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.

Jun 29
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Community Managers: Who Will Do the Social Media Work for Your Small Business?

By Social Media

The number one struggle small businesses have with social media is this:

Who will do the work?

It’s an extremely important question to answer before your efforts online begin in earnest. An estimated 95 percent of all blogs have been abandoned. For those who don’t engage, tweets fritter away over time and for those without a strategy or a plan, Facebook pages go dormant. Companies have grand plans about how they’re going to engage in social media and then … no one truly owns the effort.

One approach that’s been discussed is the creation of a  community manager or a conversation manager or sometimes even simply a social media manager (a quick Google of this found upwards of 14,000 jobs with this title). The point is, some companies have come far enough in the process to acknowledge that if they are going to be successful in their social media efforts, they need to create a position to handle it.

Companies often think, “We want the young, hip intern who ‘gets’ social media to do this for us.” This is like hiring your 16-year-old nephew to build the Web site for your business.

Just.

Don’t.

It’s great that the youngest person on your team uses social media on a regular basis, but they’re not the voice and face of your company, unless they ARE your primary audience. If your audience needs to engage with someone who represents your company — truly — who can answer with authority any question or respond to any inquiry without checking with a battery of people first, then THAT’s the person who needs to be your community manager.

Now it’s fine if that community manager is not a subject matter expert on all the different products and services your company provides. In fact, what the community manager needs is the young hip intern and a team of others in the company to research and supply a feed of information: blog posts and articles to read, news to react to, ideas, photos, product information, etc. The manager can then use this flow of creative inspiration to develop the content that engages your community. Give the manager the support they need to represent you, but first choose wisely, knowing that that person may find themselves representing you in a crisis, or on a day when business is not going well at all. The community manager is your company spokesperson. Are you ready to have that person represent you online?

The person who can and should manage your community should have the authority to do so; they should have the respect earned through longevity with the company, and the skill and personality to enjoy engaging with others on the social Web.

Who manages your community now? If you’re not yet engaged in social media, who do you plan to have manage your community?

Jun 28
Love0

Who’s Listening?

By Social Media

Today’s guest post is from Ken Mueller of Inkling Media.

Social Media platforms can be incredibly personal. For those of us who spend a good part of our day communicating via Twitter, it is not only personal, but has become second nature. So much so that we really do need to stop and think from time to time before we Tweet.

If you’re anything like me, you use Twitter for both personal and business reasons. You might even have two separate accounts, but we need to remember, it’s hard to separate the two. I’m a sole proprietor; I AM my business. People associate me with Inkling Media. Anything I say on my personal account will affect how people view me. That includes clients and prospective clients. Even if you are one of those people whose Twitter bio reads, “I also tweet for @[businessname] but my tweets here are mine alone and not those of my employer,” you need to think before you tweet. You can throw down all the caveats and disclaimers in the world, but if you annoy or alienate me on your personal Twitter account, and I know that you work for Joe’s Taco Shack, there’s a good chance I’ll go elsewhere when I’m jonesing for a taco.

It basically comes down to whether or not you have a filter. This can either be your own internal filter, or an external filter, or both. I normally have a pretty good internal filter. I find that in both the personal and professional realms, there are certain topics I’ll avoid. Those include politics and religion. Oh I have very distinct opinions on both of those topics, and I might make the occasional mention, but I also know that Twitter might not be the best realm for discussing them in any meaningful way. 140 characters of text can certainly limit understanding and cause confusion.

Additionally, I also tend to avoid any sort of profanity or off-color humor. I don’t really speak like that in my real life, so why should I talk like that on Twitter or Facebook? I know that there are some people I follow that I would NEVER want to work with based on their “sense of humor”. Often, I might even unfollow them if it gets out of hand. Some folks seem to wear their brashness like a badge of honor. Sorry, I’m not buying.

I also have at least two external filters in place. Very often you’ll hear someone say, “Don’t put anything online you wouldn’t want your mother to see.” Well, my 77-year old mom is one of my filters. She subscribes to my blog via email, and while she doesn’t understand most of what I blog about, just knowing that she’s reading my blog does have an effect on what I write. For instance, while I don’t use profanity, my mom’s definition of profanity and mine, are decidedly different, mostly based on being from different generations. I remember my mom making a big deal about one of her grandchildren using the “F-word” once. I was shocked that one of them would use it, and then discovered that to her, the “F-word” is “fart”. Yup. That’s my mom. Needless to say, the word “fart” won’t appear in my blog (but I’m more than OK using it here on Marijean’s blog! Hope your mom doesn’t mind, MJ!)

My second external filter is my 21-year old daughter. She recently joined Twitter as a way of being a part of the Tony Awards. But, now she’s there. And she follows me. She’s a great kid and we get along really well, but knowing that she is reading my tweets does make me pause from time to time. She’s kinda nosy and won’t hesitate to question me on things. So I’m now learning to put my tweets through an “Elizabeth Filter.”

Do you have a good filter in place? External, internal or both? What rules do you have in place for yourself? Are there certain types of language, behavior, or content that you don’t like seeing on Twitter, Facebook, or other social platforms?

 

 

Jun 27
Love0

React and Respond: Letters to the Editor and Online Comments Get the Job Done

By Public Relations

One of the more eye-opening moments I had as a young PR intern had to do with letters to the editor. A naive idealist, I thought all letters to the editor (LTE) were written by earnest citizens, penned by hand and mailed with a stamp. While some surely are (I hasten to add, for you, the Easter Bunny believers), many are not.

Now, all LTEs are signed by earnest citizens. All are sent by or delivered to publications by those putting their money and hearts behind the sentiment in the aforementioned letters, but LTEs are often suggested, originated, drafted and refined by people just like me: Public Relations professionals.

Publications worth their salt (or the paper on which they’re printed, in the case of those who still follow this process), follow up with those who have signed the LTEs and ask them to verify that they, indeed, have lent their name to the letter and the words within are theirs.

(Am I really telling a trade secret here? Or are you all nodding the head bob of the cynical with me?)

Today almost everything printed or broadcast is also found online, allowing for a faster reaction and response and, fortunately the speed-of-light submission of e-mailed letters to the editor and of course, the online comment, appearing just below the original article, to which the comment or letter reacts.

It’s a gift to the PR industry, actually, to be able to respond so thoroughly and quickly in this way. The opportunity for a client to correct misinformation in a very visible way, or to defend itself in a public forum is extremely valuable and clients always appreciate the opportunity and support to get the job done.

Chiming in is important, and it’ s been part of my job for more than 15 years to monitor the news on behalf of my clients and alert them to opportunities to react and respond. My favorite of these are those that offer controversy, stir up emotion or even allow for a crisis to potentially be averted. Few activities in the PR practice are more fun for me than crafting the crisis message and response. The current speed of news is the most challenging to stay on top of, but I enjoy watching and listening, and making the recommendations to get into the conversation when it’s appropriate for my clients to do so.

Have you ever written a letter to the editor? Is this information news to you?

Jun 24
Love0

WTF? Friday: Four Facebook Mistakes Businesses Make

By Communications

WTF FridayFacebook has some pretty stringent guidelines for promotions. Lots of businesses, however, pretend these guidelines don’t exist. I think this is tantamount to sticking your tongue out at Facebook and going “nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, NAH!”

One of these days, Zuckerberg is gonna get pissed and y’all are going to wake up to banned accounts and disabled “official” pages. Frankly, I don’t blame Facebook one whit if they decide to enforce the rules on the platform they built, own and LET YOU USE FOR FREE.

There are five actions businesses take on a regular basis that are in direct violation of the rules. They are today’s WTF? Friday feature . . .

  1. Making a user “like” a page to get something in return, such as a promotional item, contest entry, etc. Seattle’s Best Coffee is a major brand doing just that right now:   “Like us! Do it! You’ll get $1.50 off a four-pack now!” Uh, no.
  2. Having a profile instead of a page, as this business, Fine Living Lancaster has done. Don’t “friend” a business and if you have a business and have created a second profile (your own, as a person and one for the business) you have violated Facebook’s Terms of Service. Whoops.
  3. Here’s a dental practice telling you that you’ll have a chance to win an iPad if you like their Facebook page. That’s TOTALLY against the rules, but not only that, has only earned them a little over 200 fans. Worth it? Especially since they run the risk of having their page shut down? Probably not.
  4. Another really common no-no – the photo contest run without a third party. You can’t ask users to upload photos for a photo contest that takes place within Facebook. See #4 of the Promotions Guidelines.

If you’re a marketer, what do you think? Should businesses with a marketing presence know better? If Facebook does crack down and disable accounts like the ones above, who should be held accountable for that?

Jun 23
Love0

Job Seekers, Do or Don’t: Should you Follow and/or Friend Future Employers?

By Communications

A question from the field . . .  “Should you engage with potential employers on social platforms?”

It’s a bit complicated, but here’s my take:

  • DO follow them on Twitter if they are clearly a Twitter user (as a person, not a corporate account). If they’re following many and being followed, as well as contributing to the conversation, then they are engaged and will welcome an additional follower.
  • DON’T follow them on Twitter if they don’t tweet or have few or no followers. I’m not sure why they’re there and neither are they.
  • DO follow them if it’s a corporate account designed to be a news stream about the company and/or its industry. That’s why it’s there.
  • DO connect with them on LinkedIn if you know one another and have worked together or been connected by a business network. Chances are, if you’re to the interview stage, this is someone already in your network.
  • DON’T send them a LinkedIn invitation if they’re not on LinkedIn. (Why do you want this job, again?)
  • DON’T friend them on Facebook. That’s a little weird if you don’t know each other. It is, of course, fine, if you’re already friends in another way.
  • DO “like” the organization’s page.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with any of these?