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Jaggers Communications

Feb 17
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The Independent Author and Social Media: A Marriage of Necessity

By Social Media
Editor’s note: I’m out gallivanting (actually, several speaking gigs and new clients to serve this week), so my friend and social media-savvy author, William Esmont has provided us with a guest post. Enjoy!

With the introduction of the Kindle platform, Amazon made it possible for independent authors and publishers to make their work available to the world with a click of the mouse.

Independent authors rejoiced. Then they set about the business of learning how to sell on the web, and in the process, discovered it’s a lot harder than it looks.

Following are some strategies I learned during my first year as an independent author. In isolation, they are interesting diversions. When combined however, they become a powerful machine capable of drawing global attention to your work and building a loyal fan base of repeat customers.

1. Independent author message boards

Web sites like kindleboards, nookboards, and mobileread are excellent places to meet other authors and hone your craft.

2. Twitter

Create an account dedicated to your writing identity and tweet about your experiences. All of them. Learn hash tags and use them to your advantage.

3. Goodreads

Goodreads is like Facebook for book aficionados. This is where hardcore readers congregate.

4. Book Bloggers

A good review from the right blogger can send your sales into the stratosphere. All they ask in return is a review copy.

5. Facebook

Create a Facebook page for your author activities and post in writing-related groups using the new ‘post as page’ functionality.

6. Personal Blog

This is your public face. Link it with Twitter and your blog posts are distributed to the world automatically.

And last, but not least, buy business cards. You never know when the person sitting next to you in Starbucks is a potential customer.

William Esmont lives and writes in Tucson, Arizona. You can learn more about him and his books at www.williamesmont.com.

Feb 08
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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 02
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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.

Feb 01
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Media Alert: Jaggers Communications Offers Blogging Best Practices Workshop

By Jaggers Communications News

*MEDIA ALERT*

For more information, contact:

Marijean Jaggers
434.973.0645
mjaggers@jaggerscommunications.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jaggers Communications Offers Blogging Best Practices Workshop

WHAT: A workshop for bloggers, those interested in blogging and those responsible for creating online content as part of their jobs. Participants will be led through exercises to improve blog posts, headlines and searchable content.  This workshop shares blogging best practices from seasoned blogging professionals applied to all levels of social media expertise.

WHEN: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 9:00a.m. to 11:00a.m. Fee: $60/participant.

Register online:  http://jaggersblogging.eventbrite.com

WHERE: OpenSpace in The Conference Studio, 455 Second Street SE, Suite 100,Charlottesville, VA 22902, phone: 434.566.0880, http://getopenspace.com/

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About Jaggers Communications

Jaggers Communications is a strategic communications firm that 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