By Kelly Gregorio
The difficulty with content creation lies in the quest to stay credible.
In a sea of (often recycled) information, it can seem nearly impossible to position a client as an industry leader that stands out from the rest.
The good news is that with some thoughtful consideration and tweaks to your content creation routine, PR professionals can guide clients to an even higher level of credibility.
Five Ways to Make Your Content Credible
Make it Useful
One way to make content credible is to make it action-oriented. “How to,” numbered steps, and tip-related content will allow audiences to take your client’s credibility into their own hands.
If you base the content in the reality of real needs and wants, then audiences can test out words of wisdom for themselves.
Make it a Conversation
Credibility tends to stack in numbers. One way to up the cred of your content is to bring in others who have demonstrated success in that content area to comment and report on a specific topic, trend, or issue.
Consider hosting an interview as a way to welcome new voices and insights into your client’s arena. Keep in mind, by encouraging multiple perspectives onto pages, you also encourage interactions, comments, and carried out discussions from members of your audience and community.
Make it Approachable
You can have the best content in the world, but if it isn’t approachable, it is not going to get a chance to gain a following.
Keep pages welcoming and inviting with easy-to-read articles and resources organized in a way that makes logical sense. H1 and H2 tags don’t just make your content pretty. They also help your content rank around industry-specific keywords and phrases.
Subheadings and bold print that finalize points are essential. Go the extra step by including real, relatable examples to increase understanding and use accompanying pictures and videos to increase entertainment value when appropriate.
Make it Open-Minded
When crafting content, it is important to remember you don’t have to find likeminded opinions and support in order to gain credibility.
Simply highlighting and thoughtfully examining opposing opinions really rounds out an argument.
Make an effort to increase your client’s credibility by remaining unbiased within the content at hand; be willing to give equal consideration to other sides, possibilities and varying viewpoints as much as possible. Audiences respond to a well-structured and well-reasoned argument that welcomes debate and discussion.
Make it Relatable
Content creation can be greatly served by an added personal touch.
See if there are appropriate ways in which you can incorporate real-life examples into written work. Anecdotes and personal stories can also help illustrate challenging and dense ideas in a digestible format that resonates with your audiences. Start with common customer questions and answer them as completely as you can.
Not only will credibility grow from a personal experience standpoint, but audiences will also feel closer and more loyal to brands that divulge glimpses into their past, insight into their present, and dreams for their future.