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.

Oct 17
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How to Manage Social Media in Five Steps: The Who, What, When, Where, Why

By Communications, Social Media

I’ll admit it; I am a decent time manager. I’ve also been a bit of a control freak, managing whole aspects of social campaigns (i.e. doing all the work myself instead of delegating it). With the amount of work it really takes to manage social media for a business and, in my case, numerous businesses, holding it all in my greedy little hands simply isn’t possible. Having a plan to manage it, using tools to make it efficient and delegating roles to others are the keys to making it all work.

A lot of businesses get stuck on this point — the lack of a plan to follow results in failed, frustrated efforts — but what is a plan? And how is it managed?

How to Manage Social Media in Five Steps

It’s not easy, but it IS simple:

  1. Discuss and decide WHY you’re using social media for your business. Is it to inspire loyalty, attract new customers or to pay attention to what existing customers are saying about you and your industry. (All of the above is a perfectly acceptable answer.)
  2. Decide WHAT tools you’re going to use.
  3. Determine WHO will be responsible for developing content.
  4. Schedule the content that needs to be developed and designate WHO will make sure it happens and WHERE the content will be shared (Twitter? LinkedIn? StumbleUpon?)
  5. Create goals and schedule WHEN you will look at, analyze and report the analytics and your progress toward your goals.
What do you think? Does this framework solve any issues for you? 
Oct 14
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Seven Ways to Get More Fans for your Business on Facebook

By Social Media

I’ve been doing a lot of coaching, guiding and talking about legitimate ways to use your Facebook page to get more fans for your business. It’s really about building community and the ideas shared here are not unique to Facebook sharing, but are really excellent ways to use that platform. So often, businesses start going down the road of promotions and contests that, if done incorrectly, violate the Facebook terms of service. I assert that these promotions may not be what you need, (even if you are doing them the right way.) Rather, focus on what you CAN do to build community without resorting to bribery, freebies, conditions and begging.

Seven ideas:

  1. Be a resource for your community. What’s the latest news? What are you reading that your community would find of interest. Share the link in status updates.
  2. Take a poll — make it fun, and ask community members to share the poll with their friends (you can use the Polls or Questions applications to do this.)
  3. Feature a fan of the (day? week? month?) — what ever time frame works best for the resources at hand.
  4. Tag businesses you’ve “liked” in status updates (use Facebook as the page, then “like” other business pages; use the @ symbol to tag those pages in your updates.)
  5. Are there businesses geographically close to yours? Can you be a good neighbor by sharing their specials, their news or events?
  6. Ask closed-ended questions — people don’t want to work that hard to answer you, so give them a choice of two or more options to answer.
  7. Do share links to your best content (blog posts, videos, photos, etc. ) but share links to others’ content as well, at least a third of the time. It’s called SOCIAL media.

What other organic ways can you use your Facebook page to increase fans of your business?

Oct 13
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Three Ways Your Company is Doing it Wrong on Facebook

By Social Media

Facebook is tricky; devious, even. Navigating the guidelines for operating successfully as a business is mystifying. Every day I catch companies doing something that violates the Facebook terms of service or is an unsound practice in online marketing. A sampling:

  1. After posting as the business on the business page, the admin user is commenting on the post, again as the page. Here’s how to do this right. 
  2. A random display of not necessarily relevant “likes” appear in the left sidebar. Here’s how to change that. 
  3. Promoting a contest or offer that requires Facebook interaction. e.g., Like us and you’ll get . . . that’s not kosher according to Facebook rules.
Stay tuned for some tips on ways to use Facebook the right way to earn more fans. 
Oct 12
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Marketing Jargon: What does Word-of-Mouth Mean in the Digital Age?

By Communications, Social Media

When I ask businesses how new customers find them I have always heard the answer “word-of-mouth.” It’s still the most commonly cited method for customers newly discovering

I'm a Connector; I talk, and talk, and talk

products or services. What has changed, however is that word-of-mouth is really “person to person” communication.

Word-of-mouth still happens in person, of course, but even more often, and with vastly more people, person to person marketing is occurring via social platforms.

Do you Know Who the Connectors Are? How about the Mavens?

In his very famous book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell defined what he calls “connectors” —  the people who “link us up with the world … people with a special gift for bringing the world together” and “mavens” —  the people who “link us up with the world … people with a special gift for bringing the world together.”

The way that word-of-mouth marketing works in person is even more important to pay important to when considering social platforms.

As a business, when you look at your Facebook fans or your Twitter followers, can you identify the connectors? How about the mavens? How will you tap into the power that those “mouths” represent to your business to make strides toward your business goals?

Oct 11
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Thoughts on Rewarding Fans

By Social Media

A couple of weeks ago I felt like sending someone flowers. More specifically, I wanted to reach out and surprise one of my Twitter followers by making their day a bit brighter in a

The FTD Golden Autumn Bouquet

memorable way.

I tweeted that I was going to send a follower flowers and had a couple of people jokingly say they wouldn’t mind being recipients, so I picked one and ordered a bouquet.

I was kind of excited, waiting for the day that the flowers would arrive; looking forward to seeing a tweet or a Facebook update noting the surprise.

I like surprising people in gentle ways, mostly with pie, but this time, flowers just seemed like the right way to go.

It has gotten me thinking a lot about how we reward fans; how our clients recognize the relationships with the most loyal, the most ardent supporters of their businesses.

So this week my challenge to my clients and to you, business people following this blog, is to think of a way to make the day of someone who believes in you and in your business. Let me know how you’re going to do it — and I promise, giving is just as fun as receiving.