3 Key Elements Your Content Needs to Break Out From the Crowd With the torrential onslaught of new content -- 2 million blog posts every day! -- it's not easy to stand out. Here's how

Content marketing has been around for a while now -- it's no longer a new idea. Most companies have a robust content marketing strategy that includes blogging, social media, and even advertising on social networks.

But according to MarketingProfs, there are as many as 2 million blog posts published every single day. There's such a high volume of content being produced that the environment has become extremely competitive.

Related: The 5 Ultimate Content-Marketing Tools

The question is: Now that everyone is on board and publishing content around the clock, what can you do to make your material stand out from the noise?

Add research to your content strategy.

One area many content producers are missing the mark is in the research department. Rather than taking the time to share insights from within their own companies, they are using statistics and research from external sources.

Look at any popular blog post and you'll notice that much of it pivots on hard numbers, statistics, and research that proves certain methods, tactics, and strategies are more effective than others. That information has to come from somewhere -- so why not from your business?

While everyone is linking out to in-depth studies that prove X is 46 percent more effective at Y, your business or organization can be the one who's actually generating this data, which not only helps you better understand your unique business -- but it establishes your company as the authority on the subject as well.

This will also help you build up a nice network of external links back to your content as more and more people reference your research, too.

Related: How the Experts Scale Their Content Strategies

External links matter.

We know that having a network of external links that point back to your website are a good thing (because they bring more outside traffic to your website.)

But it goes beyond a matter of traffic -- it impacts your organic search rankings, too. Information from Moz says that external links are extremely important for search engine optimization -- and because they indicate popularity and relevance for search engine algorithms, they can help raise your content to the top of search results.

So, for example, say you're an email marketing company and you publish new research that shows personalization within subject lines boosts open rates by 65 percent. You create an in-depth report that shares additional statistics and information about personalization's impact, which is both valuable and insightful for your audience.

Related: 5 Strategies to Optimize Email Marketing Targeting Millenials

But other industries then want to reference this great new research, too. So they link out to it in with blog posts they're writing and showcase some of the interesting statistics from your research.

Over time, you notice that this research is not only bringing new, relevant traffic to your website, but that this piece of content climbing the list of search results that come up for "Email personalization in subject lines."

Now, this is just an example, and the results are not always the same -- but you get the idea here. Research is extremely valuable -- and every content creator is hungry for new data he or she can showcase.

Related: Step Up Your Link Strategy to Get Better Search Results (Infographic)

Don't be a regurgitator.

If you're looking for a simple way to make your content more interesting and relevant this year, stop turning to the research from other companies and start sharing your own.

Not only will you highlight interesting trends within your niche, but over time, you'll train your audience to come to you as a go-to source of industry research and build up your authority.