3 Essential Ingredients of Great Content

Why authenticity, accuracy, and sincerity are at the heart of the best content

That there's no shortage of content on the internet is the understatement of the decade. What there is a shortage of, in my opinion, is great content. Content that isn't merely ChatGPT-revised versions of the same stuff you've read a thousand times.

Great content is the needle-in-a-haystack stuff that you can identify immediately because it's fresh, novel, and insightful. But beyond that, it tends to demonstrate several characteristics that you see over and over again in the writing, video, and audio busily setting itself apart.

This week, I'm going to talk briefly about what I suggest are three of the (related) hallmarks of really good content: authenticity, accuracy, and sincerity. Let's go!

Authenticity

Authenticity, in this context anyway, is the practice of being true to yourself.

You come from a unique background. You possess a unique set of skills. You speak and write a certain way, you hold a particular set of beliefs and opinions, and you want this thing or that thing.

One of the hallmarks of great content is that it makes crystal clear the provenance of the writer, podcaster, or videographer. We can know something about the creator almost immediately because it shines through in their work. They don't hide their accents, their opinions, their mannerisms, their ways of speaking, or their beliefs. They don't pretend to have skills they don't actually have, and they don't downplay any expertise they actually do have just to seem more "folksy."

To borrow a phrase that's become popular amongst work and performance coaches, authentic creators "bring their whole selves with them" when they make content.

One of the easiest ways to illustrate what authenticity is is by shining a light on an industry where it's most lacking: contemporary politics. In both my country (Canada) and the United States, politicians on both the right and the left seem to be falling over themselves in a race to be the least authentic human beings on the planet. Right-wing populists claim to be "salt of the earth" when they haven't so much as done their own grocery shopping since well before they graduated from Yale. Left-wing progressives claim to be champions of the downtrodden while simultaneously pushing policies that cement the upper classes further into their privileged perches. Very few people in that field (arguably, anyway) are who they say they are.

Basically, what I'm saying is no different than what your eighth-grade teacher told you all those years ago when you were looking nervous at the dance: Just be yourself.

Accuracy

It won't come as a surprise to you that we're suffering from a flood of misinformation and disinformation on the web. Sometimes it seems like we can't trust anything we read, regardless of the source. Indeed, some people have taken their suspicion that far, arguing that everything we come across on the internet is inherently suspect.

I'm not that jaded. I remain of the view that there are credible and reliable sources of information available online. Reputable news organizations, reliable journalists, and even some content creators have put accuracy and truthfulness at the heart of their work.

A healthy skepticism will always be a part of any balanced information diet but, as a writer, YouTuber, podcaster, or other content creator, there's no good reason to make your audience sift through your work just so they can avoid lies, untruths, inaccuracies, or other falsehoods.

Yes, you can and should always encourage your audience to take what you write or say with a grain of salt and to verify your claims to the best of their abilities. But, at the same time, you can always take much of the work out of this task for them by citing reliable sources and ensuring you're only giving them accurate information in the first place.

It's a cliche that trust, while hard to earn, is extraordinarily easy to break. And that's especially true for content creators, who live in an ecosystem where people are unfortunately all too willing to bend the truth - or even tell straight up lies - to make a buck or advance an agenda.

So resist the temptation, if it exists for you at all, to exaggerate, fabricate, conceal the truth, minimize inconvenient facts, self-aggrandize, or otherwise misrepresent reality to your audience. While it might seem like there's a dollar or two in it or that it's a shortcut to a larger audience, the lies just aren't worth it in the end.

Sincerity

Sincerity is similar to authenticity and accuracy but I think there's a critical difference. While authenticity demands that you be true to yourself, sincerity means that you be truthful with your audience. While accuracy requires that you refrain from making demonstrably false claims, sincerity means that you do your damndest to go above and beyond that and faithfully pursue truth at all times.

It means not engaging in rank bullshittery. It means not hawking products, courses, and sponsorships you haven't carefully vetted. Above all else, it means treating your audience with a respectful lack of cynicism, understanding that they should be able to take your claims at face value and be absolutely confident that you've done your homework.

There's nothing wrong with being ironic or sarcastic from time to time, as long as it's very clear that that's what you intended. Anytime you veer from sincerity, your audience should be in on the joke. They shouldn't be at the wrong end of a disingenuous pitch for some shady Web 3.0 crypto platform or subject to a sponsorship for a consultant you don't actually believe will help anyone. They shouldn't have to consume 1000 words worth of fluff just because you couldn't come up with something good for this week's newsletter.

Truth as a trump card

You may have noticed that all three of these characteristics of great content have something to do with the concept of true. And I don't think that's a coincidence. Great content rings true. It's not wishy-washy BS. It's not shady hucksters selling cheap subscriptions or weak online courses. And it's not flat-out misinformation.

Great content is true stuff said plainly.

And that's about as simply as I can put it.