The importance of authenticity in online content creation

“Authenticity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

No one knows who originally made this quip. But whoever it was, we can be reasonably sure they weren’t a Gen Z influencer. In this day and age, “fake it to make it” doesn’t work so well. Making it means keeping it real. 

How did authenticity get to be such a thing? And is it really what it claims to be?

Embracing reality

For many, an online persona is a perfect version of oneself, crafted to give an idyllic and thoroughly misleading picture of how great things are. Gen Z are having none of it.

Perhaps as social media natives they have a better-calibrated radar system when it comes to identifying fake from fact. For whatever reason, “real and raw” replaced picture-perfect as the modality of choice.

This has led to the rise of apps such as BeReal, and phenomena like the Instagram photo dump. 

It signals – once again – a juddering pivot from the norms of previous eras, where putting on a show was considered a sign of effort and general good form.

But why?

Authenticity is more than just a fad or affectation that the young will grow out of. It actually has a number of genuine advantages, particularly in the present age that is awash with free online content as far as the eye can see. Here are some of them:

• • It’s a better deal for your followers: people will be loyal to you because they find your content valuable. You don’t need to pretend if you actually have something important or interesting to say. Faking it is only necessary when you are covering up for a lack of genuine value. 
  • You find your niche faster: counter-intuitively, trying to please everyone is not the best path to growth. There are people out there who are looking for exactly the sort of thing that only you can put out. Watering it down for people who are not them is the last thing you want to do.

• It’s easier (in the long run): putting on a front or chasing trends may get you short-term spikes in engagement, but is hard work to maintain. And a fake persona is almost impossible to sustain in the long run. The real you will come through eventually.

In a world as competitive as the online content space, where everyone can access every subject for free, being yourself is the one true differentiator you have. Squandering it doesn’t make sense.

The biggest risk of all

Of course, because of all the competition, the lure of shortcuts is always present, and leads some people astray. The ‘authenticity gap’ is perhaps the biggest pitfall an influencer can fall into (so to speak). 

In other words, if people perceive that an influencer is not being straight with them, the betrayal is double. At least the detergent ad is not pretending to be objective, but you…we thought you were one of us! Shame!

A famous content creator called William Shakespeare once said, ‘To thine own self be true.” 

We’ll take this advice over the opening quote any day.

You can avoid losing the trust of your followers by staying true to yourself. And by remembering that this is not the same as being true to the algorithm. 

The algorithm is your servant not your friend, and should never be your master.