National and Regional Digital Marketing Speaker – Sarah Best
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Sarah Best (CEO and Chief Strategist of Sarah Best Strategy, https://www.sarahbeststrategy.com) is a digital marketing speaker and workshop leader who speaks at local, regional, and national conferences.
She illuminates difficult-to-understand topics, gives actionable advice, references industry-specific examples and case studies, and adapts content for all levels, from absolute beginners through intermediate and advanced users. Sarah Best Strategy's digital marketing services empower companies and organizations to shine in the digital space, whether you want to unleash the full potential of your in-house team or hire professional help to execute your vision. We do this in the service of creating happier, healthier, and more inclusive communities. Groups Sarah speaks to include membership associations, nonprofits, faith communities, universities, B Corporations, credit unions, chambers of commerce, travel and tourism, and social corporate responsibility groups. |
Sarah Best (she/her) - Speaker Bio
Sarah Best (she/her, CEO of Sarah Best Strategy – https://www.sarahbeststrategy.com) and her team have won over a dozen awards for their digital marketing work, including Best Use of a Social Media Platform from Travel + Leisure. Recognized as a 40 Under 40 in InBusiness, her work has been profiled in SUCCESS, Crain’s Chicago Business, Mashable, TechCrunch, Chicago Tribune, National Geographic Traveler and other publications. She was tapped to speak at Social Media Week for the MacArthur Foundation, and has twice been selected for SXSW. An alumna of New York University, Sarah holds a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program at Babson College and has completed executive education for diverse businesses at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
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Sessions and Workshops
NEW - Digital Strategy and Trends
Technology influences marketing and business in profound ways. Digital platforms seem to change and emerge by the day, and novel technologies can evoke as much fear in us as they do a sense of wonder and opportunities. A lack of certainty about the impacts of technology often results in overly conservative decision making, or worse, wasted resources, even when we as business leaders see the potential for disruption to our bottom lines. In this talk, Sarah Best, CEO of Sarah Best Strategy, an award-winning digital marketing agency, shares a framework for making good decisions about trends and determining when we need to act on them. Current trends in search, social media, and AI tools will be presented as use cases.
How Semantic Search is Changing the Google SEO Game
Advances in AI and large language models (LLMs) have created a sea change in how Google is ranking websites, and businesses that are losing their rankings are, at times, seeing significant decreases in revenue. During this session, we'll discuss how Google's algorithm has evolved over time, what semantic SEO is, and how to optimize your website in response to recent algorithm changes. We'll review foundational SEO strategies, share tools that can make SEO easier, and look into our crystal ball to prepare for other potential disruptions to search including social search and conversational search tools like Google Bard and Chat GPT.
How to Set Your Social Media Team Up for Success
Workflow, a term that is used to describe the way that people work together on a set of tasks, can make or break a marketing program. Teams that align around a clear vision and communications objectives, and who are empowered by the right tools and processes are best set up to achieve an organization’s goals. Today, Sarah Best, CEO of Sarah Best Strategy, will share her tips and best practices for collaborating as a team around producing social media content, so that you save time, and give yourself the best chance of furthering your mission.
How to Plan Social Media Content in a Strategic, Time-Efficient Manner
During this presentation, social media expert Sarah Best will teach you how to plan social media content in a time-efficient and strategic manner on your own or in a group. Learn how to apply the FEEL-THINK-DO framework to your content for maximizing engagement and speaking to customers at different points in their sales journey, and gain an understanding of how evergreen content, content buckets, and AI tools and techniques can help you save time and get the most out of content you’ve already written for your website or other sales materials.
How to Determine Your Social Media Mix
According to a 2021 Harris Poll, 71% of purchases are influenced by social media from friends or people we know, while 63% are influenced by a company's social media. In this session, social expert Sarah Best will walk you through data that can help you determine which social platforms to focus on, how to speak to customers effectively via social media, why paid social is important, and how to set goals for your social media program.
Instagram for Business
Because Instagram is a visual-first platform it can feel a little tricky to navigate as a business. In this session we'll look at how successful businesses use content to drive awareness, traffic, and engagement. We'll review lots of examples from relevant businesses, teach you how to set goals for your Instagram program, discuss the easiest way to get started with paid Instagram strategies, and share best practices.
Take Control of Your Local Search Presence
Google search listings can increase sales and foot traffic to your business, whether you have a brick-and-mortar location or are selling products online. In this session, Sarah will demystify the basics of how local search and organic search work. You’ll learn practical, time-saving tips for improving your local search listing, how to optimize pages on your website for key search terms, and how to understand whether your efforts are working.
Messaging for Target Audiences
What makes your audience tick and how can we effectively speak to them? Join an expert from Sarah Best Strategy for an interactive workshop on how to write messages that are tailored to your key stakeholders, and how to deploy these messages as part of a communications strategy. We'll demonstrate the design tools of user personas and value proposition canvases and how we can use them to create foundational messaging.
How to Manage Manage Social Media in a Strategic, Time-Efficient Manner
During this presentation, you’ll get an overview of how to plan social media content in a time-efficient and strategic manner. We’ll teach you about the FEEL-THINK-DO framework for speaking to customers at different points in their sales journey, and introduce the concept of “evergreen” content as a way to save time and get the most out of content you’ve already written for your website or other sales materials.
Setting Your Social Media Team Up for Success
Workflow can make or break a social media team. Teams that align around a clear vision and goals, and are empowered by the right tools and processes, are best set up to effectively achieve business goals and objectives. At our May event, Sarah Best, CEO of Sarah Best Strategy, will share her tips and best practices for organizing a social media team to maximize effectiveness.
Custom Talks and Workshops
We also offer custom workshops for groups of all sizes. These workshops range from hour-long webinars or in-person talks; skill-building lunch and learns; to engaging, interactive workshops; and multi-day bootcamps.
Examples of custom sessions we've offered in the past include:
Technology influences marketing and business in profound ways. Digital platforms seem to change and emerge by the day, and novel technologies can evoke as much fear in us as they do a sense of wonder and opportunities. A lack of certainty about the impacts of technology often results in overly conservative decision making, or worse, wasted resources, even when we as business leaders see the potential for disruption to our bottom lines. In this talk, Sarah Best, CEO of Sarah Best Strategy, an award-winning digital marketing agency, shares a framework for making good decisions about trends and determining when we need to act on them. Current trends in search, social media, and AI tools will be presented as use cases.
How Semantic Search is Changing the Google SEO Game
Advances in AI and large language models (LLMs) have created a sea change in how Google is ranking websites, and businesses that are losing their rankings are, at times, seeing significant decreases in revenue. During this session, we'll discuss how Google's algorithm has evolved over time, what semantic SEO is, and how to optimize your website in response to recent algorithm changes. We'll review foundational SEO strategies, share tools that can make SEO easier, and look into our crystal ball to prepare for other potential disruptions to search including social search and conversational search tools like Google Bard and Chat GPT.
How to Set Your Social Media Team Up for Success
Workflow, a term that is used to describe the way that people work together on a set of tasks, can make or break a marketing program. Teams that align around a clear vision and communications objectives, and who are empowered by the right tools and processes are best set up to achieve an organization’s goals. Today, Sarah Best, CEO of Sarah Best Strategy, will share her tips and best practices for collaborating as a team around producing social media content, so that you save time, and give yourself the best chance of furthering your mission.
How to Plan Social Media Content in a Strategic, Time-Efficient Manner
During this presentation, social media expert Sarah Best will teach you how to plan social media content in a time-efficient and strategic manner on your own or in a group. Learn how to apply the FEEL-THINK-DO framework to your content for maximizing engagement and speaking to customers at different points in their sales journey, and gain an understanding of how evergreen content, content buckets, and AI tools and techniques can help you save time and get the most out of content you’ve already written for your website or other sales materials.
How to Determine Your Social Media Mix
According to a 2021 Harris Poll, 71% of purchases are influenced by social media from friends or people we know, while 63% are influenced by a company's social media. In this session, social expert Sarah Best will walk you through data that can help you determine which social platforms to focus on, how to speak to customers effectively via social media, why paid social is important, and how to set goals for your social media program.
Instagram for Business
Because Instagram is a visual-first platform it can feel a little tricky to navigate as a business. In this session we'll look at how successful businesses use content to drive awareness, traffic, and engagement. We'll review lots of examples from relevant businesses, teach you how to set goals for your Instagram program, discuss the easiest way to get started with paid Instagram strategies, and share best practices.
Take Control of Your Local Search Presence
Google search listings can increase sales and foot traffic to your business, whether you have a brick-and-mortar location or are selling products online. In this session, Sarah will demystify the basics of how local search and organic search work. You’ll learn practical, time-saving tips for improving your local search listing, how to optimize pages on your website for key search terms, and how to understand whether your efforts are working.
Messaging for Target Audiences
What makes your audience tick and how can we effectively speak to them? Join an expert from Sarah Best Strategy for an interactive workshop on how to write messages that are tailored to your key stakeholders, and how to deploy these messages as part of a communications strategy. We'll demonstrate the design tools of user personas and value proposition canvases and how we can use them to create foundational messaging.
How to Manage Manage Social Media in a Strategic, Time-Efficient Manner
During this presentation, you’ll get an overview of how to plan social media content in a time-efficient and strategic manner. We’ll teach you about the FEEL-THINK-DO framework for speaking to customers at different points in their sales journey, and introduce the concept of “evergreen” content as a way to save time and get the most out of content you’ve already written for your website or other sales materials.
Setting Your Social Media Team Up for Success
Workflow can make or break a social media team. Teams that align around a clear vision and goals, and are empowered by the right tools and processes, are best set up to effectively achieve business goals and objectives. At our May event, Sarah Best, CEO of Sarah Best Strategy, will share her tips and best practices for organizing a social media team to maximize effectiveness.
Custom Talks and Workshops
We also offer custom workshops for groups of all sizes. These workshops range from hour-long webinars or in-person talks; skill-building lunch and learns; to engaging, interactive workshops; and multi-day bootcamps.
Examples of custom sessions we've offered in the past include:
- LinkedIn Strategy for Brand Champions
- Social media topics for faith communities focused on outreach to external audiences, and family engagement topics
- Case Study: How the YMCA Took their Social Media Strategy National
- "101" sessions on coaching topics setting up websites, Facebook pages, etc.
- Personal branding for professionals in transition
Interactive Activities for In-Person and Virtual Talks
We're able to offer most of our topics in a variety of formats, from a webinar to an in-person workshop or bootcamp (full day or multi-day session). For webinars, we use interactive tools like collaborative whiteboarding and drag-and-drop features to keep attendees engaged.
Workshops and bootcamps longer than an hour can include breakout discussions and activities.
Workshops and bootcamps longer than an hour can include breakout discussions and activities.
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Watch a Past Talk
Past Speaking Engagements
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Book Sarah for an Event
Please give as much detail as you can about your training need or event, such as: tentative or confirmed event dates; audience for the event and audience size; event location (virtual or in-person); event format (talk, workshop, bootcamp); desired length (20 min, 45 min, 60 min, 1.5 hours, half-day, full-day, multi-day); and preferred topics.
"Sarah's presentation for Madison Women in Tech on personal branding was fantastic. The idea can be intimidating, but her description of personal branding as 'an invitation for people to think differently about you' really helped set the tone. Sarah had good pacing, practical advice and clear takeaways. It helped me confirm what I was doing right, while providing me several easy-to-understand next steps!"
- Hilary Stohs-Krause, Co-Owner, Ten Forward Consulting and Organizer, Madison Women in Tech
