Creating and sharing: why we are all curators in the Social Age

I read a study this morning from the Pew Research Centre’s Internet Project. They interviewed a thousand American adults on their internet habits: 54% of them had posted original photos or videos to websites and 47% shared content they found elsewhere.

Creating and sharing are two parts of curation: they form the foundations of leadership skills in the Social Age

Sharing and curating are habits of the Social Age, they’re deeply embedded in how we interact online. In my Social Leadership model, i explore how we curate this content, how we tell stories about it and how we share it effectively, but one thing should be clear: it’s not a minority of people that do this. The curators are everywhere. To differentiate ourselves, to build reputation, we just have to do it well.

Effective sharing is about adding context, about interpretation, about storytelling. It’s what makes something relevant to you when it’s of no interest to me. Sharing is about quality not volume. It’s about timelines not randomness.

Organisations need to adapt to the realities of the Social Age: using enabling technologies to let people share effectively, building storytelling capability and forming strong and dynamic communities.