We recently connected with Xavier Murphy and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Xavier, thanks for joining us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I hope the legacy will be that we created a platform that showcases Jamaica & Jamaicans who live on the island and in the diaspora to the world.

Xavier, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am Xavier Murphy and I founded the Jamaicans.com platform in 1995. Our main goal is to showcase Jamaican and Jamaican via the platform. I love seeing people soar the new heights and we are excited to tell their stories. Our platform visitors visit for these stories and to learn about Jamaican culture, music news and recipes. I started in the industry working for an electronic marketing company that sold Travel packages on AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In the mid to late 1990’s when the dot-com burst we had to find ways to keep paying the bills. The use of the internet was increasing even though companies were experiencing this financial downturn. We had more visitors each month and the cost to maintain the platform. The community on our forums, which many say were the first form of social media, came up with the idea to raise funds with paid parties through our the USA, Canada and Jamaica. The funds raised were paid directly to our vendors (hosting, email service) and kept us afloat during a difficult time.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

It was a tough balancing act building an audience on what is recognized a modern social media as we still had to maintain our “old school” social media, a forum. We reach an audience of over 350k modern social media today as people moved away from forums. I think the key to social media is providing content that your audience will interact with.

Contact Info:

• Xavier Murphy – Jamaicans.com Founder (How to say “Xavier“)
• Jamaicans.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamaicansdotcom
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/Jamaicans/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/jamaicans/
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/ jamaicansdotcom 
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/jamaicansdotcom
• LinkedIn: https://jm.linkedin.com/company/jamaicansdotcom

Image Credits
Xavier Murphy