Building Influence Through Content Curation

One of the hot topics today in Internet marketing is content curation. Content curation will help you build influence with your community, fans and followers.

A key difference that distinguishes content curation from simple sharing of content, is that content curation involves commenting or to present additional information by the person curating, versus a simple share which is reciting what was originally posted..

So, for example, it might be considered a straight share when I retweet someone on Twitter, or share their update on Facebook. Where a simple share becomes a form of content curation is when I add my own comments or thoughts to the retweet or share. Something like, "Very good article" or "I'm attending this event, I hope you will too."

These types of additions serve primarily a social/relational function. A powerful form of content curation happens when you mention another person's article and incorporate your strategies or advice into it. This becomes a way of filtering information and presenting the best of it to your community. Building influence develops your position as a thought leader..

Introducing content by filtering is an influential building process. As the rate of content production increases and people feel more and more overwhelmed by information, the most influential leaders will be the ones who filter best. To gain a position of influence and leadership within a community you must engage in filtering information that is unique to that community.

A better way to become a influencer is to create and curate your own content. You can build your thought leadership by developing relevant, timely, unique and captivating content that serves your target audience. You can curate your own content periodically by reintroducing a valuable post, or reigniting the conversation around a particular topic.

While curation seems to have initially begun as a way of rapidly creating new content, it also represents another way to build influence. In a selective way, when you curate content you associate yourself with the author of the content.. By submitting a new format for your content or discussion allows you to control and direct where attention and focus goes..

To have influence you must be able to harness attention and focus..

When you become the content producer of your target market, the ultimate goal is to produce content that everyone wants to share. Make it interesting. Have an opinion. Use graphs, images, infographics to make your point. Make your content captivating to your target market. Calling attention to what someone should know and then guide them on what is not important.

To the extent that you can help people interact with your information in a productive way, while guiding the conversation so your community benefits, you will be a curator with influence.