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.

Feb 13
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5 Ways to Be a Better Business Blogger

By Uncategorized

It’s incredible, when I think back over the last six years or so, the evolution of blogging in business. What used to be a hard sell (yes, blogging is going to be very important for your business) is now standard-issue stuff. Successful businesses blog! Successful business people are bloggers. It’s so exciting to be not only watching but involved with this evolution in a very hands-on, integrated way.

Since you’re here, you’re probably a blogger for your business. Feel free to tell us about your blog in the comments — we’d all like to visit and read your posts!

I know we all get a little stuck sometimes, or a bit uninspired, so here’s a list of five ways to give you a boost in blogging:

  1. Involve others in the process. Even if you’re a sole proprietor there are other people you work with as vendors, partners or key customers. Ask them for ideas and inspiration. Get them to use Pinterest or Delicious to collect ideas for you to blog about. (OK, true story: I clicked over to Pinterest to add the link to this post and yeah, you lost me there for about half an hour. Behold the power of Pinterest. I’m back now. If you did the same, I hope you returned to finish this post with me.)
  2. Ask your readers what they’d like to see on your blog. I often ask my followers on Twitter for blog post ideas and they come up with some great ones!
  3. Read something you don’t normally read. If you’re a regular of the business section, try health or science, lifestyle or sports . . . mix it up to find a new angle that applies to what you do.
  4. Get visual! Look for or capture an image that sums up how you’re feeling, what you’re doing or what you’re seeing. Video is fun, as well (the shorter, the better.) Can you challenge yourself to tell a video story in 60 seconds?
  5. Dig deep. Share something personal (personal never, ever means PRIVATE). It is so valuable to show the human side of your business. We all have one — let your audience connect to yours. Some of my most popular business blog posts of all time have been from a very personal perspective.

I hope this is helpful to you — and remember, I want to read your blogs, so go ahead and pitch them below.

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Feb 07
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Wahooptie: Rolling in the Social

By Social Media

What is a Wahooptie, you might ask, if you’re not from Charlottesville, have visited Charlottesville or otherwise have some tie to the University of Virginia. A Wahooptie is a cab; not just a cab, a taxi service, a line of limousines, a brightly colored fleet prepared to deliver you safely from point A to point B anywhere in Central Virginia.

This, is a Wahooptie:

Ummm Hmmm.

I’ve enjoyed Wahooptie interaction via Twitter and observed an active Facebook page (smart place to engage college students). But I was MOST impressed with the service’s presence on my wrist when I attended a recent concert at the Jefferson Theater.

Wahooptie sponsored the wristbands and included a QR code for a ride home in case concert attendees had too much to drink. This has my vote for most useful QR code placement (although I wonder how often it’s used.) I could envision a friend scanning another friend’s wristband and ushering them into a hot pink limousine, easily. Who doesn’t want a ride home in that kind of style?

What useful QR codes have you seen? 

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Feb 06
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5 Ways to Protect your Social Media Investment

By Social Media

I hate it I see a client letting their online reputation go … it’s so obvious, too. The neglected blog, the missing updates, the long delay (or lack of) responses; it’s frustrating for those of us who really appreciate social interaction with brands we support.

A couple of weeks ago I used Twitter and Facebook to try to pin down the location of a food truck I like. SEVEN days later the person behind the Twitter account told me where the food truck was that day. Too bad it was a full week ago that I was interested.

If you’ve set up a presence for your business or, if you’re a sole proprietor, yourself in social media, here are five simple ways to make sure you’re protecting the investment of your time and the reputation of your brand:

  1. If you’ve “gone fishin'” leave a note behind or hand over the reigns to a trusted associate to manage the presence while you’re out.
  2. Create a schedule for yourself — and stick to it. If you can manage interaction three times a week (and mean it!) then get it done.
  3. Set alarms, calendar appointments, visits from the goon squad or your Uncle Vinnie — whatever works — just set an effective reminder to hold yourself accountable to maintaining your presence.
  4. Find a way to keep it personally rewarding — examine what you, personally get out of online interaction and focus on that element.
  5. Reward yourself! When you set goals that are realistically high but attainable, celebrate it when you achieve them. Go ahead. Buy yourself a little something, just for making it to the end of this very important blog post.
Jan 31
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6 Reasons Telling Someone You’d like to Add them to your Professional Network is Lame

By Communications, Social Media

You’ve all gotten this message: “I’d like to add you to my professional network.”

Here are 6 reasons why you should never, ever send this default message.

  1. It demonstrates to the contact that you don’t really know much about social networking.
  2. It is a lazy approach — you should put some thought into it instead of using the default message.
  3. It doesn’t give the contact any context at all! You owe people in your network a reminder of how it is you are connected and why you should share your professional world. Tell them WHY you want to add them. You owe them that much.
  4. It makes me think that you’re just trying to build your numbers and don’t represent any value to my network whatsoever.
  5. It doesn’t give me any detail about you — I’d love to know that I’ll be connecting to you to help you find a job or endorse your work or introduce you to a connection of mine.
  6. You’re part of a professional network; act like it. Is a default message a professional invitation?

P.S. The image above is from an actual invitation I received from someone I’ve never met or heard of. I did not accept the invitation.

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Jan 25
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Community Conversations: The Face of Charlottesville Tomorrow

By Communications

This post is part of a series, “Community Conversations” featuring people responsible for the socialization and communications for their businesses. If you’re interested in contributing a post for this series, contact me at mjaggers at jaggerscommunications dot com

My name is Jennifer Marley, and I’m the Community Engagement Coordinator for Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Charlottesville Tomorrow is a non-profit, non-partisan community news platform. We cover growth, development, and local political issues facing the Charlottesville-Albemarle area. These stories are published to our site and, through a ground-breaking partnership, printed in The Daily Progress; but after that, what happens to them? That’s where I come in.

I take the content, boil it down so I can understand it (as a newbie to this community, sometimes that takes a while!), then broadcast it to our community in ways that are specific to the issue, the audience, and our strategy. For example, I may take a story that we publish to our site and share it on Twitter by posing a question; post it to Facebook and tag a group that is involved; print up doorhangers and canvas a neighborhood that is affected; and make it the subject of our monthly-ish News n’Brews events. Each tool we use has specific strengths and weaknesses, and so we try to use them to maximize their strengths. I strive for specificity and strategy with everything I share.

One of the most fun parts of my job is sharing who we are. When I was first hired, I launched a reader survey to take a general temperature check on how our community perceived us. Something I heard over and over from readers was that they were interested in the people behind Charlottesville Tomorrow – which makes perfect sense to me. We’re a small community, and while it would be nice to think we can hide behind all our fun tech toys and just broadcast content, people want to connect with other people. For some readers, making that personal connection might be a gateway to our content. So I encourage our reporters to share stories they’ve written across their own social networks; I work on getting them in front of our community at events and as speakers; and we have fun sharing what’s happening around the office across our social media platforms.

We believe this area is special and we cover what we cover because we want it to stay that way. Finding ways to make that content affect people personally is important, and that’s what I work towards every day!

Connect with Jennifer and Charlottesville Tomorrow on Twitter