Tag

Marijean Jaggers

Sep 26
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Five Simple Ways to Manage a Reputation

By Communications, Crisis Communications, Public Relations

How do you manage the reputation of your company? It’s difficult, and there are many moving parts. That’s why so many hire help from a firm or solo practitioner. Not a week goes by when I don’t hear about a business owner fretting over a bad Yelp review or an article damaging to their business or industry.

There are a few basic elements to managing a reputation, such as:

  1. Publishing content that tells the story of your organization in an authentic way
  2. Monitoring what’s being said and written online, to react to opportunities to respond
  3. Proactively pitch media with real news about your business
  4. Position the leaders of your organization as thought leaders and experts; offer them to media members as interview subjects or authors of whitepapers and editorial pieces
  5. Generate conversation among fans of the business

Of course, if a company’s reputation is bad because its product, service or customer relationships are bad, you may do all of the above and the company will still earn the reputation it deserves. Consider carefully your clients, PR and marketing people. And companies? Don’t expect miracles when you’re unwilling to improve the way you do business.

And now, a little Joan Jett and the Blackhearts . . .

 

Sep 16
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WTF? Friday: Why Fake it When You Can Have the Real Thing?

By Communications, Social Media

Today’s post is brought to you by Ken Mueller, the owner of Inkling Media, a Social Media and marketing company in Lancaster, PA.

You just can’t fake some things.WTF?

The other day I saw one of my friends post on Twitter:

NEWS FLASH: Fake tans don’t look real

And he’s right. You can spot a fake tan a mile away. A fake tan screams, “I’m vain and I was nowhere near the beach!”

Same with toupees.

Is it more embarrassing to go bald and show the world, or try to cover it up with a piece of “processed hair matter” that screams, “If I were bald you MIGHT look at me, but NOW you can’t take your eyes off of me and the monstrosity on my head, can you???”

Like any great marketing, they grab your attention, but for all the wrong reasons. People can see through fake. Fake might work for a while, but eventually you will be found out.

What does faking it look like in Social Media?

Claiming to be something you’re not – your credentials can be Googled, and what you say about yourself can be either confirmed or denied by those you have known over the years. And the more you share online, the more people can tell if you have no clue what you are talking about.

Claming to NOT be something you are – You’ve read the reviews on Yelp where you just know that the glowing review was written by the mother or spouse of the restaurant owner, or it might actually be an employee pretending to be a happy customer. On the other side, I’ve seen horrible reviews that just feel as if they were written by the competition. Don’t do it.

Astroturfing – This is when businesses create fake profiles of individuals who then comment on their blogs, Facebook pages, etc.. The idea is that you are “seeding” conversation, and making it look like you have a larger following than you do. This will bite you in the butt big time if you are ever caught…and odds are, you will be caught.

Don’t be stupid. You can try to fake things, but it’s very likely you’ll be found out, and the damage done can be pretty bad. Be real. Be who you are. By all means, filter yourself, but don’t try to give people the wrong impressions.

Sure we can beat the words “authenticity” and “transparency” to death, but they are incredibly important. It’s like signing up for a dating site and posting a picture of a beautiful man or woman, and claiming to be much younger than you are. That game only goes so far. Eventually you’ll have to go on a date and it will be obvious you’re lying.

Faking it never works. Well…almost never…

 

 

Sep 15
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Tweet, Meet, Eat and . . . History! Tweetup Friday, Sept. 16 at Noon

By Communications

A serious part of my Charlottesville cultural upbringing has been missing.

Confession: I have never been to The White Spot.

Upon learning this, my friend Coy Barefoot and I decided it was high time we meet for lunch and quickly turned our date into a full fledged tweetup, enhanced by a short, historical walking tour of The Corner at the University of Virginia.

Coy, an historian, wrote the book, The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of Virginia.

Me? I just want a Gus Burger.

Join us! Friday, Sept. 16, 2011 at noon.

Eat, Meet, Tweet and History

Sep 13
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Jaggers Communications Offers Twitter for Business Workshop

By Jaggers Communications News

*MEDIA ALERT*

For more information, contact:

Marijean Jaggers
434.973.0645
mjaggers@jaggerscommunications.com

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

WHAT: Public relations firm Jaggers Communications and nationally-recognized social media educator Marijean Jaggers offer a Twitter for Business lunch time session. The workshop offers information for businesses to help increase social networks, reach business communications goals and develop the right kind of relationships. This session will cover best practices, Twitter management tools and methods of measuring success.

 WHEN: Friday, Sept. 23, Noon to 1p.m. Fee: $49. Register online: http://twitterforbusinesscville.eventbrite.com/

 WHERE: OpenSpace, (next to ACAC downtown) 455 Second Street SE, Ste. 100, Charlottesville, VA 22902. Parking is available on Second Street or Garrett Street.

 WHO: This session is $49 to attend and is open to the public. Business owners, employees and marketers should attend.

 NOTE: Participants should bring a brown bag lunch. Drinks and dessert will be provided.

 

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About Jaggers Communications

Jaggers Communications is a strategic communications firm that provides organizations in health care, education and science-based business 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 strategic communications with effective reach. www.jaggerscommunications.com

 

Sep 09
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WTF? Friday: Four Ways Facebook and LinkedIn are Different

By Communications
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/TimFree/status/112157907902136322″]

My friend Tim fired off a cranky tweet this morning — and I agree with it wholeheartedly. Four ways Facebook and LinkedIn are different:

  1. LinkedIn is specifically for business relationships; for the most part, your friends on Facebook aren’t there to do business.
  2. A person’s LinkedIn profile is their resume. A person’s Facebook profile often tells you far less about the person professionally, and more about them personally.
  3. We connect to people on LinkedIn to improve our careers, to endorse others with whom we do business and to seek new opportunities. We connect with people on Facebook to find out if that guy we went to high school with is still hot. (Pro tip: he’s not.)
  4. Facebook calls connections “friends” which is amusing and mislabeled. I’m not really friends with most of the people I’ve “friended” on Facebook. LinkedIn connections, however, should be held to a higher standard; it will happen you will be the link between person A and person B and if person A asks you for a reference regarding person B, you don’t want to say, “I don’t really know them.”

So don’t go accepting all those offers to connect on LinkedIn willy-nilly, you dope. Make sure they’re people with whom you actually have a relationship you can reference.