Brandon Croke

What Happened in 2011?

Wow. What a year. Typically talks about new years, resolutions and predictions get on my nerves, but this year (against my own good judgement) I decided to take a look back at 2011 and share some milestones and life lessons learned. Looking back, a lot has happened the past year. I kicked off 2011 celebrating [...]

4 Things College Presidents Should Know about Social Media

Last week my friend Mallory Wood caught my attention when she shared an article by Michael Stoner asking for feedback from the higher ed community on what a college president should know about social media. After seeing the post (an important topic in my opinion) I started writing a lengthy comment below, but I didn’t [...]

Why Even Bother with Blogging?

I’ve got a confession to make. I haven’t been the best blogger lately. Sure I’ve got excuses (don’t we all) I’ve been traveling, I’ve been reading, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve been working on some awesome new projects more on those later. But it hit me today during a client meeting that I’m not practicing what [...]

Alone Together – Book Excerpt and Review

I’ve just started a new read that I can’t put down. I can’t think of a better way to prime myself for one of the worlds largest gathering of web, technology and emerging media conferences (SXSW Interactive) than to read a book on how these new technologies are changing us as people. Sherry Turkle is [...]

Facebook Page Statistics: Seeking Truth in Numbers

Back in 2009 Sysmos did an analysis of over 600,000 Facebook Fan Pages and I had some old thoughts I jotted down that I never got to publish until today. Although the numbers may be a bit old, the principles behind their findings are timeless. So many social media gurus love to tweet new research and statistics that [...]

What’s the future career path for social media consultants?

Extinction This may sound odd coming from a “social media consultant” of sorts, but after spending the past few years working with companies on social media I’ve noticed a pattern that doesn’t look good for your resident Twitter guru. What’s the main reason social media consultants will become extinct? Gen Y. Just in the past [...]

Sam Adams: Better Beer or Better Marketing?

There is no doubt that Sam Adams knows how to brew a great beer. Not surprisingly though, they also know a thing or two about marketing. The beer market is a highly competitive industry and while most “American Beers” sell funny commercials and sexy woman, Sam Adams takes a more well… beer focussed approach. If [...]

Where is the Talent Headed?

Yesterday I saw a post on Facebook from Paul Roetzer that really got me thinking. The excerpt below flashed through my news feed and for a minute I had an “a-hah” moment: “The new sort of competition is all about charisma. It’s about gathering talent in one spot. . . . This concentration of talent then attracts more [...]

The Secret to Success in Social Media

There truly is a secret to how to be successful in social media. Want to know what it is? The secret is seldom talked about. Yet, everyday there are thousands of people talking about social media ROI, social media monitoring, social media policies etc. You can find hundreds of lists of the top 10 brands on [...]