Brad Rourke

Category: business

  • Three Kinds Of Social Media Losers: Charlatans, Sharks, And Geeks

    Peter Shankman and Sarah Evans have co-written an article titled, “Is your social media expert really an expert?” If you have spent even a little bit of time exploring social media, you probably know that these are two very credible, serious people. Their 25-point list is very useful to anyone thinking about seeking outside help.…

  • How Blob Marketing Works

    I’ve been fiddling around with social media for a while now. Long before that, I was active online. I had a blog before the word was invented. And I promoted that blog (it was an occasional column about California politics I called Content) through a simple email list that I grew to a couple hundred…

  • Are You Ready To Switch To Opt-In Marketing?

    Think about how much you send out (whether by mail or by email) that people did not ask for. What if you switched over to entirely opt-in strategies?

  • Job Seekers: Ways To Use Social Media

    I wrote recently about how organizations can use people’s social media feetprints to find talent. There’s also been lots written about how careful people need to be with what they post in the social media sphere lest they inadvertently make themselves unemployable. But I think if you’re looking for a job and you’re not using…

  • Why Be In Social Media?

    Any new trend generates jargon. It’s necessary in order for people to talk about the ideas embedded in the trend. Pretty soon, the people who follow the trend use so much jargon it loses its meaning. We’re about at that point with this thing people are calling “social media.” Amber Naslund suggests a good thought…

  • Nine Tips For Better Meetings

    Especially among nonprofits and community organizations, meetings are a plague. They seem to be called at the drop of a hat, they run over time, and all too often the chief result of one meeting is another meeting. But if you focus on the purpose of the meeting, and follow some simple guidelines, meetings can…

  • Why Domino's Wins: The Case For Leadership

    On Monday evening, Domino’s officials became aware of a truly disgusting video circulating on YouTube, evidently made by a pair of employees, that showed one of them making sandwiches for delivery and putting pieces of cheese up his nose and spitting on them. The video was causing an uproar, and observers had pieced together clues…

  • Strategy Vs. Tactics

    I was reminded of the howls from some pundits after a McCain-Obama debate in which the subject of “strategy” came up. The refrain from the left was: “This guy doesn’t even know the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics.’” The truth is, people have been arguing about the difference between strategy and tactics for centuries and…

  • Agents, Come Out Of The Shadows

    Seth Godin wrote recently about the plight of agents. Literary agents, travel agents, stock brokers, real estate agents — all either extinct or becoming so. Why? Anonymity: The problem with being a helpful, efficient but largely anonymous middleman is pretty obvious. Someone can come along who is cheaper, faster and more efficient. And that someone…