Content marketing takes work, research, drafting, proofreading, referencing, and publishing. The average blog article, one that is thoroughly compiled can take anywhere from 2-4 hours. I’m talking about a piece of content intended to engage and interact with your visitors. It’s important to invest the time, money, and effort in compiling content that will resonate with your visitors. These are potential customers interested in purchasing your product or service.

One of the most common issues that your content marketing strategy usually faces is authenticity. As a matter of fact, according to Google’s head of web spam Matt Cutts, 25-30% of content is duplicated. This is an ongoing issue with many brands and individuals out there. Particularly marketers. Each tend to put spin on a subject by inserting their own perspective and calling it authentic content. Authentic content does not consist of writing about the same subject as someone else did and then simply putting your own perspective on it.

Writing authentic content is difficult. Extremely challenging! It takes a lot of grunt work and elbow grease to come up with a piece of content that stands on its own.

Why Content Authenticity Matters in Marketing

When putting together a content marketing strategy, it’s imperative to consider authenticity. Exercising this quite diligently will ultimately help build a trend with your audience in the long run. One of the main reasons that sites like Mashable, Gizmodo, Search Engine Land, Digital Trends, or Huffington Post even have gained such big market recognition is due to their content authenticity. One of these sites will usually be the first to report on a breaking piece of news. Each will compose the information into an engaging and informative blog post article that will invoke interest with their audience.

How to Implement Authenticity in Your Content Marketing

Putting together a valiant content marketing endeavor requires a strategy, creativity, and of course a tactical approach. You need to spend some time thinking about how to portray yourself or your brand across in an authentic fashion. Here are a few simple tips to follow when attempting to implement authenticity in your content marketing strategy.

• Research the subject matter as best as you can. Google Trends is a good resource for performing general research on a specific topic or subject. That should give you a ballpark understanding of the current consumer trends revolving around the topic or subject you are interested in writing about.

• Perform sample searches on Google and explore the organic results. Take note of the top 3 sources that are currently discussing that particular subject or topic you are interested in writing about.

• Peruse through some of the articles you identified on Page 1 of Google after submitting a search query. Notate to yourself some of the most common things that each source is discussing that pertains to your subject or topic. The whole point behind this endeavor is to ensure that you will not sound repetitive.

• Think about the unique thoughts and perspective you can include within your article that will intrigue your readers. I’m talking about the one or more things that they will find most interesting in your article that has not been shared by others. This is perhaps one of the most integral elements in establishing content authenticity.

Following these simple rules will help guide you to content authenticity. Remember, positioning yourself as an authority in part heavily relies upon content authenticity. One of the things that resonates with web visitors is the fact that they can absorb breaking news and information. As a brand, this gives you an opportunity to capture their attention and ultimately be able to connect with them.