Monthly Archives

July 2012

Jul 13
Love0

How The Facebook Timeline Changes Destroyed an Industry. What???

By Uncategorized

So all day today I’ve been reading posts about how the changes to the Facebook business pages, wherein the tabs were de-emphasized and the timeline became a requirement, have destroyed an entire industry, namely that of agencies and design firms who charged a lot of money to build and maintain Facebook landing pages for their clients. Here’s one from Fortune, here’s another from Geoff Livingston.

This surprises you? Really? I’ve been a digital professional a loooong time (> 20 years), and one thing I’ve learned is that tools change. A lot. And often. And on a whim. Standards shift, strategies change, business models come and go. I cannot sympathize with a model that says you should build an entire business around the whims and trends of a mercurial software company, no matter how large. Developing an expertise in Facebook design as a component of the servies you offer makes total sense. Assigning an FTE to monitor, track, prepare for, and execute against evolving functionality makes more sense. Being experts in a particular technology is always good. But if your entire business is building landing pages around the Facebook Tabs feature, you’re gonna pay at some point.

Features change. If you hook your wagon to them, be prepared to be unceremoniously UNhooked somewhere down the road, and without your consent. To be honest, I’ve never been particularly enamored of building big marketing plans around platforms–you cede too much control over the success of your business to the purveyors of said platforms.

Jul 12
Love0

Tweetup with the C’ville Media — Tonight! #Meetthecvillemedia

By Communications, Media, Social Media

Tonight at 5pm, we’ll be gathering at CitySpace http://charlottesvillearts.org/cityspace/ for a fun and informative Tweetup — a Tweetup with a purpose. For those of you playing the at home game, you know we tried to hold this even a month ago and there was a power outage that forced us to cancel it at the last minute. That makes me even MORE excited to be finally hosting tonight’s event. Here’s the skinny:

Meet the faces behind the Twitter handles at this free, casual event hosted by Charlottesville Tomorrow and Jaggers Communications!

Charlottesville Tomorrow  and Jaggers Communications are bringing people in our community together to inform and engage in this unique event. Tweet-up with members of the media and the local Twitter community. 5pm — 7pm Thursday, July 12 at CitySpace. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
We will be moderating a short panel discussion about the intersection of traditional media and social media; how news is delivered and travels in our community. Joining us for the discussion will be:
Join us for some fun discussion, interesting people and a little food and beverages. See you at 5pm! If you can’t make it, follow along virtually with #meetthecvillemedia on Twitter.

Jul 11
Love0

Truffles, and Social Media in Education, on the Air with Coy Barefoot

By Communications, Crisis Communications, Social Media

Coy Barefoot asked me what my last, best meal was. I had to tell him all about the amazing dish I had while in Croatia; pasta with delicious truffles. That’s it, there on the left. It was incredible!

Other than that, Coy and I talked about education and social media, online learning programs and more, on Charlottesville: Right Now! You can listen, here.

The inspiration for the conversation was the Education and Social Media Roundtable discussion hosted by Jaggers Communications this week. We gathered communications directors and school leadership to discuss how social media is being used by schools themselves, and by the students and parents who represent each school’s community.

It’s interesting to learn what challenges schools face that are different from businesses or nonprofit organizations, and to tackle the role social platforms play when the school is dealing with a crisis situation.

The discussion was interesting and great connections were made between individuals in those roles in the greater Charlottesville community — it’s always exciting for us to facilitate those relationships.

Something that came out of the Roundtable was the concept of fostering good digital citizenship. We’re fascinated by this and how we can assist schools in creating the programs that support it.

We’d love to host more Roundtable discussions in our community on a variety of topics. What industries or topics would you like to see in a Roundtable series?

 

 

Jul 10
Love0

It’s Not just that WE are Social. The World is.

By Communications, Social Media

We talk about social media. We talk with clients about their social media strategy. We talk on this website about social media trends and forecasts. We are a public relations firm. Our job is to relay a company’s stories and messages to the public. It’s just that the public happens to be on social  networks.

We have said this in so many different ways. Social networks were a fundamental tool in the Arab Spring uprising. They are a platform to help people get jobs. If Facebook were a country, it’s population would be 100 BILLION. We’ve talked about how it doesn’t matter what your perception of the social networks is, their importance is undeniable. But still, companies occasionally still tell us that they are not interested in the social media piece.

That is ok. We can still help you with brand positioning, crisis communications and public relations. But there’s a big chunk of the world that will never hear your message because you didn’t present it in the space that they’re already visiting.

 

Jul 09
Love0

Jaggers Communications has a New Home

By Jaggers Communications News

Do you like games? Let’s play a game!

We spent the last week or so moving into a new office in Charlottesville. It took us awhile to find just the right spot, and we’re slowly acquiring furniture and settling in. Lucky for us Blue Ridge Internetworks already had fiber in our new building so we were up and running immediately (thanks Tommy!).

On to the game . . . this is a quick snapshot view from my office window.

Can you tell me where the new Jaggers Communications World Headquarters is?