Tell Your Story Welcomes Amanda Stewart

Amanda Social PRTell Your Story is thrilled to introduce you to its first full-time team member, Amanda Stewart. Amanda will serve as our Social Media and Public Relations Manager, responsible for developing and executing strategic PR and social media plans for clients as well as Tell Your Story. She will also oversee me, the intern.

 

Prior to Tell Your Story, Amanda worked as a public relations consultant for business-to-business firm, Gyro (formerly HSR Business to Business), where she helped increase awareness, preference and thought leadership for clients including USG Corporation, Morton Salt and SIRVA. She takes a metrics-driven approach to social media and PR and is passionate about integrating social and digital media with traditional public relations.

 

Originating from Rockford, IL, just 90 miles outside of Chicago, Amanda attended Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois where she received a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication and Political Science. Although she initially planned to be an attorney, after interning at a law office in college, knew she was better suited for a career that allowed for more creativity and communication. After her first marketing/PR internship, Amanda was hooked. She was then drawn to the beautiful city of Chicago where she not only loves the abundance of business opportunities, but to the amazing culture, food and people.

 

“I have loved developing highly- targeted messages, and sharing those messages through public relations and social media strategies. One of the most fascinating things about this industry is the evolution of it,” Amanda expresses. “Just in my 5-year career, the way we communicate with customers has completely changed with the widespread use of social media and user generated content. I look forward to seeing what is to come and helping my clients navigate the changing landscape to their best advantage.”

 

Amanda learned about the opportunity with Tell Your Story because George Rafeedie, Founder of Tell Your Story, was the Managing Director at her first agency job at HSR Business to Business. They kept in touch over the years after George started his own agency, and when the opportunity arose, they both knew it was the perfect fit.

 

“I saw Amanda grow rapidly at HSR and her reputation for doing great PR and social media work grew tremendously after I left,” George said. “Once I saw I had the opportunity and clients to get someone like her on board to help craft and tell great stories, I had to go for it. I can’t be more excited about the work we are currently doing and will be doing for our clients. Keep an eye on us.”

 

Welcome Amanda!

Lots of Activity

Tell Your Story ActivityWhat a crazy last few weeks. I attended almost all sessions and networking events (plus some non-official networking events) at the Business Marketing Association national conference, Unleash, last week in Chicago. What a great event. I also went to the Chicago BMA Windy City Biz Bash where I was the sponsor of the DJ and soundtrack for the night. The BizBash is always a good time and a worthy cause.

 

In addition, it was finals week at DePaul and I sat through and graded 12 fantastic presentations by my students in my Intro to PR class. They each had a “real client” and came up with a full PR/social media plan and presented it to me, special guests and clients the past two week. I’m a very proud adjunct prof.

 

Lastly, I made two new hires for

 

Tell Your Story — my first two 40+ hours a week team members to handle the growing needs of my clients, which I am very thankful to serve. We’ll have more detail on my two hires over the next few weeks.

 

Other than that, it’s time to make things happen and get ready for several client summer shows and initiatives. Thanks for reading and following

Creative Story Reel

We like to tell purpose-driven stories of great companies and people through a variety of marketing communications tactics. Once we help you uncover or refine your organization’s great story, we pull together our resources from creative, PR, social media, interactive and other disciplines and tell that story in compelling ways.

 

Check out our featured video on our YouTube channel for the few great stories we are currently highlighting.

Content: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

In this short Tell Your Story interview at a recent social media gathering, IBM’s David Pittman talks about his Reduce, Reuse and Recycle philosophy when it comes to content creation for communications and social media uses. His philosophy took shape when he was at a much smaller company than IBM, but you can put this thinking to use at all kinds of companies, regardless of size.

 

In short, he is saying that most companies have all of the content they need to consistently share their compelling stories through social media channels. The content already exists in various forms — sell sheets, web sites, press releases, brochures…etc. You just need to be resourceful with what is already created and reduce, reuse and recycle. Then, if resources and budget allows, get creative with developing new content.

Layoff Christina? And Other Super Bowl Thoughts.

Social PR National SongHere are a few delayed thoughts on Super Bowl topics of all kinds. I needed a few days to recover from the Steelers loss. (Those who know me, you understand.) Plus, my DePaul intro to public relations students energized me a bit. So here you go.Layoff Christina. Everyone makes mistakes. Don’t worry critics – she will NEVER live this down. And, yes, Francis Scott Key, was rolling in his grave.

 

All Super Bowl ads mentioned can be viewed on YouTube’s AdBlitz channel.

 

GroupOn is who we thought they were. Tibet ad didn’t play well, but it got lots of attention. Even though they have apologized and pulled a few spots, it was a calculated move to add to their story. I don’t think it will have any long-term damage.Budweiser’s western spot cracked me up. They always know how to make me smile. Bud and DDB (their ad agency) are also masters at pre-Super Bowl commercial buzz. (Hold Me Closer) Tiny Dancer was the perfect song.

 

The Dorito’s/Pepsi Max Crash the Super Bowl Challenge was a big hit. Big winner was the Pug/Dorito Super Bowl spot. Maybe I like it because I have a pug dog named Bruce, but it also scored really well nationally.
VW won in a big way with Darth Vader. If you didn’t hear, the kid who played Darth is a 6-year-old heart patient from Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles and is getting a lot of post-Super Bowl buzz.

 

Not sure why Motorola would knock off the iconic Macintosh 1984 ad. Seemed too manufactured.

 

Chimps are always funny. Hooray for CareerBuilder.

 

Detroit Pride. Chrysler won a lot of points in Detroit, the state of Michigan and other down-on-their-luck-but-far-from-dead-cities in the Midwest, like my hometown Youngstown, O.

 

Skechers won some credibility with the young crowd, according to a few students last night. Kim Kardashian was a big hit.

 

Despite several glitches, I liked the halftime show. So did my boys Maxwell (5) and Alex (2).

 

The mattress spot was a bit too risqué for me. But mattresses could probably tell some darn good stories. So good for Sealy.

 

Wow, did Mother Nature play a star role in Jerry Jones’ worst nightmare or what? The owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the vision and money behind palatial Cowboy Stadium, host of the Super Bowl, couldn’t have imagined worse weather or a more bizarre situation involving unavailable seats for actual ticket holders. This Time Magazine article illustrates everything that went wrong and the PR fallout of “seatgate” at the SuperBowl.

 

The NFL must be scratching its head too about how these things collided on Super Bowl Sunday, their biggest day of the year. On top of that, Christina messes up the national anthem and the halftime sound speakers weren’t working too well. Good thing the play of Aaron Rodgers, and the resiliency of the mistake-prone Steelers made it an exciting game, and the most-watched television show in U.S. history topping more than 111 million viewers.

 

That’s all I have to say about that. Long live the National Football League and here’s to fruitful negotiations between the owners and the players’ union over the next several weeks. You don’t want that story to drag on any longer than it has already.

 

 

 

Layoff Christina? And Other Super Bowl Thoughts

 

The Chrysler 200 has arrived. Imported from Detroit.