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Thought Leadership and the return of Librarian. Part I

Thought Leadership Times Blog (Jan 17 2010)

  1. Thought Leadership and the return of Librarian. Part I


    The deluge of online content available for B2B products and service buyers continues to explode as marketing processes shift from an outbound to an inbound marketing model.  The Internet makes it easy to share content with prospects and customers. Searching for relevant information is just a few clicks away. However, against this rising deluge of content is the fixed time available for prospects and customers to search, digest and understand this information.  Thus, there is a unique opportunity for Thought Leaders to take on an old role that many consider redundant in the Search Age: The Librarian. 

    Try my quick memory experiment:  It’s 1995.  Where would you or your customers go to learn the latest, documented, non-marketing, information about an industry or business issue?  If we’re thinking before the Internet, that source of most information would most likely be the company’s research library.  In the library, there would be periodicals of industry information and a librarian would be readily available to conduct a search on a major information database.  In those days, we may have even emailed the librarian our information needs and they would provide us with the needed periodicals, books, and research to review at our leisure.

    In 2010, search and publishing have been democratized so that anyone may publish and anyone may search, at any time.  However, this freedom means that most information is published in unstructured ways, and with increasing frequency.  In the beginning, we started with flat HTML pages, but soon moved to Flash, then video content.  After only a few years, we now have blogs, PDF White Papers, and eBooks.  Key word marketing makes it easy to be relevant in customer searches, but keyword marketing is extremely competitive and cheaply available to anyone with a content marketing budget.

    Too much information to search and to digest means that customers and prospects need human filters to help secure a comprehensive understanding, online.  Welcome back the Librarian.  According to Wikipedia, “A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs.”  In simple terms, a librarian helps people with critical information needs.  Librarians or Information Professionals also act as collectors and maintainers of relevant information that will be of need to their clients. 

    Successful Thought Leadership requires that companies collect and make easily available relevant information for customers and prospects to consume.  This information should help individuals increase their knowledge regarding a certain topic within a limited time.  The format of the Internet makes it easy to store this content in easy-to-retrieve systems.  In addition to saving time, providing a relevant collection of information increases the trust value of thought leaders to their audience.  How does a thought leader become an effective librarian without taking on a new career?   That’s easy: Curate.  We’ll discuss this in the Part II of this series on, next week.

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