Working with subject-matter experts in maritime: interview frameworks

Maritime content that sounds authoritative almost always traces back to a real conversation with a real subject-matter expert. Not a content writer pretending to know about CII verification. Not a marketing manager paraphrasing a sales deck. A fleet manager, a master mariner, a regulatory specialist, a former DPA, a chief engineer, an offshore operations director. Their voice in the content is what separates work that gets cited from work that gets ignored.

Most content teams know this. Most struggle to actually extract it. The interview turns into a rambling monologue that’s impossible to edit, or a pulled-teeth half-hour where the SME answers in single sentences and gives up nothing useful. The fix is a tighter framework.

Before the interview

Send three questions in advance. Not twelve. Three.

A typical pre-brief for a forty-five-minute interview with a fleet director on CII strategy:

1. What changed in your operating decisions when CII started biting?
2. What are most owners getting wrong about CII verification?
3. Where do you see the regulation heading in the next eighteen months?

Three questions force the SME to think before they get on the call. They show you’ve done the work. They’re broad enough that the SME doesn’t feel boxed in but specific enough that they can prepare.

During the interview

Treat the interview as a structured conversation in three parts.

The first ten minutes: warm-up and context. Ask about the SME’s current role, their fleet, their region. Get them comfortable. Don’t start recording until they’re past the first awkward two minutes. Most SMEs warm up around minute eight.

Twenty-five minutes: the substance. Walk through your three questions, but listen for the answers under the answers. The most quotable line in any maritime SME interview is almost never the answer to the first version of a question. It’s the third or fourth version, after you’ve drilled in.

Final ten minutes: stories and stakes. Ask “what’s the worst version of this you’ve seen?” and “what would surprise an outsider about this?” These two questions consistently produce the most quotable material in the entire interview.

What to record

Always record. Always transcribe. Maritime SMEs use specific terminology, vessel names, port references and regulatory clauses that you will misremember. Recording protects against this. It also protects you if the SME later disputes a quote.

Tell the SME the recording exists, that it stays internal and that they will see the final piece before it publishes.

Editing for credibility

Three rules.

Cut the throat-clearing. Most SMEs start every answer with thirty seconds of context they think you need. You usually don’t. Cut it.

Preserve the technical specificity. If the SME says “the issue is that the CII calculation methodology doesn’t account for waiting time at anchor, which on a tanker doing thirty days a year at LOOP can blow a B rating to a D”, do not paraphrase that into “CII has some calculation problems.” The specificity is the credibility.

Quote them where the language is theirs. Maritime SMEs talk in particular cadences, particular metaphors, particular bits of operational shorthand. A piece that uses three or four of their actual phrases as direct quotes reads as authentic. A piece that paraphrases everything reads as content marketing.

The pattern over time

The brands that get this right run a roster of six to ten internal and external SMEs they interview regularly. Each SME contributes once a quarter. The content programme builds genuine breadth without exhausting any individual. The SMEs become more comfortable with the format over time and produce better material on the third interview than the first.

That’s the long game. SME-led content compounds because the SMEs themselves become better collaborators with practice.