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Pay It Forward 2010 Profile: Sarah Evans

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These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.


Spotlight: Sarah Evans
Title: President/Founder
Employer: Sevans Strategy (herself)
Who paid it forward: Peter Shankman

Sarah attended Millikin University near Chicago where she started off as a Musical Theater major. Within the first month, she decided that major was more of a hobby for her and she switched to Communications based on recommendations from some of her advisors. Early on in her PR career, she discovered a deep love for non-profits and last year she decided to venture out on her own to create Sevans Strategy, where she works with non-profits and “social good” companies to help them craft their communications campaigns. Sarah also blogs at www.prsarahevans.com and was recently listed in Forbes’ 14 Power Women to Follow on Twitter, invesp’s Top 100 Most Influential Marketers of 2009 and ereleases’ 30 PR Experts to Follow on Twitter.

How Sarah started learning about social media: Online communications is what she loves. Sarah wrote her first computer program in 6th grade and won a state award for it. Her mother is a librarian, and she had Sarah and her siblings using computers at a young age. She was constantly looking for ways to stay in touch online with people. Back then, Sarah says these resources weren’t even called social media – they were called ‘emerging technologies’.

Who has influenced Sarah: Peter Shankman has been a big influence on Sarah. She says that he has been very generous with his time and advice, particularly in support of her venturing out on her own last year. Sarah also appreciates the guidance she received from Jackie Mitchell, her first boss, who was a MarComm Director for the Red Cross in Chicago at the time. She says that Jackie challenged her to never be afraid to share her ideas, and to work like you’re not afraid to be fired. (great advice that all of us could take!)

Where Sarah sees social media going in the future: From a PR standpoint, Sarah believes it’s going to become more integrated – social media itself will be less of a separate entity unto itself and more integrated into marketing practices. She also feels there will be even more interest generated in location based applications, and wider acceptance and embracing of these tools. People will be checking for a company’s presence online as well as looking for its community involvement and participation in activities, and we will see more companies ‘crowdsourcing’ for ideas from customers. Sarah feels we will see more practical uses for social media, not necessarily innovation-wise, but more day-to-day uses for them.

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