Not All of Your Thoughts Have to Be Original to Be a Thought Leader
By Ido Lechner, Co-founder & Head of Strategy @ Magic Media
You’ve been making a genuine effort creating content to spread your ideas and gain recognition, but all your hard work isn’t producing the results you’ve been hoping for. 12 posts in and your follow count is low, with lackluster engagement to boot.
“How many google searches until I find the secret to growing this account? It was daunting enough taking the first step to post, but I’m not getting many likes here… it’s making me look like an amateur!”
Creating content is an arduous and time consuming process that eats away at your day.
Meanwhile, Sam on LinkedIn is reposting other people’s work, and, with nothing more than a caption linking back to the original post, has been surfing on a high of likes and comments.
What’s going on here?
Why is the guy posting other people’s content getting so many I more eyeballs? He didn’t even make it himself… he’s not saying anything new here.
Ok, so here’s the thing…
Yes, to be a thought leader you need to introduce new concepts to your audience. You absolutely should be rationing a part of your day towards the creation of new content — written pieces, videos, photos. Get new material out there, every day.
But with that said…
No, not everything you post has to be original. It just has to be “new.”
It’s certainly true that thought leaders inspire change by being the first to introduce new and actionable concepts to their network, but being the first one to introduce an idea doesn’t always mean being the first one to have it.
There really isn’t anything wrong with reposting content, so long as you provide attribution if its required. Developing an online presence is first and foremost about being ‘present’ after all. I wouldn’t describe being ahead of industry trends, sharing news, starting discussions and drawing attention to other people’s work as anything less than that.
In many ways, thought leadership is equal parts curation as it is content creation. If the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, than thought leaders themselves are followers of great ideas, passed on from adjacent industry experts.
How much more content you could be posting each day? Does it always have to be your own?
Share other people’s work on Instagram in the story section. Repost on LinkedIn, and add your own caption to get people talking. It never hurts to remind the world you exist, and you don’t need to own the information you’re passing along to your network and audience.
After all, the fastest (and really the only way) to grow your online presence is to deliver value to your audience. That’s a highly subjective statement — what is value anyways? — but one thing’s for sure, educating and inspiring others doesn’t always require the materials to be yours.
To be crystal clear, thought leadership was never supposed to be about originality. It’s about moving industries (and societies) forward by enlightening their workers.
That’s why not all of your content has to be original.
