Public Relations: Sarah Evans’ Recipe for Success

by Mom It Forward on April 27th, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Take two parts passion for PR, and add two parts passion for social media, a heaping tablespoonful of hard work (that spice that makes everything better), and you have Sarah Evans of Sevans Strategy, a successful PR social media guru whose mission is to successfully bridge the gap between PR and social media. She is widely sought-after by businesses and organizations for her how-to-effectively-use-emerging technologies recipe.

How did such a great recipe develop? How much time did it spend in the oven? Several years, Sarah's "oven" being first a community college where she worked in and gained a love for all things "communication," then at a large healthcare nonprofit in Illinois and as a PR freelancer, and then as a PR blogger. Her experiences have grown into and resulted in a "delicious," successful PR agency serving over 40,000 people. Indeed, her career literally grew out of her passion for helping businesses understand and work with social media sites.

And as well she should, with statistics like these, reported on PRSarahEvans.com:

Almost 20% of visits to company sites are prompted by social media, whereas less than 1% come via direct links, according to a ForeSee study. (InformationWeek),
Eighty percent of U.S. businesses with 100 or more employees will use social media marketing this year. (iMediaConnection via eMarketer).
Only one in five small businesses uses social media. But of those that do, their use of blogs ranks above Twitter. (73% Facebook or other networking site, 28% blog, 23% Twitter. WSJ

With good reason, then, Sarah is a self-described "social media freak," a passionate believer in the social media space as a "perfect playground" and medium for connection between blogs and brands. At her own blog, PRSarahEvans, she has a vision of making a legacy for the PR industry as a whole. She strives to model good public relations behaviors and get rid of negative perceptions of PR people. She shares many practical insights for those looking to understand what "good PR" really means, and delineates specific things that keep people coming back to one's blog, site, or store. "I love being able to help other people, and make a living at the same time," she says. "It's ideal."

And help people she does. She recently donated the use of her social platforms to help a local crisis center, and raised $161,000 in two days. "My way of 'saving the world' is a little bit here and there." Like all of us, she seeks to make a difference for others while still finding balance in her own life, and it's not always easy. Having once worked a full-time day job and a full-time freelance job at the same time, she has been in a place of imbalance. Today, she has a husband, a baby on the way, and one full-time job. When asked what kind of "dish" she hopes to serve five years down the road, where she hopes her company will be, she replies: "I hope SevansStrategy will be the most trusted resource, the company companies go to when they need to understand and effectively work with social media."

If you want to find out more about Sarah Evans, visit her blog: http://prsarahevans.com, her Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/prsarahevans, her Twitter page @prsarahevans or http://twitter.com/#!/prsarahevans, or her Sevans Strategy site: http://sevansstrategy.com/.