Back, Back, Back It Up

We live in a loud world. News stations with their constant stream of unfortunate events, social media throwing the opinions of your friends and loved ones in your face, and smartphones that keep you trapped in the digital world. Everyone has an opinion about everything and they need everyone else to hear what they have to say. When in reality, their opinion is exactly that – an opinion. An opinion is not fact, it is not research, and it is not credible no matter the medium because opinions are influenced YOU. I believe that now more than ever people should be doing their research about a subject before spouting off figures they saw in an article on The Onion. We have talked about how an attention-grabbing headline is very important in modern day journalism but sometimes that catchy headline can lead to the downfall of a lazy reader. People click “share” on Facebook without even opening the article or looking at the source. I have a friend who shared something on Facebook the other day which is a perfect example of the lazy social justice warrior. He shared an article that had the headline “Mayor Is to Appeal Officer Lawsuit Sentence Involved in Shooting”. The headline is intriguing, right? Well, it was so intriguing to my friend that he did not even bother to open the article to see what was happening. It turns out the article was from 2015 and was very old news, which was pointed out to him in a comment and he proceeded to delete the post.
On a Business Insider graph from 2010 I saw that above all else, including brokers and financial websites, people trust their own opinion the most. Imagine how much higher that percentage might be now in 2018 with all the things that have happened on those eight years. Does anyone else see this as a bit pathetic? Are we so high and mighty that we believe our opinion is the Golden Rule of journalism? Have we lost so much faith in our news and political leaders that we will not trust any information except the information in our own head? In case you were not aware; human beings are not omnipotent in any way. You do not know everything and yes, you could very well be incredibly wrong but are too stubborn to ever admit it. So, you keep believing in your opinion that goes against the facts because you do not care about or trust the facts presented to you.
In Markham Nolan’s TEDTalk he says, “by the time I'm finished talking here, there'll be 864 more hours of video on YouTube than there were when I started, and two and a half million more photos on Facebook and Instagram than when I started”. This sounds familiar, right? If you read my post about Big Data, you see the enormity of how much data there is on the internet. With such a big amount of data being transmitted you can expect a solid chunk of it to be wrong, so searching out credible resources is more important than ever. Nolan goes on to talk about the Egyptian revolution in 2011 and how much effort was put into making sure the photos and postings they were seeing were in fact real. If they were to see an image and it looks so real that they take it at face value, then later down the line it is discovered to be fake, it could cost them their career. Even as a non-professional it is still important to keep your blog credible because eventually your unverified facts could cause something catastrophic for yourself or someone reading your blog. We see unverified posts constantly on social media either claiming some celebrity died or is getting divorced (and they are not) or fake pictures of severe weather (like Nolan mentions about Hurricane Sandy), and even doctored photos from war zones. Can you imagine being the spouse or parent of someone in the military and they see that where their loved one was stationed had been bombed? Absolute heartbreak and hysterics would ensue because in that moment they are just thinking about their loved one, not whether the picture is real or not. By sharing pictures or articles that are not credible you could destroy someone else’s world without even knowing it.
Now let’s get focus on your professional blog and why, no matter the topic, it needs to be credible. I found an article online talking about why credibility is important, and I want to mention that this article was taken from someone’s blog and is mostly opinion. The author talks about how your blog needs to be credible in order to be popular because if it is not credible you will lose the trust of your readers. The very first tip that the author gives in making your blog credible is to “do your research”. Doing your research means fact checking to make sure the stats or the strategies you post are correct and work”. Doing research may be a long and painstaking process depending on the number of things you need to fact check or how deep you must dig for an answer. This kind of work may not be something you were looking to do in your professional blog, but it is necessary. If you decide to just take a statistic at face value without doing the research, you could seriously damage your reputation or even negatively affect your career. Can you imagine losing your career because you were too lazy to do your research? Then think about how your credibility is ruined which in turn ruins your reputation. You might as well sign up for unemployment now.
I found a website called “Problogger” and it has other tips for creating a credible blog. I will list some of those tips for you: use case studies, provide specific details and avoid generalities, use a photograph depicting the article topic, and more. Another tip that was not mentioned on the Problogger website is to make your blog look credible. What I mean by that is make your blog clean looking and easy to navigate with no broken links. Let’s say you are going in for a job interview, but you look messy – your hair is a mess, you’re wearing athletic shoes, and your shirt is untucked. Does that give you the mental picture of a professional you would like to hire? No, it does not. But if that person was well dressed and well-groomed you would be more willing to give that person a chance and trust them. This example can directly correlate to a blog; if your blog does not look professional then someone is less likely to think you are credible and trustworthy. Credibility is very important these days because more and more data is piling up which inherently means more lies and exaggerations are being generated and published. Without credibility you are putting yourself and your blog at risk both professionally and personally. Miriam Webster defines trust as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something” which shows that if people think you are credible and worthy of trust then they are relying on you to be truthful. Do not let your readers trust in you be shattered – just do the work and be credible.


https://www.ted.com/talks/markham_nolan_how_to_separate_fact_and_fiction_online/transcript
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/blogging-credibility.html
https://problogger.com/12-ways-to-make-your-blog-posts-more-credible/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trust

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