Brad Rourke

Category: social networks

  • Ten Tips For Twitter Newbies

    So you’ve signed up for Twitter, followed your best friend and your spouse, and posted two updates. (You are in good company if one of your first updates says: “Trying to figure out Twitter.”) So now what? Here are ten tips to get started. Look around and follow a handful of people. Look at who…

  • Chronicle: Follow These People. Me: Article Too Long.

    Andrea Jarrell pointed out an interesting article recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s a list of ten people to follow on Twitter, but it also includes some interesting discussion of what Twitter is and how you might use it. It’s geared toward academics — people who often live and interact in pages rather…

  • Taking Private Conversations Public

    Last week, Lisa Hickey wrote a piece in which she mused on some of the societal effects of social media. She makes a number of good points, but one in particular stood out for me — the relationship between online and in-person conversations when it comes to trust. Think about all the times you’ve had…

  • Astroturf On Twitter

    In organizing circles, “astroturf” refers to the practice of creating the simulation of a grassroots groundswell through robo calls, highly choreographed postcard campaigns, etc. People on Capitol Hill can tell it’s happening when they suddenly get pounds of mail that’s identical. My friend Jed Miller raises some interesting (related) questions about using Twitter as a…

  • Building A Talk Using Social Media

    In late January, the New York Time’s David Pogue gained a bit of Twitter infamy with a stunt. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was making a presentation and as a way to demonstrate the “power of Twitter,” he asked for a cure for hiccups with Twitter running on his screen. He got lots…

  • Tweets Squeezing Out Rants

    Brian Solis of TechCrunch wrote an important review of an interesting trend in today’s social media world. We are learning to publish and react to content in “Twitter time” and I’d argue that many of us are spending less time blogging, commenting directly on blogs, or writing blogs in response to blog sources because of…

  • Real World Social Media Workflow — How Much Time Do I Spend Listening?

    Social media maven Beth Kanter has been attending a conference on nonprofit use of technology. One of the speakers was Wendy Harman, who runs social media for the Red Cross. Beth has a great recap of that session here, with these key takeaways: First thing every morning, [Wendy] spends a couple of hours listening –…

  • Selling To Business And Thinking About Using Social Media? You’re LATE.

    A remarkable report crossed my desk from the Groundswell folks at Forrester Research. It’s a study of the social media habits of a representative sample of business-to-business buyers. These are the folks you imagine are dry. Buying stuff for their company, from other companies. Where’s the innovation to be had there? Well, you’d be surprised.…

  • Selling To Business And Thinking About Using Social Media? You're LATE.

    A remarkable report crossed my desk from the Groundswell folks at Forrester Research. It’s a study of the social media habits of a representative sample of business-to-business buyers. These are the folks you imagine are dry. Buying stuff for their company, from other companies. Where’s the innovation to be had there? Well, you’d be surprised.…