sharing your expertise can feel like a daunting task. How much is OK to share? What type of information will resonate with your audience? And how do you draw out meaningful stories from your technical or field staff? Middle of Six principals Wendy Simmons and Melissa English give their recommendations to help AEC leaders and marketers stand out from the crowd and connect with decision-makers.
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Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist.
We are exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.
Today, we're chatting with Melissa English, and we are gonna talk about sharing your expertise.
Hey, Melissa.
Hi, Wendy, thanks for having me back again.
This is a great topic.
It's so integral to our firm's success is to share the expertise of the staff that our clients hire.
So I'm really looking forward to discussing this with you today.
Yeah, you identified this as an excellent pre-positioning tactic to put your firm in that spot of expertise.
So you want to draw out their stories.
How do you determine what topics you should be writing about or grabbing from your team, developing content or creating a speaking engagement?
What does that look like?
It needs to really align with what the goals for your firm are.
What are the business development goals?
What are the growth markets or what are the markets that you want to capture more market share where you're already leading the pack or maybe want to lead the pack?
So looking at what the goals for your firm are and seeing where that makes sense to share your expertise.
I think another important element when you're looking at that is who are those contributors that you can draw upon in your firm?
Who is a good speaker?
Who enjoys speaking publicly?
Who is a fantastic writer or maybe even just, maybe they're not the greatest writer, but they always have really good ideas and can tell a great story.
And maybe you can sit down and listen to them and craft what they've said into a compelling piece.
So kind of looking at who you can tap to assist you with this, because it's definitely not something that only falls on marketing.
You need to collaborate with the members of your firm on these efforts.
Another way to do that is you can kind of reverse engineer it.
If you have someone on your team who's really eager to help and wants to contribute to marketing, or maybe they've set that as a goal for the year, as to help the marketing and business development efforts of the firm, you can see what they're interested in and then look for an opportunity that aligns with what their interest and passions are.
Yeah, it's so much easier to speak or write about something that you feel comfortable with.
I mean, we recommend that in lots of areas, including interviews and whatever.
So tapping into what they already want to talk about or are exploring or researching on their own is important.
Pulling the relevant publications and looking at the media calendar when those are released and looking for areas.
OK, this one's going to be on K-12 school design.
So let's start thinking about that and pondering on that, because it doesn't necessarily come to mind right away.
But if you're starting to think about it from the beginning of the year and kind of always keeping that in the planning stages of what makes sense for us, what stories do we have to tell?
On occasion, we have clients who are hesitant to tell stories or share expertise.
I think they're being a little conservative, wondering like, well, are we going to give away our competitive advantage?
We don't want to give this level of detail.
How do you address that when that's their concern about sharing information?
I think helping them understand that's how we show the value that we bring.
We're not necessarily giving away the secret sauce because we're not going to discuss the design to that level of detail.
But an interesting story is to talk about the outcomes.
How did it benefit the client?
How did it benefit the community?
And leaving people wanting more or, wow, they really know what they're talking about or they really did something great for this city and I would like them to do that for my city.
So I think just kind of helping them understand that that's how you show your value.
And you have any other thoughts on that?
Yeah, I have noticed that can be a concern.
And I think when you just talk through the facts of, you know, it's not that level of detail.
And also, the benefit is the number of eyes and connections you're going to make through that.
Let's say you have something published in a trade journal, or you're speaking at one of your associations, you have the opportunity to be in front of hundreds or thousands of potential clients and just increase that brand awareness.
I mean, that's so valuable.
And the fact that you're just sharing your expertise is really positioning you well to be.
The first or in that first group of people they call when they need to have that issue addressed.
Well, I don't know if this is bad to say, but I've certainly encountered the experience where someone might say, oh, I saw you wrote an article.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but sometimes it's just that they recognized you did something.
So it's like they saw you.
It was an impression.
So maybe they don't even read the article.
Yeah, right.
Know that sharing information is pretty meaningful to those who are looking for it.
Even though there's so much information out there, oddly enough, you can still very much differentiate yourself.
It will be noticed.
And mentioning social media, even commenting on other people's thought leadership pieces, adding your perspective to it.
So the range of how you share your expertise can be from one end of a published article to the other of just interacting with the content of your clients or strategic partners or just industry professionals that do the same type of work that you do.
Yeah.
So I think we've all had that experience where we encountered someone who didn't think what they do is interesting or special.
But we know it is, as marketers.
How do you draw that information out of this person?
Oh yeah, definitely a common experience.
I've interviewed so many superintendents about their projects to get details for a write-up.
And they say, oh, well, this is just what we do.
But there's a story behind it.
And I think getting to that story can have the lightbulb go off for marketing of how far you can take something.
So the best way to get a story is build a relationship and start spending time, having FaceTime with those folks.
So from my experience, that has been going on job walks and visiting with the field team and seeing what they're actually doing.
It could include something like having a contest for photography where your project engineers are sending in images and it provides an opportunity to be like, hey, let's get more of that.
What was happening here?
You know, you're kind of connecting with the people who are putting the work in place or doing the design to go beyond just this is the line of or here's the detail of what we're doing to what's the story behind it.
Yeah, I know some groups that I've dealt with in the past, their whole department went on like a field trip in the summer and visited the projects.
I was like, hey, can marketing come along?
Because that's where we hear what you did and why it was a fun project or what were the challenges or how you dealt with it.
So I definitely agree that getting, interacting with the team and working together and seeing what they're doing is the great way to draw that information out.
Right, and it builds the marketing team's expertise as well because now you are seeing firsthand how a problem was being solved.
It may encourage you the next time you're putting together some logistics plan to say, well, what about when we did this on that last project that you got to see with your own eyes?
You're like, that sounds good.
Is that something we'll do here?
I mean, you're just going to have a deeper amount of knowledge related to your firm and what they do so that you can make those suggestions.
So it kind of goes both ways, right?
Yeah, helps you know what questions to answer.
I've even had the experience where it helped me in a meeting with a client.
The engineer wasn't giving a lot in the meeting, so since I knew a little bit more about how he worked and what types of things he did, it helped me kind of guide a conversation to kind of open the door for that person to share the expertise.
So, hey, Bob, remember that time you did X?
Can you talk about that?
So the more connections you have with the people where you're hearing what they do, how they do it, it pays off in spades in ways you don't even realize.
That's a good point.
You should be like an interviewer, you know, polish your interview skills, like you're a reporter, I guess, is maybe the right terminology there.
If you're not asking questions, the stories might just stop where the other person feels like, yeah, that's all the news I have, but there's more, and you just need to learn how to dig into it a bit.
Yeah, getting those journalistic questions handy and just keep asking, why did you do it that way?
How come that happened?
What did the agency do that made you change the course of your design and just constantly asking questions?
That's a fantastic strategy for proposal development, too.
If you can get that expert on the phone and ask the why and the how and get a little more detail, that description in a proposal is improved by huge margins in that way, because we've got real details and we understand the why and the value that was brought.
You're wanting to share your expertise so that you can solve the problems or the issues that your clients are facing.
So if you're finding out from your business development staff, this is what's important to this client, then you can say, like, what other places have we solved that problem?
Or how did we deal with that before?
I think another sometimes unexpected benefit of these expertise sharing is that it doesn't just have to be the architect or engineer that worked on that project that can tell that story in another format.
We've certainly had success coaching teams to use the firm's experience of solving a problem to talk about at an interview.
It worked over and over with this one particular case study.
And so, don't be afraid to share that information across the firm and across departments, because if it's a good story, it can really sell your firm.
Right.
And capturing those stories will add to other initiatives you're doing.
Well, the award submittal at the end of the project, even, that could be submitted nine months after the project completed.
It won't be nice to have those stories from early in the project and understanding what the plan was and how they move forward through it, not just capturing it just at the end.
Agreed.
Yes.
There's many times where we get in the trap of just finding out what happened at the end, but those stories get forgotten.
So, I think that's another benefit of going on site, even maybe during construction, not just when the project's done, looking for opportunities to tag along with the staff and hear them speak about their work firsthand.
See, I love the difference in our experiences together, Melissa, because you think the project is done when it goes into construction.
I think the project is starting when it goes into construction.
But that's awesome.
That's really good.
Well, another way that you can share your expertise is through a blog.
And I know something I've heard at past S&PS events was, how do you go about curating content?
I heard examples of the internet architects came together and started writing a blog and marketing's not involved.
So what thoughts do you have about how to curate content and how marketing should be involved in content creation?
Well, I definitely love to see marketing involved in anything, any external communications that are going out there.
You know, marketing is providing an eye for, well, quality control, which is really basic stuff, but we want to make sure it's representing the brand the best way possible.
And also just confirming that the tone and the voice and how that's being communicated visually with graphics is again, a great and consistent representation of the brand.
So just put that out there.
I'd love to have marketing have a seat at the table.
As far as curating the content goes, this marketing just uses a lot of tried and true techniques, a content calendar and understanding what are the, I don't know, three or six topics that are very important to us as a firm and making sure that we're checking the box.
I don't think we have to micromanage the process, but we might just be a sounding board or a checkpoint for that.
And also potentially able to generate some ideas if that group gets a little bit stuck on what they want to talk about.
Yeah, I would never want to discourage someone on the firm who was excited to write, but I would, as a marketer, want the ability to QC it, make sure the tone and the voice are consistent with our brand.
But I think that's great to make sure that marketing is involved.
You know, in my experience, I would say I'd be jumping for joy if a group decided they wanted to create that much content.
I would break down any barriers for them because I would be so appreciative of the help and the stories that they're going to start telling, and just the fact that they're being really proactive and engaged.
So that I want to go on the record for saying, I might warn from past experience that we want to temper the enthusiasm a little bit and decide what is actually possible given the resources.
I heard the request many times, we should do a newsletter and it sounds great.
And it's a lot of work.
So marketing can help be a voice of reason of what is possible and how those resources could be allocated to make something like a blog happen.
The last thing that we would want to do would be to roll out an initiative like a blog with a lot of content that fizzles in six weeks or six months.
I mean, it's okay if it changes for strategic reasons, but not because of poor planning and the fact that we just kind of lost our energy.
Yeah, that was something that came to mind.
Do you have any ideas or best practices on what you should be prepared before you launch a blog or say you started a new firm and the blog hasn't been updated since 2018?
What would you recommend?
I think planning, and this can be as simple as a table or some sort of calendar of the frequency and all of the elements that need to be included, including graphics or photography, copy editing, the QC process, the actual technical digital component of posting those and then where that information is shared.
I mean, that can be mapped out pretty simply, you know, in a calendar or word document so that people are able to see what's ahead.
If you're trying to get content built up, I'd love to start with three or four posts.
Hopefully, they're evergreen enough that they're not incredibly time-sensitive, or if something is, you can position it in that spot to not move, but you give yourself a little wiggle room if internal deadlines change and you need a little space.
If you're really excited about starting a blog, which would be great, then it should be pretty easy to get three or four posts in the can, ready to go, because if you can't get that, you may not have enough to talk about later on.
If there's a lot of enthusiasm from leadership that you want to do this, then that could be the next step.
OK, we need to have four to six posts ready to go before we launch this.
And if that gets everybody energized and they start writing excellent, if that means that three months later no one has written a word, then you probably got your answer that a blog is not the avenue for your firm to share their expertise on a regular basis.
Yeah, I think also having this lots of advance notice, if you have a blog writing group that might be six people in your firm, and you want to post once a month, each individual would be assigned two times of year.
So you actually could have plenty of road ahead of you.
In my opinion, there's no excuse for missing that deadline because you've got four or five months to prepare it.
But we do know that your other work and projects take precedent over, are the priority over that kind of internal content.
So Melissa, looking beyond the client and those external audiences, just sharing your firm's expertise have other benefits that we haven't talked about.
Yeah, I think there's been a real movement over the last couple of years of how important it is for marketing and human resources to be integrated because your brand also translates to an employer brand.
How are you recruiting?
How are you introducing your firm to college students?
How are you introducing the profession of architecture, engineering and construction to middle school, high school students, maybe in some cases, elementary students as a career path?
So I think there's some great ways to partner with human resources to use that expertise as a way to enhance your employer brand.
We're working with a firm on a new website and within that website committee, a few of the members are very focused on every bit of content needs to appeal to college students.
And the nice thing is these are young people on the committee who definitely know what's going to be good.
And so they're really driving that that content, it needs to help with recruiting and be appealing to that audience.
Yeah, it's a competitive market.
Students coming out of college have different paths.
If they're an engineer, they don't just have consulting engineering as an option.
They also have being an agency engineer, or working for a government agency.
There's a lot of different ways that you can go with a design degree, or an engineering degree, or construction management degree.
So we want to attract people to our firms and to our industry.
So I think it's a great tip is to have people from all ages and generations in the groups that are making decisions about what your external content looks like.
It might be surprising to you what you learn by talking to people outside of your own generation that they really want to be able to read something, or like if it's not video, I'm not going to look at this.
And that's real information, and we should be absorbing that and making decisions based on it.
Yeah, definitely.
I know personal preferences, you know, video is not my favorite, but I want to be open to what people of different generations are engaging with and what's interesting to them.
And if it's an animated video and that's really what our target recruitment pool looks like, then let's set a plan in place to make that happen.
Yeah, and for me, if it's not something I can listen to, it's going to really be low on my list of things to get to read because I'm just reading all the time.
So I will, I'll take an audio version of any document any day.
Like a podcast called The Shortlist?
Yes, that's exactly right.
Depending on the size of your firm, and we've encountered a few very large, you know, like national, international firms that will have either the blog internally or actually we met one that has a podcast internally.
That kind of blew my mind.
But you can create content that is and share your expertise just for your employees so that they know what's happening.
No one can know everything that's going on projects, but maybe there's an opportunity for them to understand like, this is how this problem has been solved.
Here's all the resources.
I mean, let's not overlook that opportunity.
Yeah, or even just even a tidbit.
Oh, we're working with that school district.
You know, you hear something out at a networking event, and you can bring that information back.
But yeah, I don't think it should be understated that the expertise sharing should be happening inside the company as well.
What about, you know, the marketers' role in sharing their expertise that might be training or, I don't know, just kind of like the why of what they do?
Do you have any kind of anecdotes to that, Melissa?
That's one thing that I started thinking about as you were just talking now, and how sharing expertise can kind of make it incremental steps.
So maybe someone has decided, I would like to speak at a conference, but I would like to have more practice.
So setting up some internal initiatives inside the company where your project manager can present to the company, talk about a project.
So it gives them practice speaking.
It has the benefit of sharing with the firm what different departments are up to.
And then from a marketing perspective, you know, maybe you really want to have a big push on social media.
So you do a session about how to set up your LinkedIn profile and how to interact on LinkedIn and how to share content, because some people might know and some people might not know.
So I think that's one way you can help get everyone to come along, show your expertise as a marketer, show them analytics.
I think there's ways to internally show what you know.
And I think another way is doing the writing yourself.
I've written articles for the Daily Journal of Commerce.
Maybe you want to partner with a principal in your firm and co-write something.
I'm a big proponent that if you write something as a marketer and you're an in-house marketer, you should get a byline.
I know some people ghost write and I think there's a place for that, but I also think it's important for your professional career, for your ego, that your work is credited by getting a byline if you're writing something with someone in your firm.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I like that we'd be coming at sharing expertise from multiple angles.
And one of those that you're hitting on, if marketing is sharing their expertise and writing an article and they're putting themselves out there more, they're actually getting a lot of professional development along with your team getting the benefit of their expertise.
So definitely not a wasted effort.
It's an opportunity for, I guess, marketers at any level, but I love to look for an opportunity for someone who's more junior to present to the company.
Maybe they're sharing the social media strategy or whatever that is.
It's building, helping them build their career while also providing the rest of the firm some great information.
Yeah, if you have an internal happy hour or project pinup sessions, maybe you want to show a really great infographic you did for a proposal, or you did a special proposal design that was really incredible, and you want to share that with your team.
So I think a lot of times the other staff in the firm don't really know what marketing does.
Well, I know they help us get work for the firm, but they might not know.
So I think that's another way that you can build deeper relationships with the people that you work with.
And I've found the more you share, the more likely people are to come stop by your desk and say, hey, I heard this or I got this information from a client.
I think just kind of opening those channels of communication and building those relationships benefits the firm and you as a department.
Yeah, you know you have something good going on when people do stop by your desk.
They're like, oh, I have this idea.
They should be dropping off samples and sending you pictures from their phone like could we get one of these?
How about this?
You know, I mean, that's a wonderful spot for the marketing group to be in where people are coming to them.
We're not just pulling information or ideas out of the team.
And then it also makes it easier to pick up the phone and say, oh, hey, I saw on your calendar you're going out to the job site.
Could you take a picture of this for me?
You know, the stronger relationships that just makes it easier to call in a favor or people are probably less likely to miss a deadline you might set for them if you have a deeper relationship and they know you more as a person.
Yeah, absolutely.
I feel like on every podcast, we've mentioned relationships.
And maybe that's part of the marketing world that we live in, but it's important from every angle.
And we'll just keep emphasizing that.
Be a partner to your team, be proactive and helpful, make it easier for them.
And your job as a marketer will be that much more fulfilling and easier, too.
Definitely.
I mean, it's part of you sharing your expertise.
Maybe you have a tip for them, or hey, who should I call for this?
Just being that resource to people.
You know, it's so funny, as we're talking about this, it just dawned on me, like, oh my gosh, this is exactly why we started The Shortlist.
Because we thought people will be, they're awesome.
They'll call like, I'd like to pick your brain on this.
Or, you know, we're in these different roundtables and we get to share.
This was just an opportunity for us to do it in a much more proactive way.
Like, we want to put this out there.
It might work for some people.
It may not be the right exact thing for others, but we're not afraid to just open up the conversation and tell people what we've learned.
And hopefully there's some good stuff that comes out of it.
Yeah.
So if you want to submit a question, you can email us at theshortlistatmiddleofsix.com.
And part of our podcast, towards the end, is we take a listener question.
So should we move to that, Wendy?
Yes, let's do it.
Okay.
So this week's listener question is, the principal said he would write an article, but he is not making progress.
What should I do?
Yes.
The dreaded, I said I would do it, but I'm not doing it.
So I think there's a few different options you can do to work on that.
One, get some time on the calendar, sit down and brainstorm.
What topic is interesting?
We're targeting this type of work.
So what does this client want to hear about?
And kind of just doing a little brain session, taking those journalistic questions out, the who, what, when, where, why, how, and talking through that.
You could just write it for them.
I know as marketers, we have many demands on our times, but that is another way to just get things done.
In that case, I would want to get a byline if it was going to a publication, get some credit for your work.
Maybe one of the stumbling blocks is, I really need to get some quotes from this client or this consultant to help frame this article, so maybe you could reach out to those folks and take some of that load off of your principal.
Another option is maybe this person is already going to be presenting this project to maybe like a planning commission, some other way that this information is coming out that you could sit in on and collect notes and outline it and take a stab at a draft.
So those are some thoughts I have.
What do you got, Wendy?
Yeah, I think you hit on this is that maybe you can reach deeper into the project team.
The principal might not be the only person that has this information.
It really depends on what that topic is.
But is there someone else that you can leverage to get that first draft together or some sort of an outline where then the principal can take more of a reviewer's role and fine tuning that content?
I mean, that's something I might look for, making sure we're looking at all the options for resources.
Yeah, kind of trying to dig out what was the problem?
What options did we consider to solve it?
Why did we pick that solution?
You know, kind of trying to give them some framework, because I think sometimes people look at a blank screen and think, I don't even know what to write.
Yeah, and simplifying it in the way of like you mentioned the outline.
But really, we're talking about, can we get three or five bullet points that are those details?
We can fill in a lot of the gaps or decide how we need to like dig in deeper on a specific area.
But if we have the real key elements, that can go a long way to getting something developed.
I definitely think people get hung up on, well, I am not a great writer, so I can't write content.
Well, we can help you write it better.
Like you said, brain dump of bullets, and we can craft that into prose for you, and then you can review it.
So I think it can be an iterative process with your team where you're bringing value of your experience and expertise as a writer and a storyteller with the technical know-how of the principles in your firm.
And if it goes on and on, and definitely you get to provide some leadership and say, this looks like this is not going to happen.
We'll put it over here in the parking lot until it does.
And if we get the chance to share it, that's great.
And you kind of kind of move through your process without depending on that one person.
Yeah, I think that adds some credence to the earlier comments that having a backlog of maybe three to six blog posts or whatever it might be in the can before you launch something so that you can account for those times where maybe someone gets stuck on something else and you got to prioritize another piece of content ahead of that one.
Yeah, and you want to be flexible enough in your overall content calendar that if something new and wonderful comes up or someone is inspired because they went to a conference and has information to share that you can flex your schedule and get that in there.
So it shouldn't be the end of the world if one article does not come together.
All right, well, Melissa, thanks again for being here, talking about sharing your expertise and sharing your own expertise here on the podcast.
We will have you back next time to talk about more exciting marketing stuff.
And like Melissa said, if anyone has a question out there, we are ready to answer them.
So please do that, and we'll tell you everything we know.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, principal marketing strategist.
Kyle Davis is our producer with Graphic Design and Digital Marketing by Alison Rose.
If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, send an email or voice memo to theshortlist.middleofsix.com.
If you missed anything or want more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.
And follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at middleofsix.
Thanks so much for listening.
We hope you'll tell your friends and colleagues about the show, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.
Until next time, keep on hustling.
Bye.
Take care.
The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.