What role does content curation play in thought leadership?

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I’ve always said no because to be a thought leader necessitates generating original, new content or insights that address a certain markets issues or challenges.  By doing this you display your depth of expertise on a topic or a business sector.

After some good banter on one to two websites about this I have developed two observations on content curation and thought leadership.

Curated content plays a support role to thought leadership

The first is that curated content can play a very important role in supporting and informing a thought leadership content program.  For example, curated content feeds are a great way to keep in touch with trends which can inform your thought leadership topics and in that sense help with the content calendar.

New ideas as a result of curated content  could be thought leadership

The second is that if the person curating the content is able to, through that content, arrive at new ideas or insights which they then deliver to their audience this could be construed as thought leadership.

Regurgitating content doesn’t cut it

Simply regurgitating someone else’s content is not going to cut it.  Repurposing content is not going to cut it and neither will re-packaging it.  Content curation cannot be called thought leadership.  Only when it leads the curator into a totally new hypothesis or insight can it start approaching thought leadership status and at that point it is no longer curated content but rather the curator’s interpretation off the back of the curated content.    

I don’t want to take anything away from content curation.  It is fantastic for a content/editorial calendar and it can be a great support to a thought leadership campaign.  Content curation allows you to monitor trends in your space and help inform better what you are planning in real time.

Some great sites on content curation

If you are interested in reading more on content and content marketing/curation there are some great sites such as www.contentmarketinginstitute.com  www.junta42.com  http://optimalaccess.com/ and www.getcurata.com

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2 Responses to “What role does content curation play in thought leadership?”

1. Building Thought Leadership through Content Curation | Power Tools for Thought Leaders says:

   December 19, 2011 at 19:24

   [...] What role does content curation play in thought leadership? (thoughtleadershipstrategy.net) [...]
2. Building Thought Leadership through Content Curation | e1evation, llc says:

   January 17, 2012 at 23:11

   [...] Leadership through Content Curation View more presentations from Corinne WeisgerberRelated articlesWhat role does content curation play in thought leadership? (thoughtleadershipstrategy.net)Claiming Content Curation Is Thought Leadership Is Like Plagiarism [...]