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 10
Love0

32 Small Things we like About Charlottesville, Va.

By Uncategorized

I was inspired by my friend Melissa Gilliam aka MilliGFunk, and this post, Grace in Small Things, sharing what readers love about St. Louis, Missouri. I decided to put the question to my own community of Charlottesville, Va.

Here are some of the small things we love about Charlottesville:

  1. Marco and Luca dumplings
  2. The view coming down 250 from Pantops
  3. Beer Run
  4. The Whale Tails
  5. Walking on the grounds of UVa
  6. Number 904 at Saigon Cafe
  7. Seeing people you know
  8. Dogwoods in the spring
  9. Connecting with dogs’ siblings via social media
  10. Dog friendliness
  11. Being able to pick apples, ride a horse, float a river or hike the Appalachian Trail within a short drive
  12. Outdoorsy feel
  13. Big city offerings in a quaint small town
  14. Azaleas in full bloom in May along the 250 bypass
  15. The hike to Bear Fence Mountain in Shenandoah National Park
  16. Walking the downtown mall
  17. Having lunch (or even better WINE) outside on the downtown mall
  18. The fact we still have bookSTORES
  19. The independent coffee shops
  20. The Festival of the Book
  21. Pie Fest
  22. The VA Film Festival
  23. The Chocolate Festival
  24. Knowing the name of your mailman
  25. Food: specifically tons of amazing local restaurants, local farms and farmers markets and CSAs, most of the population loving local and shunning chains… I don’t know what I’d do without Spudnuts, Bodos, Beer Run, Mas, The Nook, Sticks, Christians, Horse & Buggy, Relay Foods, the Saturday market…all our awesome, awesome local businesses
  26. Iconoclastic bagel shops that won’t slice more than 3 bagels per order and will look at you like a space alien if you mention the word “toasted.” 🙂
  27. Any given day of the week, half the town is in a coffee shop. Love a bustling morning office
  28. Local eggs and other great local groceries
  29. Support for entrepreneurs. This town makes most things possible!
  30. That despite the first snow of winter there were musicians playing outside at the Downtown Mall
  31. Public observation night at UVa observatory
  32. Cafe Con Leche from Cafe Cubano

Another reader had a “like,” and a question: “I like the fact that, even in the midst of a traffic jam, it is a custom in Charlottesville to let somebody else merge into the stream of cars from the side, ahead of you. This little piece of civilized, polite behavior makes me feel good about my city. Tell me, is this common elsewhere, or is Charlottesville unique in this feature?”

What do you think?

Feb 09
Love0

Social Media Assignment #6: Listening to the Social Web

By Communications

Do you know what is being said about you, your brand or your company online?

Maybe you have been using Google Alerts to monitor for news about your organization, but do you know what people are saying on the social web?

What is the social web? Twitter, blog comments, bulletin boards, Facebook and blogs are some, but not all the elements of the social web.

Today’s Social Media Assignment

Take about half an hour to play with some of the tools displayed in this post. Try out Social Mention and IceRocket in particular — free tools that allow you to search the entirety of the social web.

With these tools you can subscribe to the search you create and continue to monitor mentions on an ongoing basis (recommended). You may find you have to tweak your search terms until you refine them to exactly the right keywords to find the results you seek.

Another approach to consider — search for your customers, clients or employees — do you know what they’re doing or saying online?

I recommend you spend some time listening — not just one day, or one half hour of one day. It takes time, and ongoing attention. And while you’re listening, take time to develop a plan for how you will respond to any mentions of your brand — positive or negative mentions.

Feb 08
Love0

The 6 Reasons Social Media Immersion is the Right Choice for Executives

By Communications

Photo credit: Liam Dunn

For years, people have offered to pay me for my time to sit and walk them through social media and help them figure out a plan for growing and using their social networks.  Until I began Jaggers Communications I couldn’t devote time to share my expertise on that level, but the demand continued.

In response to that demand, I developed Social Media Immersion for the Executive. Here’s why it works:

  1. Clients at the executive level do not want to attend a workshop, seminar or class to get up to speed in social media; they want one-on-one attention and a focused one-shot time to cover the basics of what they need to know over a few hours’ time.
  2. In the Immersion session, any question, no matter how basic or advanced, can be asked and answered.
  3. Executives come away with a concrete plan of action to continue to work from, continuing on a path to greater understanding and benefits of social media engagement.
  4. Time is a huge factor; a full or half-day session will help make sure all social media engagement is efficient and meaningful.
  5. The Immersion session is confidential; a crash course in social media is not something all executives want shared.
  6. The results are immediate; before the session has ended, the client’s social profile and network will be upgraded, goals will be in place and direction will have clarity and purpose.

Is there a CEO, CFO or other executive you know who could benefit from an Immersion session? Are you interested in learning more?

Feb 07
Love1

Superbowl, Black Eyed Peas, Groupon, Kenneth Cole, Aguilera and Social Media

By Social Media

If you’re not truly plugged in to social media, you’re missing more than half the fun. There’s nothing better than the full-on rants that happen via Twitter, Facebook and blogs while a nationally televised event gone wrong or PR snafu unfolds.

Last week’s Kenneth Cole tweet made mainstream news, so even if you’re not a Twitter user, you probably know about it, but found out much later than a good 12-20 percent of the population.

It has gotten so integrated for me that it is my strong preference to have Tweetdeck open and flying during something like the Superbowl (Inauguration, State of the Union and any disaster reporting have also been memorable moments in the twitterverse). All Sunday, Twitter helped fuel excitement for the game (and who am I kidding: the commercials).

A reported 4.5 million tweets were generated by the Superbowl.

The fast and furious response to that nightmare of a halftime show and Christina Aguilera’s goof in the national anthem were hot topics, rather than tweets about the game itself.

Marketing, advertising and PR folks were on fire about the tasteless Groupon ad. I missed the commercial when it aired but quickly saw that something was up via my Twitter feed.  Many of those I follow unsubscribed from the service in the middle of the game, which may teach Groupon, a company whose backbone is social networks, the ultimate lesson.

If you’re still unsure about the power of social media and think it has nothing to do with you and the world around you, I encourage you to experience the next national event with one eye on the Web; there are layers you are missing and some great additional content that will make you better informed faster and often, with much more entertainment than a Superbowl halftime show has to offer.

Feb 02
Love0

Social Media Assignment #5: Find Your Tweeps

By Communications

I let you have a few days off; call them virtual snow days. Now, back to work!

If you’re not on Twitter, go set up an account at www.twitter.com We’ll wait.

If you’ve ignored that last line, still don’t have a Twitter account and yet are still reading this post (tough room), here’s the deal — you want a Twitter account in the name of your choosing yesterday. If you don’t grab your name, or the name you want it will be gone (if it is not already). So even if you’re not quite ready to tweet, grab your name (and make sure you tweet a little or you will lose it.)

/digression.

You have a Twitter account and you’re following a few people; some are friends or bloggers you follow, others found you and you’re simply following them back.

Today’s Social Media Assignment: Find People to Follow on Twitter

Go to http://www.tweepz.com

Conduct a search using query tools, for example:

name: “Marijean Jaggers”

or

loc: Charlottesville, Va.

Use keywords to help you find the people you seek. Realize that, as usual, search is only as good as the information to find, so if people haven’t completed their biographical information, they may be more difficult to find. THIS IS A NUDGE TO GO COMPLETE YOUR BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION.

Ahem. Subtlety is not my strong suit.

Let’s see who we can follow, shall we?

For fun, I did a search for people with “business” in their bio, entering: bio: business.

Naturally the return was a huge number of users; more than 25,000. The next step when something like this happens is to refine your search by excluding extracted entities. Because I speak English, I start by excluding other languages, then I’ll move to excluding users who don’t follow anyone and so on down the line until I’ve created a more specifically generated list of people I want to follow.

You may be doing this exercise for yourself or for a client — if you’re generating this information for monitoring purposes, you can create an RSS feed to follow the search.

I hope this helps you develop new relationships via Twitter and you find it as beneficial as I have.