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From satire accounts to blatantly false accounts, fake news is an ever-growing concern among publishers and audiences alike. Everything, from presidential campaigns to local businesses and professionals, has become the victim of fake news stories.

This has created an epidemic in the content marketing world. With everyone having the ability to create, distribute, and promote content—regardless of context or truth—where does this leave publishers and writers? Brands and marketing professionals have worked tirelessly to become authorities in this online space, and fake news can ruin it in a matter of seconds.

The solution: adding value.

How Value Separates You from Fake News

Fake news always has a sneaky agenda. Whether it’s to sway the reader’s thoughts in a particular direction, to stir up controversy, or to simply be a nuisance, fake news lacks one fundamental factor found in top performing content: value.

When you create content for your audience and overall marketing strategy, you should always focus on adding value to your reader’s day or life. For example, if I owned a coffee house, I would write content related to any of the following topics:

• Brewing Coffee-Shop-Worthy Coffee at Home
• The Difference Between Arabica and Robusta Coffee Beans
• Decoding the Complicated Coffee Shop Drink Names
• Demystifying the Unspoken Coffee Shop Etiquette

All of these topics seek to enhance the reader’s life with relation to drinking coffee, brewing coffee, or visiting a coffee shop—all of which can bring my hypothetical coffee store revenue. By providing this value to potential customers, you show them that you care about their livelihood. All fake news seeks to do is spark a conversation and/or controversy.

Don’t Spread Falsehoods

When creating valuable content, you must back up your statements with facts, studies, and statistics that prove your point. However, the Internet is riddled with inaccurate statements regarding popular statistics and studies. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to make something up and spread it across the world wide web.

With this in mind, you should always do your due diligence when creating content. As a brand or publisher, you are responsible for sharing correct information with your audience. If you accidentally use an incorrect statistic, you are contributing to the fake news epidemic.

To ensure that you share accurate information, vet the source you found it from. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Did the source conduct the research?
• If not, did they cite the original source?
• Was the study reliable?
• Is the source known to share accurate information?
• How did you find the statistic or fact? Was it through social media?

If any of your answers seem a bit off, it’s in your best interest to find other statistics or data.

Valuable Content Builds Trust

Thanks to the abundance of fake news, readers have difficulty determining which content to trust. If you prove to readers that your content provides value and is trustworthy, you are setting yourself up for success.

When you produce and distribute relevant content with accurate information that readers find valuable, you’ve hit the bullseye. After engaging with your content a few times, your audience will begin to trust your brand and rely on you for truthful information regarding whatever topic or industry your content discusses.

Don’t contribute to the fake news epidemic. When they go low, you go viral by creating valuable, factual content your audience can trust.