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A friend of mine recently introduced me to “Hardcore History,” an excellent military history podcast. In one episode, the host, Dan Carlin (@hardcorehistory), made an interesting observation about the difference between how modern historians approach the retelling of history compared to those from decades and centuries ago.

“History today is like news reporting in that the job of the historian is to get the facts. But many of us like to have, and see value in having, someone you would call a ‘news analyst.’ Someone whose job it is to look at the news in its entirety, and explain the bigger picture of what it means.... Yes it involves opinion. But with opinion sometimes comes insight.”

This reminded me of one of my favorite sessions at SXSW 2011, titled, “Bloggers v. Journalists.” In the session, Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu), author of PressThink and a professor at NYU (pictured right), was discussing the role of bloggers and journalists in news reporting.

He stated that journalism today is all about objectivity—telling all sides of a story without bias or opinion. Somewhere along the way, young writers were conditioned to take their voices out of their work, sticking to he-said/she-said journalism in hopes of establishing trust and authority.

Rosen went on to say that the terms of trust are changing. People no longer trust objectivity, and instead prefer expert opinion, as long as the expert is upfront about his or her bias.

Establishing Trust Through Opinion

Content marketers today are, in many respects, journalists and historians. They document the news of an industry, help to identify trends, place them into context, and then publish this for audiences via mediums that promote sharing and conversation, such as blogs, ebooks, white papers, videos and podcasts.

However, with the proliferation of information online, if your content doesn’t differentiate itself from the rest, then it is likely to get lost in the shuffle and produce weak returns.

So, how do you make your content stand out? One way is to defy today's historian and journalist logic by adopting a unique voice and integrating opinion. Through opinion, you can explain how and why—based on your experience and understanding of the topic—you think trends or events will impact your industry, affect clients or customers, change business strategy and more.

The Power of Opinion

By consistently offering opinions and unique insight on industry topics, you create content that can only be found on your site, content that online audiences will find valuable and relatable.

This is because opinions do more than just provide insight, they:

• Capture attention
• Resonate
• Generate other opinions
• Evoke emotion
• Distinguish those “in the know” from those repeating “the know”
• Most importantly: Make you real and relatable

From a marketing perspective, all of these combine to truly engage audiences, which can:

• Increase social media shares and followers
• Generate inbound links
• Grow subscribers, relationships and loyalty
• Raise your profile enough to generate media attention and speaking engagements

In addition, Google’s Panda updates make it more important than ever to produce original, high-quality content that audiences engage with. This is an especially important point to remember for those curating content: By offering opinions and insight on curated articles, you are making the content your own, instead of simply regurgitating another’s work.

While I don’t think opinion always has a place, and in some industries (i.e. legal, medical, financial) may get you into trouble, I believe that opinions have the power to take your marketing efforts to a new level, and set you apart in an otherwise competitive market. 

What’s your opinion?

(Image Credit: Rachael Olan, SXSW.com)

Keith Moehring is business development manager and a senior consultant at PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. Follow Keith on Twitter @keithmoehring. 

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