Mar 02
Love0

Social Media Therapy: Keeping my Eye on the Zuckerberg Prize

By Social Media

If you follow me in all the various places online, you know that a) I hurt my back awhile ago b) I have been going to physical therapy to get better and c) the injury woke me up to the need to get in shape and follow a plan to do so.

The good news is that all I’m doing is working — really working. And even though it is sometimes painful or I don’t feel like it, the exercises, eating right and getting increasingly more active are going to have the results I desire.

I was propped up after a grueling session, with a heating pad on my knee and the issue of Time with Zuckerberg on the cover, thinking about physical therapy and social media.

There are many similarities between following a strategic digital communications plan and a self-improvement plan.

  1. You enter with your goals in mind. With my healthy-living plan I’m losing weight and strengthening my core so I get pressure off my arthritic knees and avoid injuring my back again. With social media, you should begin knowing that you want the work to result in establishing you as a thought leader in your industry, or in increased sales that help you make your business goals. It doesn’t matter what the goals are, as long as they’ve been defined.
  2. In social media as in exercise, you can’t just do it once here and there and expect results. You can’t binge exercise then sit on the couch for a month. It takes consistent effort and renewed challenges. My physical therapist will ask me how I feel and if I’m not groaning too much, will make me do another set of exercises. Challenge yourself — if you get used to doing one blog post a week, challenge yourself to crank out two.
  3. You can’t cheat. I know that if I eat that donut and don’t enter the points using my Weight Watchers tools, I still ate the donut, and if I do that too often, I’m not only not going to lose the weight, I’m going to gain weight. Since I really, really want to slim down, not just for summer, or my son’s upcoming wedding, but for life, then cheating becomes less attractive. You can’t cheat social media either — people try to hire someone else to do it for them, or sacrifice authenticity and engagement by relying too much on automated actions. To create lasting relationships, you’ve got to be there, and you’ve got to stick it out.

I’m paying attention to the techniques the physical therapists use to keep me motivated so I can apply them to clients struggling to stick with a social media plan. And as I stick to both my healthy living plan and my own social media pursuits, I will keep picturing myself (a fit and thin me) on a future cover of Time.

 

Mar 01
Love0

Jaggers Communications Announces 2011 Community Partner: Shenandoah National Park

By Jaggers Communications News

Jaggers Communications Announces 2011 Community Partner:  Shenandoah National Park
Firm will support 75th Anniversary Outreach

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (March 1, 2011) – Jaggers Communications, a strategic communications firm with a growing presence in Charlottesville, announces the Shenandoah National Park will be its local pro bono community partner for 2011.  The firm will develop an integrated social media and overall communications plan to support Shenandoah National Park’s 75th Anniversary year of celebrations and noteworthy events.

“We are delighted to have been selected as this year’s community partner,” said Martha Bogle, superintendent of Shenandoah National Park.  “With the help of Jaggers Communications’ expertise, we will generate more awareness of the Park and the many events and offerings during the 75th Anniversary Celebration year.”

Jaggers Communications provides a positive impact to the communities in which it has a presence by selecting a nonprofit organization to work with on a pro-bono basis each year. “We believe it is critical to give back to the communities where we live and work,” explained Marijean Jaggers, president and owner of the firm.  “Shenandoah National Park has so many great stories to tell and, as a cherished part of my own back yard, I’m honored to have a role in sharing those stories in our community during the celebrated 75th anniversary.”

About Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park encompasses part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the state of Virginia and is  long and narrow, with the broad Shenandoah River and valley on the west side and the rolling hills of the Virginia Piedmont on the east. Although likely the most prominent feature of the Park is the scenic Skyline Drive, almost 40 percent of the 79,579 acres has been designated as wilderness and is protected as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Shenandoah National Park was dedicated on July 3, 1936 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Throughout 2011, Shenandoah celebrates its 75th Anniversary with events and special offerings. Learn more at www.celebrateshenandoah.org

About Jaggers Communications

Jaggers Communications applies experience to help businesses and nonprofits reach their business goals through strategic marketing, content creation, public relations and social media. Jaggers Communications provides organizations in the health care, education, manufacturing, travel and tourism industries with social media consulting, public relations support and reputation management strategy. The firm was founded in 2011 to serve businesses and nonprofits with a need for cost-effective, strategic communications with effective reach. www.jaggerscommunications.com

###

 

Feb 28
Love0

LinkedIn: When to Ignore a Request to Connect

By Communications

My friend John posed this question via Twitter, “Say you don’t know someone and they send you a LinkedIn invite. I usually summarily reject. Are there cases where I shouldn’t?”

It’s a good question, and I know that people have differing opinions on this one. There are two schools of thought, as in most things, one is “white hat” the other a more “black hat” or not-so-ethical approach. I am steadfastly white hat; that’s what you get from someone with a background in professional communications, public relations and reputation management.

That being said, I believe in preserving the sanctity of what LinkedIn has set out to do; create business networks of people who actually know one another. I will extend this to fairly loose connections and relationships — I don’t have to know you in person or have worked directly with you to connect with you on LinkedIn. I do, however, need to have context that indicates our commonality — where we met, a common group or community to which we belong. I speak to large audiences frequently and sometimes am invited to connect to someone who I met during that speaking engagement. I often accept these, if I’m given that context and made a personal connection with that person at that event.

This leads to how we send those invitations to connect with others. Several years ago I received an invitation to connect that was so well-written, I have cleaned it up, generalized it, and used it as a best practice example ever since. A good invitation to connect looks something like this:

As you may know, I resigned my position as [TITLE & COMPANY]. It was a rich experience and I value the privilege of access to a very high level of thought leadership during my years there.

Recently, I have begun to work with the [COMPANY] to [DETAILS OF JOB AND INDUSTRY] We are [MORE DETAILS OF THE WORK BEING DONE, RELATIONSHIPS BEING BUILT].

As I value our relationship and appreciate the depth of experience you bring to your profession, please join my network so we can stay in touch on this and more.

Warm regards,

It’s helpful, when you reach out to someone to connect, to give them context — the when and where of your meeting or interaction. Some of us meet and work with many people and our memories are not as clear as we’d like. I may have simply forgotten your name, and if your note says only “I’d like to add you to my network on LinkedIn” that doesn’t do anything to differentiate you from the guy who is just trying to build his numbers.

That brings me back to the concept of the black hat social networker — occasionally you will get invitations from people who are so far outside your network you can’t even figure out why the invitation has arrived. There are people simply playing a numbers game; don’t be tempted to join this tribe or contribute to it by accepting. It devalues the network and the strength of the relationships in it.

What do you think? When do you ignore a request to connect on LinkedIn?

Feb 24
Love0

How the Financial Services Industry CAN use Social Media

By Communications

If you don’t already know this, I’ll tell you: people who work in investments or financial services aren’t “allowed” to use social media. The industry, as a whole, frowns upon it because of liability, security and privacy issues.

Not willing to be the one and only industry left completely out of the social loop, some of the companies offering these services have established some creative workarounds to enable their staff to use social networking sites to generate what amounts to cold calling lists.

I’ve seen the “social media policy” for one of these companies, and some of the tactics encouraged are counter to the culture of social media enough to make my hair stand on end. I had an encounter of this kind personally, and it left a bad taste in my mouth ever after.

But, fear not financial people — there’s a good solution to this conundrum, that follows the social media rules of engagement and can help you build your business. (And there’s also a good reason why there’s a picture of a pie in this post.)

The way to successfully use social media is to focus your content on you as a person — what is it about you that’s interesting? Are you all about lacrosse or running? Do you brew beer or (as I do) bake pie? What can you do to brand yourself in your community, to become the guy/gal who [fill in the blank] that also works for “Merrill Jones” (not a real investment firm; duh).

If you can use social networking to develop relationships in your community as a human being and a member of your community, the people with whom you develop those relationships can and will become clients and referral sources over time — without you ever mentioning anything about financial services or investments online.

I don’t have the same issues (at all) as financial folk, but still have benefited from people knowing me as “the pie lady” only to discover that there’s much more to me than that. Sometimes the people who come in through the “pie door” end up clients or valuable referral sources. They always become friends.

People have relationships with people — not the “Merrill Joneses” of the world. Just something to remember, no matter what industry you’re in.

Feb 23
Love0

7-Steps to Social Media Startup for Small Businesses

By Social Media

My friend Denny and I go way back. So far, in fact, that I remember him trying to teach me how to do paradiddles during our freshman year sociology class at the University of Missouri.

Apparently people call him Dennis now, but he’ll always be Denny to me.

Yes, Denny is a drummer (that’s a recent photo on the right), and it’s been no surprise to me that over the last several years he’s been teaching young kids how to be drummers, too.

The music store where Denny taught is closing shop, and Denny intends to continue his side-business from home. He reached out to me for some advice on how to market his services efficiently and inexpensively.

Here’s what I told him to do . . .

7 Steps to Social Media Startup for Small Businesses

  1. Buy the domain name for your business and/or your first and last name.
  2. Arrange for a year or more of hosting the website (I am fond of DreamHost).
  3. Install something easy to manage, like WordPress on the site.
  4. Get some YouTube videos posted of you and your students.
  5. Create a Facebook page for your business and share it with all of your friends, students and former students.
  6. Grab a Twitter account and include “drum lessons” and your location in the bio — make sure you’re following people in your community (find them via Tweepz.com) and interacting with them.
  7. Create a schedule for yourself and post new content to your website at least once a week — drum solo videos, your thoughts on your approach to teaching, your favorite drummers (etc.)

If Denny, (ahem) Dennis, does all of this, and makes sure he’s connecting via LinkedIn and Facebook with members of his community, parents and potential students, I’m sure he’ll have dozens of future drummers beating down his door.