All Posts By

Marijean

Marijean Oldham (Jaggers), a social media specialist and public relations professional, is president and CEO of Jaggers Communications LLC, a strategic communications firm based in Charlottesville, Va.

Nov 27
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How Movie Theaters Can Use Social Media Better

By Communications, Crisis Communications

I’m one of many people in my community beyond thrilled to have a brand-new theater. After years of needing an updated movie house, we finally have a 14 screen megaplex with an Imax theater. The theater had a bit of a rough start during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with unexpected, and unexplained fire alarms forcing the facility to evacuate multiple times. On site, the staff handed out passes to those ejected from their movies, but some patrons were still grumbling and others did not receive compensation for their ruined experiences at all. And what do dissatisfied customers do? Well, they go to Facebook, of course!

 

It’s interesting to me that the Regal Stonefield Stadium 14 & Imax has set up a Facebook page and earned more than 700 fans, and yet has done nothing on it’s page to respond to customer comments or complaints. If you go to the Facebook page you can see that there is not one comment or question to which the theater has responded.  (The URL is https://www.facebook.com/pages/Regal-Stonefield-Stadium-14-IMAX/352615974822625?fref=ts —  note that they haven’t even grabbed the custom URL to properly name the page)

 

Regal may think they’re the only game in town so they don’t need to treat their customers or fans well, or be responsive in social media. That’s too bad, because even though ticket sales are pretty good, they can still decline if customer service is truly awful. You can have a good theater, but a bad reputation may keep movie goers at home, or in the next town over for their big screen experiences.

I encourage the theater to make sure they’re paying attention to the page and to provide customers with the information they seek. If there’s a problem, such as the fire alarm issue, the fastest way to inform patrons of what’s happening and how they plan to handle it is to post those answers online, and since Stonefield already has a publishing presence on Facebook, there’s no better place to keep customers informed.

Nov 15
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Five Ways to Use Social Media to Attract Talent, Boost Recruiting

By Communications, Social Media

This week our president said that our priority needs to be on jobs and growth. Our local economy seems to be on board with that, as this week’s Hiring and Social Media workshop had a great turnout. I partnered with my colleague Mickey Kampsen of Management Recruiters International of Charlottesville to offer an educational session for people in charge of hiring and recruiting for their companies. The representatives that participated were from very large international companies down to small shops; all with many of the same challenges and needs.

Mickey’s expertise is on the recruiting and HR side of business, while Jaggers Communications offers expertise in social media. Our firm HAS been engaged to recruit community managers and social media/marketing associates and team members, so we have gained first-hand experience in the recruiting field, as well.

In the workshop, we shared five ways anyone in a hiring position can use the tools of social media to attract better talent and boost recruiting efforts:

  1. Use monitoring tools such as Topsy to watch competitors or other companies you admire, to see new jobs posted and their techniques for attracting talent.
  2. Use monitoring tools that search the social web to qualify a candidate and see if they’re behaving themselves professionally on social networks.
  3. Use the LinkedIn company page to full advantage, and further your reach into internal referral sources by growing your network and encouraging colleagues to improve their profiles.
  4. Blog — even in regulated industries you can blog to share your corporate culture, the stories of the  people who represent your team, and a sense of what it’s like to work within your company.
  5. Consider (especially if your company is large) establishing a Facebook page just for the hiring division of your company. Marriott takes this approach with success,  as does Unilever and Boeing — all great examples of how this can be done successfully.

We’re excited to see this much interest in jobs and growth on a local level and look forward to assisting companies with the next stage of sharing their stories through the growth cycle.

Nov 07
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The Joys of Being the PR Firm Around the Corner

By Communications, Public Relations

I worked in St. Louis, Missouri for years.  17 in all, in fact. Five of those I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia. And while I loved that job, the firm I worked for, my colleagues, my clients and the work itself, traveling (and all its inevitable hassles) back and forth and not having the ability to “walk the halls” of my clients’ offices frequently wore me out. While I’m clearly a big believer in staying connected to others through social networks, I deeply value the ability to show up, to be present and to be eyeball to eyeball with people who are important to me.

At the end of 2010, after that last lonely hotel room, that last airline delay, that final unexpected layover, I quit the job in St. Louis and at the beginning of 2011 I opened my own shop in Charlottesville. I haven’t looked back since.

One of the truly great joys of working here is the ability to be present, live and in person, with our clients. A common day might include running into clients on the downtown mall, or really anywhere around town. Or learning the Gangnam Style dance from a client prospect at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Our proximity to those we serve allows us to dash, sometimes literally around the corner, to a client’s office. A client had a crisis recently and my colleague Rusty and I were able to pick up sandwiches for a working lunch and land at their office to work through the crisis management within the hour.

I’m not saying it isn’t perfectly possible to work at a distance, and we’re happy to do that, but there’s great gratification at being able to connect with those right here in our community.

Nov 06
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#Election2012 and the Normalization of Social Media

By Communications, Social Media

Today, Election Day 2012, I, of course am thinking about the last presidential election, and how, for me and for millions of Americans, it was the first presidential election we watched unfold on Twitter.

This time around, that doesn’t seem at all unusual. This time, social tools for a nationally-watched event are so integral, I can’t even imagine an election without them. It’s somewhat unbelievable to me that voting hasn’t become a totally online experience and I wonder if it’s possible we’ll get there between now and 2016. One thing is sure, our use of Facebook, Pinterest, blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other tools have grown so significantly, it seems by the next presidential election there will be nary a voter without access to and regular use of one or more of these platforms.

I will likely have an eye on Twitter throughout the day with a glance at Facebook now and again. Later tonight will be a combination of TV and communal watching the results come in with others in person and via the social networks.

Get out there and vote, and let me know how you plan to watch the election unfold. 

Oct 31
Love0

Can you be Dr. Jekyll AND Mr. Hyde on Facebook?

By Social Media

It’s a challenge many of us face — straddling the chasm between our personal and professional lives or the personality we have among friends and the personality we have with, say, our grandmothers.

It’s not that we’re necessarily two different people altogether, it’s just that some content we want to share with friends, and some we really don’t want our grandma to see.

So who to be on Facebook, Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? And can you successfully manage being two different people on that social network? 

My first piece of advice is this: DO NOT HAVE TWO DIFFERENT PROFILES. First of all, it’s weird. Second, it makes it really hard for people to figure out which one of you they should be friends with.

Instead, manage who sees what by developing lists. For some, that list may be “Grandma and Mom,” or “Colleagues,” or “Exes from Texas.” The other list, the one you share ALL your crazy stuff with, may be simply “Friends.”

For me, I have lists like “Besties” and “Charlottesville” — the town where I live. I have “Business Contacts” and “Family.” Separating my friends into categories serves another purpose; it keeps me from boring the pants off of the people who just don’t really care about my Pinterest pins, my social activities or my cousin’s wedding.

This means, of course, that I have to manage my posting more carefully — I have to actually select to whom any given post is visible. It takes work!

Is it worth it? Well, for those of you struggling to maintain some kind of illusion with your grandmother, I suppose it is.

To get started, click on Friends in the sidebar and Create List. Give your list a name you’ll remember so you can, at a glance, know who’s included in that distribution.

Now, when I post an update, I can select from my list to decide who gets to see that update. For example, if I want to post something relevant to my St. Louis friends, I would select only that list.

It’s a bit cumbersome, sure, but can save a few embarrassing conversations with Grandma over the Thanksgiving turkey.

Facebook has also built in a setting that defaults to the LAST LIST TO WHICH YOU POSTED. So be careful to select the right audience before you post.

Editor’s note: Seriously — go see Jekyll and Hyde at Play On Theatre in Charlottesville this week — it’s spooktacular!