Before inviting an expert to contribute to your SaaS article, identify one recommendation you cannot yet explain well. Ask about the conditions behind it, check the answer, and record exactly how it changes the advice.
Consider a guide that tells founders to shorten onboarding. A quote praising simplicity leaves the difficult question open: which steps can a team remove without preventing customers from getting a useful result? Build the interview around that decision.
Identify the decision your draft cannot support
Read your outline and mark advice that lacks instructions for applying it. Phrases such as “choose the right approach,” “monitor performance,” and “start small” are good places to investigate.
Turn one gap into a question with a reader, a constraint, and a choice:
For a two-person SaaS team whose customers must import data before using the product, when should onboarding require that import, and when should it offer sample data first?
Write your tentative answer before the conversation. Label it as a hypothesis and note what evidence would make you revise it. If you cannot imagine an answer changing the article, reconsider whether you need the interview.
If the reader’s question is still vague, use the SaaS content brief template to define it first. Then use the interview to resolve the advice the brief leaves open.
Choose an expert who has handled the problem
For an onboarding article, someone who has investigated failed imports may offer more relevant detail than an executive who speaks broadly about product growth.
Check what the person has worked on, how recently they did it, and whether the setting resembles your reader’s. A process designed for an enterprise implementation team may be impractical for a founder handling support alone.
IDEO.org’s Design Kit recommends matching expertise to the project, previewing the questions and time commitment, and seeking different points of view. You can apply those recruitment principles to an editorial interview. Read Design Kit’s expert interview method.
An employee, customer, or vendor can contribute useful knowledge. Describe their relationship when it affects how readers should interpret the advice. Scrutinize a vendor’s recommendation about its own category even when the explanation sounds technically sound.
For a narrow procedural question, start with one relevant practitioner. Seek another perspective when the answer rests on disputed assumptions, carries substantial consequences, or comes entirely from someone who benefits from the recommendation. Allow time to investigate disagreements before choosing which advice to publish.
Ask questions that reveal actions and exceptions
Send a short brief describing the reader, the unresolved question, the expected time commitment, and how you plan to use the answers. Agree on recording and attribution before starting. Ask the person to avoid sharing confidential customer information.
Adapt these questions to the conversation:
- What happened the last time you handled this problem? Ask about the setting, constraints, and sequence of actions.
- What did you check before choosing an approach? Look for a condition the reader can inspect.
- What did you try that failed or needed revision? Ask what revealed the problem.
- Under what conditions would you recommend a different approach? Capture the boundary of the advice.
- What evidence can support that explanation? Request a public document, an approved example, or another source you can check.
- What would a reader misunderstand if we summarized your answer in one sentence? Use this to uncover missing qualifications.
The GOV.UK user research manual recommends open, neutral questions, follow-ups, and specific stories rather than general accounts of how things should work. That questioning discipline also suits an expert conversation. Read GOV.UK’s interview guidance.
Ask how the expert chose an onboarding sequence rather than asking them to endorse your conclusion that shorter onboarding is better. Follow an abstract answer with a request for the next action: what would someone inspect, change, or stop doing? Follow a universal recommendation with a question about exceptions.
Trace each contribution to an article edit
After the interview, keep the person’s wording separate from your interpretation. Preserve a recording timestamp or note reference so you can recover the context.
For each useful contribution, complete this sentence:
Because the expert identified ______, the article will change ______, within these limits: ______.
The change might be a prerequisite, a replacement example, a narrower recommendation, or an explanation of a failure mode. Sometimes the right edit is to remove advice you cannot defend. A contribution that repeats the surrounding paragraph may not need to appear.
Use a direct quote when the wording adds precision or captures a meaningful judgment. Paraphrase when that makes the procedure easier to follow, while retaining attribution. Check factual platform claims against current documentation even if the interviewee sounds certain.
Record the verification status beside the proposed edit. An expert’s recollection establishes what they report experiencing; it does not establish what caused a result or how often other teams encounter it. For an unverified consequential claim, narrow the wording, identify it as the person’s judgment, or leave it out.
Send the relevant passage back for an accuracy check, including enough surrounding text to expose a misleading interpretation. Keep responsibility for the article’s conclusions and wording; an accuracy check need not give the source editorial control.
Worked example: replace blanket onboarding advice
This hypothetical example uses invented scenario details to show an editorial decision. It describes no actual interview or measured result.
Imagine a SaaS team writing for founders whose products detect errors in customer records. The draft recommends removing the data-import requirement and letting every new user explore sample data.
The writer asks an implementation specialist whether sample data demonstrates enough value to justify postponing import. In the scenario, the specialist explains that a sample workspace can teach navigation but cannot reveal errors in a customer’s own records. Some users also need an administrator to authorize access to the source system.
| Hypothetical contribution | Specific article edit | Check needed for a real product |
|---|---|---|
| Sample data teaches navigation. | Describe the sample workspace as an introduction to the interface. | Test what a user can learn in that workspace. |
| Detecting customer-specific errors requires customer records. | Replace the advice to postpone every import with a decision based on the result the user needs. | Confirm which results require real data. |
| An administrator may need to authorize access. | Add a preparation step that identifies who can grant access. | Verify the source system’s permissions and import requirements. |
The initial advice reads:
Remove the import requirement and let every new user explore sample data first.
A proposed revision for this hypothetical product reads:
Offer a sample workspace to users who want to learn the interface. When a user needs to find errors in their own records, guide them through import. Before they begin, explain which records they need and whether an administrator must authorize access.
The revision gives the reader a condition for choosing each path and a prerequisite to check. Before using it as advice about a real product, the writer would verify the requirements and test both paths. Whether either path improves activation remains a separate question requiring measurement.
Check reader usefulness and limit search claims
Ask a reader who resembles your intended audience to use the revised section to choose an option and explain why. For the onboarding example, ask when they would offer sample data, when they would require real records, and what they would check before import. Note any answer that requires information the section omits.
This is a check for gaps in the explanation. A few readers’ responses do not establish that the advice works across the wider audience or improves a business outcome.
Google’s content guidance asks whether a page provides original information, clear sourcing, relevant expertise, and enough help for readers to achieve their goal. An interview can help address those questions when its substance changes the advice. Read Google’s helpful content guidance.
Those questions do not establish that adding expert quotes improves rankings or earns AI citations. Google says established SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, and meeting its requirements does not guarantee crawling, indexing, or serving. Read Google’s AI features documentation.
Copy the expert interview worksheet
Complete the article setup once. Repeat the contribution record for each answer you plan to use, so separate claims retain their own evidence and limits.
ARTICLE SETUP
Article and section:
Reader and situation:
Decision the reader needs to make:
Tentative answer:
Unresolved assumption and evidence that would change it:
Expert and relevant experience:
Relationship or incentive to disclose:
Specific incident or example to ask about:
Recording and attribution agreement:
CONTRIBUTION RECORD — repeat for each proposed edit
Expert's exact words or labeled paraphrase:
Recording timestamp or note reference:
Context needed to understand the answer:
Writer's interpretation:
Supporting document or other verification:
Verification status and unresolved questions:
Current article wording:
Proposed replacement, addition, or deletion:
Conditions where the advice does not apply:
Attribution wording and accuracy-check status:
READER CHECK
Task used to check the revised section:
Where the reader hesitated or needed more information:
Further edit needed:Before finishing, check that every retained contribution changes what the reader can understand or do. Remove unsupported numbers and wording that makes one person’s experience sound representative.
Start with one paragraph of vague advice
Choose a paragraph in an article you are working on. Write the reader’s unresolved decision, your tentative answer, and the question you would ask someone who has handled that problem. Identify a relevant practitioner and complete the article setup in the worksheet.
After the conversation, fill in one contribution record with the original wording and the proposed edit. Resolve its verification questions before using the revised passage.
