Coal is synonymous with West Virginia. The West Virginia Coal Association is the voice of this vital state industry, representing it in legislative matters, educating the public, and advocating for miner safety. Its outreach arm, Friends of Coal, is a volunteer organization that brings together those within and outside the industry who share a common desire --that coal remain economically vibrant.
Company Story
Bricks Without Straw has worked with the Coal Association for several years. President Bill Raney described what makes Jamie, a son and grandson of four generations of coal miners, a good fit for his organization. “He’s energetic, flexible, and honest as the day is long. He is just an absolute professional. He’s got great ideas, great thoughts, and is so quick to react.”
PR representative Terry Headley explained Summer-Brown’s role in transforming what Headley called a “billboard” site: “Jamie continually expanded it. He brought a good, solid template to the site and expanded it to include our separate Friends of Coal website. And we’ve continued to expand the page counts that we have.”
Members can now quickly access recent news and legislative information affecting the industry. Prospective miners find links to training and certification. Grade level activities and lessons are available for educators. People can easily register to become a Friends of Coal member on its site.
The Coal Association site’s archives—that are fully searchable and date back 5 years—have also been a valuable resource. “We wanted to maintain an archive and didn’t know how to do it.” Headley said. “Jamie developed the means to make that happen, managing it through a database rather than a WYSIWIG editor. Having that archive has actually helped us build our traffic and our page counts. There is no question about it—it’s helped. It’s helped substantially.“
Database Management
Headley also discussed Jamie’s work beyond the website: “We have a managed database—members of Friends of Coal. A lot of people go through Constant Contact; we use Jamie. We’ve developed a system where we maintain essentially constant communications through not only that database but also expanded into Facebook, social media. . .and we’ve tied that all together. And that’s largely been because of his help.“
Jamie not only manages the database, he also creates content for member dispatches. Raney explained, “If we need to get to our database, he is very, very quick to help us prepare the message. (He tells us) what it needs to look like. He’ll say, ‘Here’s the thing that you’re going to get the best response from in the social media world.’ Jamie’s just helped immensely not only in context and in construction but in the reactive nature of things.”
Advocacy
For an industry like coal, where unreasonable government regulations can negatively impact its stability, the ability to contact representatives and senators quickly and in large numbers is a must. BWS enabled the West Virginia Coal Association to do just that by assisting members in their support of HR 2018 and Inhofe’s SJR 37. “We created, with his help, a letter that people could just click on and sign their name and use their email address,” Raney said. “They could send it to our congressional delegation. We had a great, great response with that--from a broad spectrum of people, old as well as young.”
Flexibility and Commitment
As Headley said, “He understands our eccentricities and he manages those well. And that’s just not a relationship you get with a big website firm. A perfect example: last spring Bill Raney called Jamie directly--I think it was 2 o’clock in the morning—and by the next morning Jamie already had it up and people were already responding to the call for action in terms of defending this piece of legislation.” Bill Raney’s assistant, Sandi Davison, confirmed Jamie’s quick response to their requests. “Anytime I send him something, it’s ten minutes and it’s taken care of.”
It’s that flexibility and commitment to the coal industry that have earned Jamie the trust of the West Virginia Coal Association. As Bill Raney commented, “Unlike so many people--it seems like it can almost be an act of congress for some of them to move--Jamie moves quickly. We trust him a great deal to go with it. He takes things and instantaneously gets them on the web site. Photo galleries, articles, the calls to action-- we’ll give him an idea of what we want to do and he’s the one who articulates all the specifics. We bring the ideas to him and he puts it into action.” Davison concluded, ‘We think highly of him. He’s done a great job for us.”
