Brandon Croke

One Year Later in SF – On Friendships

Friends make life worth living. Humans are social creatures, highly influenced, highly attuned and highly involved with other people. One year ago today I left most all of my friendships in Ohio to strike out a new path in San Francisco. While the transition was a bit rocky (I’ll spare you the details) I can [...]

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 [...]

Companies today must BE, not Seem

Before the internet, sounding impressive was more important than being impressive. Today, with consumers having a voice it is much harder for mediocre or false promises to spread. The shift companies today must make is not only of marketing dollars (from traditional mediums to digital mediums), but of their entire marketing mindset. More $ = [...]

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 [...]