If you want to be noticed online, it’s more important than ever to be an authoritative, credible source of information. Content marketing is vital to success, yet all the content in the world will not help you stand out if search engines don’t find it relevant and credible. Aside from impacting your SEO efforts and bringing people to your site, credible content keeps people there, driving loyalty and trust with customers, clients, and other members of your audience. Additionally, we are living in an age of pervasive disinformation; we should all do our part to ensure the truthfulness of the content our audience consumes. Here are some ways to stand out with credible content:
- Have a Subject Matter Expert create content for you. One of the best possible ways to ensure that you’re publishing authoritative content is to have it created by an expert. When an SME creates content for you, your liability is potentially limited (especially if the topic is legal, medical, or related to another highly specialized field), and your reach is much farther through shares and backlinks, which also boosts your search rankings. Bonus: if the SME writes a longer piece for you, you will be able to break it down and get several social posts and smaller pieces of content.
- Have an SME review your content. If it’s not practical to have an SME create content for you, see if you can have one review your content to ensure accuracy and overall quality, especially if you’re creating a how to guide or a complete explanation of a certain subject. An expert can check your usage of unfamiliar jargon, make sure you’ve explained new technologies in a way that makes sense, and help edit your work for overall clarity.
- Interview experts or do a round-up of expert opinions. Interviews and roundups are a great way to expose your audience to the best minds in your field. Make sure you ask questions that are relevant to your audience’s needs and interests. Asking about current trends and the direction of the field almost always generates useful tidbits for content, as does asking about people’s personal journeys (how did they get started, what challenges did they face, what was their biggest victory, when did they know this was for them, what do they wish was different, etc.). Questions can always be tailored to your specific industry and answers can be used in blog posts, podcasts, videos, and social posts as well as in your original long form content.
- Delve into original sources. Rather than quote a quote of a quote or reference someone else’s references, follow the trail back as far as you can. If possible, get all the way to the source material. Find the original study, read the actual data, and go down the rabbit hole of footnotes. The less your research is like the children’s game of telephone, the better. It may seem that this isn’t important to do for things like social media posts (and, as always, it depends on your audience and your purpose), but if you want people and search engines alike to trust what you say, it’s best if you can base any claims you’re making on reliable research.
- Evaluate sources critically. In this day and age, we should all be asking questions about the facts and opinions we’re presented with on a daily basis. If you’re going to put your name and the reputation of your business or organization behind those claims, you should hold them at least to a standard that would not make your high school English teacher give you a failing grade. Check the author’s credentials. Determine their motivation for writing, creating, or sharing the information you’re reading. Look for the author’s biases and whether they seem objective. Find out when the piece was published or when the research was done, and whether it’s likely to still be accurate and relevant. Look at how deeply the subject is being explored. If the research is original, find out if it has been peer reviewed.
Substance and Style 