Hackpacker

By now, almost everyone seems to be on one social media platform or another. But crafting an identity for your social media presence means knowing who you are, where you need to be and what you need to say. Finding yourself on social One of the big things about defining your identity is making sure it can survive changes of personnel. “Hold up,” you say, “we’re a small organisation and I don’t have time to define my identity. We’ve got a social whiz who handles all of that.” But whizzes leave, the environment is ever-changing (Twitter doubling its character count, for example) and having a strategic base to your social strategy makes decision-making easier. Your identity should give a clarity of purpose to guide you, no matter how big you get. In the rapid response world of social media, an identity liberates your social media staff to concentrate on great content. So, to prepare your business for a strong identity and growth in accounts, ask the basics: where, why and wh

When asked about the worst words of 2013, The Atlantic ’s Richard Lawson responded that he hated the usage of curation. His objection to the word was that it has shifted far from its original high-art meaning: "It's a reappropriated term that used to mean something good - putting lovely and interesting things in a museum! - but now denotes a technique of cobbling together preexisting web content and sharing it with readers/followers/whomever. In other words, linking to things.” And he’s got a point. Social media means we’re all curators now. Anyone who signs up for a Twitter account is curating a stream of links and cat videos for their followers and friends.  But personalised curation is a response to the information overblown that the web has created. Social media has given many users a way to make sense of this by looking to trusted curators: their friends. Learnist is a good example of social media curating lessons as users learn from their friends about