Credibility and Thought Leadership

I’ve read a lot of stuff on the internet. Some of which I believe, some of which I don’t.

Maybe “believe” isn’t even the right word. There’s just some content I take more seriously than other content. We unavoidably evaluate everything we consume, and when we’re talking about content related to our professional or personal skill, I think we classify it –

• This content is typical, at my level or “below” me. It might have been a good refresher, but I didn’t gain anything from consuming it.
• This content is “above” me – it expands me. I am better than I was in some way because I have consumed it.

That sounds super-elitist, but it’s unavoidable. When we consume content to learn, we’re looking for signals that we should pay attention to what it says. We’re trying to figure out if this content helps us or not.

I’d like to compile a list of what characteristics of content signals authority or credibility, but I have to preface this by saying something obvious: credibility is in the eye of the beholder. You’ll never know all of the mental winds blowing around in someone’s head, so all you can do is play to commonalities.

Here are some ideas to signal that your content is credible –

Clear Attribution

People want to know that the content comes from an authority, and the first step to this is making sure they know the content comes from someone. I don’t think anyone wants “content by committee,” so attribute your content clearly – make sure the consumer can trace it back to a singular human mind.

Clear Presentation

We’ve become so inured to the presence of advertising and promotions that I think we mentally discount content that’s saturated with them.

I’m not totally sure of the mechanism here, but it likely has something to do with the altruistic nature of thought leadership. At some level, we want to believe that credible content exists for its own sake, which means there’s no external motivation as pedestrian as advertising or promotion to something being sold.

To be clear: I’m not saying you’re wrong for needing or wanting to do that, but at some level, I suspect it detracts from the credibility of the content.

Social Proof

An enormous amount of credibility we ascribe to something online boils down to how we found it. If we found it organically or through the creator’s own promotion, that’s one thing. If it was upvoted 10,000 times on a subreddit filled with smart people, that’s quite another.

A lot of this comes down to multi-channel promotion. If you create something and push it to multiple channels, there’s a greater chance it will get “picked up” and start to accrete social proof in the form of sharing or upvotes.

Of course, if it’s not good (meaning, not “good” for the audience to which you promoted it), then it will likely go nowhere. While this can be disheartening for your own content, it’s quite good for the concept of thought leadership in general. The social sphere is an effective (albeit imperfect) filtering mechanism that floats good content to the top, and sinks poor content to the bottom. We’re all better off for that.

“Conversationality”

I’ve said multiple times that I suspect we give more credence to content that sounds like it comes from a specific person, especially if we have some context for that person – who they are, what they do, etc

But there’s more to it than that –

In the age of AI, some concept of “conversationality” will likely take on more importance. One of the telltale signs of AI is likely going to become a veneer of anonymous vagueness, even if the content has some fake human attribution. I suspect we’ll eventually be able to see it a mile away.

And it’s not just the usage of pronouns. It’s… personality. It’s stories. It’s anecdotes. It’s content that genuinely sounds like someone is telling you a story about something.

Over time, I believe people will start to ascribe more import to content behind which you can hear a human voice.

Original Research or Experience

We value things that it looks like someone invested time into. Mentally, I think we’re all trying to avoid junk content, and we’re looking for signs to help us classify anything we consume.

A sign that you’ve created something of value is original research. Lots of articles serve up ideas or theories, but once you provide some original research, you’ve effectively created a story. You can explain what you saw, the question that resulted, how you tried to validate it, and what the results were.

Even apart from the information you supply, this draws the content consumer into what you were doing. You automatically provide exclusivity. This information is undeniably true, in that it represents your lived experience. (The conclusions you draw or the advice you give might not be valid, but the data you collected certainly is.)