Meet the Team: Lindsay Lanahan

Lindsay lanahan
Lindsay Lanahan is an empathetic, intuitive, and creative problem solver with a heart for helping others. Combining these natural strengths with her diverse experience working in financial, entertainment, and nonprofit industries make her an ideal Client Relations Specialist for Green Apple Strategy. In her role, Lindsay helps strategize and execute effective marketing initiatives for clients across various industries. Her ability to connect how customers think with a client’s overall goals gives Lindsay incredible resourcefulness to identify new opportunities for our clients.  “I love learning about the psychology of marketing and the user experience,” explains Lindsay. “I also love the process of identifying a problem or opportunity, creating an approach, implementing it, analyzing what worked and what didn’t, and adjusting. It’s exciting, and I love that we’re able to adapt to find a solution that truly makes a difference!” As an Enneagram 4 who grew up in the Midwest, Lindsay has expressed her creative, empathetic, hardworking, and diligent spirit throughout her career. After graduating from college, she spent two years working in development for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Nashville. From there, she went on to work at Creative Artists Agency managing tour logistics and finances for world-renowned pop and country music artists. She later combined her nonprofit experience and love of the arts to serve as the Development Manager for OZ Arts, a non-profit contemporary arts center.  After learning about Green Apple from a friend, Lindsay knew it would be the perfect opportunity to serve clients in a way that aligns with her natural skill set. “I was immediately drawn to Green Apple when I recognized how they took the time to understand each employee and client—whether it was through diving into the Enneagram or taking the Culture Index Survey to learn about each person’s natural behaviors. When I met Sam, and the rest of the team during the interview process, I knew I was in the right place.” Personally, Lindsay loves spending time with family and exploring Nashville with her husband Patrick. On any given weekend, they can be found enjoying one of their favorite restaurants, seeing movies at the Belcourt, or taking a day trip to attend a music festival. Lindsay bright and adventurous spirit resonates with everyone who knows her.

Having Trouble Hiring? Here’s How to Market to New Employees

This must be the place in neon lights
With job creation up significantly and unemployment at a 50-year low of 3.5%, a full 51% of small businesses are unable to fill jobs as 2022 begins. There’s no question that in this climate, it can be difficult to find the right person for the roles your company may be trying to fill. Hiring looks different than it did, even just a few months ago. With many companies competing for the same talent, brands must go above and beyond to appeal to potential candidates. So how can you attract qualified individuals to your organization, streamline the hiring and onboarding process and increase worker retention? We suggest following these four guidelines to help build a solid team. 

Offer a Remote Work Option

To stand out in a tight labor market, improving the benefits you offer to potential candidates is a surefire way to make your job listing more attractive to a potential candidate. In 2022, that means considering the possibility of offering fully remote or partially remote work, allowing for flexible work schedules or filling several part-time roles. Research shows the most talented and skilled candidates will opt for a remote position over a traditional position. Green Apple Strategy is a fully remote company. While our origins, heart, and investment are in Tennessee businesses, we’ve brought in talent from Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Alabama. Offering this flexibility to workers means that we received applications from qualified candidates all over the U.S.

Network Proactively 

While tools like LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, and ZipRecruiter have made finding qualified candidates easier, intentional networking (online or in-person) is hard to beat for connecting with vetted candidates you can trust. Interact with candidates on LinkedIn, follow leading HR firms, and connect with local colleges, universities, and trade schools in order to increase both the quantity and the quality of your hiring pool. 

Create An Apprentice or Internship Program 

Bringing in young, talented individuals is always a good idea, as they can provide a fresh perspective and are often eager to start their career with a bang. When you run an apprenticeship or internship program, you’re cultivating a qualified hiring pool and building relationships with potential new employees. Even if your program doesn’t end in a full-time hire, participants will receive experience and education and you will expand your talent network. It’s a win-win. 

Improve Your Benefits Package

In lieu of remote work, or to supplement that offering, consider making changes to your benefits package. In a crowded labor market, anWWi attractive benefits package can help your job listing stand out among other, similar roles. Changes to benefits don’t have to be huge but see if you can get creative in what you offer. Could you extend health care coverage to part-time employees? Increase the 401K match you offer by a percentage point or two? Offer a coworking space stipend to remote employees? Increase PTO by a week or move to an unlimited PTO option, as many tech companies do? Candidates weigh the pros and cons of each position they consider, and it can sway a candidate towards accepting a particular role.

Research Your Hiring Competitors

It’s tough to offer a competitive job listening if you’re unaware of what other roles your potential candidates are vying for. Make use of LinkedIn to research similar roles to the one you hope to fill. After all, your candidates will be viewing many of the same listings. And don’t forget to look outside your local hiring market. Candidates today have access to national and international job listings. Have a good sense of the salary, benefits, and responsibilities that the role you are hiring for entails. It will help you to craft a more informed and competitive job listing that’s likely to attract attention from candidates. 

Start Attracting Qualified Candidates Through Targeted Marketing

A strong presence on hiring sites like LinkedIn is one of the best ways to position your brand to attract new and skilled talent. Let Green Apple Strategy craft an innovative approach to your social media channels so that you can start targeting and attracting new team members.  Reach out to us today for a consultation.

Meet the Team: Katie Jackson

Katie Jackson
Once a member of Green Apple’s Orchard, Katie Jackson has joined our team as a full-time digital marketing specialist. Katie is a Hendersonville, Tennessee, native with a passion for social media and email marketing who loves to keep up with the latest trends, discovering ways that she can help our clients take advantage of emerging marketing opportunities. With a diverse background in social media and PR, Katie is well-versed in what it takes to improve a company’s brand awareness—and we’re elated to have her talent on our team.  As Green Apple’s Digital Marketing Specialist, Katie will focus on social media and email marketing for all of our clients, working closely with our strategist, Skylar, to collaborate on and execute their strategies. “I’m really excited to work on social media. It’s something I’m extremely passionate about, and I love keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of what social media can bring to marketing to help grow businesses,” Katie says.  Katie is a graduate of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where she first began school as a pre-dental major. After changing her major her sophomore year, Katie became a public relations major in the College of Communications. She also got her Master’s in Sports Management while working in recruiting in the Tennessee Football front office. Additionally, she assisted the Director of Recruiting and Football Relations and the coaching staff with recruiting events and strategy. From there, Katie’s love for social media grew while she was involved in All Campus Events at Tennessee, where she led the social media efforts and helped recruit for different events around campus. She explored that love through several marketing internships during her undergraduate career, including interning with Volunteer Traditions, Tennessee Athletic Marketing Department, Zander Insurance, Haslam College of Business, Allegiant Athletic Agency, Nashville Sounds, and Eli Lilly and Company.  Katie found her new role after meeting Owner and Chief Marketing Strategist Samantha Pyle and inquiring about social media freelance opportunities. From there, she became part of our Orchard team and completely fell into step with the rest of the core team members. She says, “I was drawn to Green Apple because of how genuine, kind, and talented the employees are! I felt like I fit in seamlessly, and I loved working on a smaller team in a boutique agency setting. I look up to Sam a lot. We have similar personalities—being that we are both Enneagram 3s and Aries.” When she’s not working on our clients’ social media, Katie is exploring one of her many hobbies. She enjoys watching sports, especially the Vols and Preds. She’s a huge Harry Potter fan and loves rereading the books and watching the movies. She is also passionate about her Peloton, saying, “I could talk about the cycling classes for hours.” She loves to draw on her iPad and has an Instagram dedicated to her digital art (@somethingnoteworthy). Katie and her fiancé, Drew, live in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they love attending Charlotte Hornets games, as well as exploring the local brewery scene. She says she misses Martin’s BBQ in Nashville and frequently visits home to eat Martin’s wings with her dad before Predators games.

Meet Our Orchard Members: Meghan Clark

Meghan Clark
The Orchard at Green Apple is full of talented professionals who are passionate about what they do and excited to share that passion with our clients. Meghan Clark is no exception. We truly value Meghan’s contribution to our team and are excited to share a bit of her story with you.

Meghan’s Role as an Orchard Member

As a content specialist, Meghan supports our core content marketing team to create blog articles for a variety of industries and subjects. Her workday typically includes researching new topics, drafting content, and editing before her writing makes its way to the client. She is extremely focused on quality content and SEO keyword research while always keeping our clients’ unique voices and tones in mind. 

Meghan’s Background and How She Came to Green Apple

Meghan began her career as an educator at an independent day school and spent much of her time with creative, brilliant 13-year-olds. After seven amazing years, she took a leap of faith and joined a small startup marketing company. The company ultimately went under, and she decided to use that opportunity to establish herself as a freelancer. A friend told her that Green Apple was looking for writers in 2019, and she’s worked with us ever since! “I grew up as the daughter of a successful entrepreneur, and I saw much of the same spirit, drive, and vision in Samantha Pyle. As a contractor, I appreciated the way she streamlined project management and billing. Even though I wasn’t part of the in-office team, I felt my work was valued,” Meghan says.  She loves working with Green Apple and had such great things to say about our team. “My editor, Content Marketing Director Adam York, is truly one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He pairs clear expectations with solid support, and he’s always available to answer my questions,” she added. 

What Meghan Loves About Her Craft—In Her Own Words

“When I initially started blogging, I was skeptical about its efficacy, but I can’t argue with the numbers. According to McKinsey, blogs sent out as email newsletters are 40 times more likely to land you a customer than social media posts. Other data shows click-through rates for email at 50 to 100 times higher than social media. People still read. Words are still powerful. As a writer, that’s heartening to me. On a copywriter’s website or resume, you’ll usually find a cheeky list of topics they’ve gotten to write about. I’m no exception to this rule. I’ve written about plastic surgery, customer service, cheeseburgers, boating, Swiss watches, pre-K education, banking, commercial kitchens, large-scale signage, cryptocurrency, and electron microscopy. Every article I write expands my knowledge base, and I love collecting arcane bits of knowledge. My work as a writer has given me the capacity to talk to almost anyone I meet about something that interests them. This is with the exception of theoretical physicists, who frankly aren’t that great at dinner conversation anyway.”

Meghan’s Personal Life

Like many paid writers, Meghan is also a creative writer. She writes creative nonfiction essays and draws her inspiration from writers like E.B. White, Leslie Jamison, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Anthony Bourdain. She says that she spends entirely too much time reading, trying to identify birds on trees, and thinking about, preparing, or eating food. We are incredibly lucky to have Meghan as a member of our Orchard team and are thrilled that she chooses to share her talents with us. Thank you for your contribution to our clients, Meghan. We appreciate you!  Could your brand benefit from quality content services? Contact Green Apple Strategy to schedule a consultation.

Meet the Team: Christa Spencer

Christa Spencer
Leaving the fast-paced world of journalism, Christa Spencer comes to Green Apple Strategy with a 15-year background as a television news producer. She’s bringing her love for storytelling to our team as a PR Strategist. In this role, Christa will work closely with Chief Marketing Strategist, Samantha Pyle, to develop and execute strategic plans to increase our clients’ visibility with media and public relations.  Christa will build our clients’ brand awareness by identifying exposure opportunities, pursuing awards and recognitions, and monitoring industry news. “My passion for storytelling drew me to this specific role, as well as the challenge of identifying a story that makes people want to listen,” Christa says.  Storytelling is in Christa’s blood, quite literally. Growing up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, she was surrounded by journalism from a very young age. Her dad is a journalism professor at the University of Arkansas, where she earned her degree in broadcast journalism. Going back even further, Christa’s grandmother was a journalist as well, even serving as a White House correspondent for over 30 years.  After pursuing a career in journalism, Christa was ready for a change. She connected with Green Apple to discuss how her skills could translate to our team’s need for PR support. “From my first Zoom call with Sam, I think we both knew this role would be a great match. Sam’s passion for clients, in-depth knowledge of the business, and the way she values her Green Apple team drew me in,” Christa explains.   When she’s not finding PR opportunities for our clients, Christa loves practicing yoga and spending time with her partner, Luke, and their dog, Scott. You’ll often find them at home cooking or getting together with friends. “We love to travel, and Luke is from Australia, so the next chance we get, we’ll head to the other side of the world to visit all of his family. I’m incredibly close with my family, too,” Christa says.  Christa also enjoys Nashville’s live music scene, farmers’ markets and hiking trails across the state.

Enneagram and Marketing: How Type Ones Accelerate Your Strategy

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Are you an Enneagram Type One? Have one on your team? 

Type Ones are known for their sense of responsibility to improve the world around them. They tend to accomplish this by striving for perfection, following the rules, and doing what’s right. This person is your organizer—the one keeping everyone in check and keeping everything moving. We’re lucky to have a Type One on our team that is a master of attention-to-detail and organization—two common traits of this Enneagram group. Olivia Cooper, our Senior Client Relations Specialist, is the secret weapon of our marketing team. Let’s take a look at why that is and how the Type One on your team can help accelerate your marketing strategy.  Read More: How Understanding The Enneagram Can Help Your Customers

Type Ones Identify Opportunities for Improvement

“Type Ones are often improvement-oriented. We love to fix everything or solve problems to make something as perfect as it can be. Marketing is always changing, so it’s important to constantly make strategies better as the industry and clients evolve,” says Olivia.  What an essential quality in marketing, right? This right here is what we love about our Olivia, and what we love about Enneagram Type Ones as a whole: they continually make us better marketers, better brands, better communicators. You name it, and your Type One will help you identify opportunities for improvement to make your brand better as a whole. After all, in our fast-changing world, we need Type Ones to show us the light and help us to keep up.

Type Ones Have Great Integrity

“I care very much about doing the ‘right thing.’ Being ethical in marketing is extremely important for transparency with consumers!” she says. Above all, consumers want a brand they can trust so that they can feel good about where their money goes. The Type Ones on your team will always be looking to do what’s right by you and your audience. 

Type Ones Are Organized

“I am pretty organized, which helps me keep everything together. This is especially useful for marketing at an agency, where I’m balancing many different clients at once,” Olivia explains. In fast-paced environments, Type Ones are your ally. They will be the person keeping your projects afloat and ensuring that nothing is overlooked along the way. 

Type Ones Are Detail Oriented

We all like to say that we’re detail-oriented. In fact, I would venture to say that you can find those words on the vast majority of people’s resumes. However, as much as we feel like we need to say that we have a keen eye for detail, that isn’t always the case. No matter how hard we look, we’re going to let a few things slip through the cracks. Not Type Ones. They’re looking out for perfection. “Even the tiniest details are important in marketing. People don’t forget the small things, so I’m always looking out for clients in this way,” says Olivia.

Ready to Accelerate Your Marketing Strategy? 

Our team enjoys learning more about each other through Enneagram Types and Culture Index surveys to ensure that we communicate and work together effectively. In the end, this is all to improve our clients’ marketing strategies and use our small team to garner big results.  Are you looking to see what full-service marketing can do for your brand? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

Green Apple Strategy Makes NBJ’s List of Top PR Firms

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What a year it has been! Despite having to make multiple shifts to our work style amid the global pandemic that has affected our world in 2020—socially and economically—we’ve also been able to see some positive outcomes. In fact, we’ve had the opportunity to celebrate a few milestone accomplishments. From our eighth anniversary to winning the Nashville Business Journal’s Best in Business Award, we’re humbled to have even more exciting news to share! 

Rising Above the Challenges 

Green Apple Strategy was recently named in the Nashville Business Journal’s top ten list of Nashville’s largest public relations firms. This recognition is incredibly significant for several reasons; one of the most touching is that our clients trust us to help them relate with their audiences and share their stories nationwide. This year has been strange, to say the least, but it’s these moments that show us how our hard work and dedication continue to rise to the top.  “What an honor to be named in the Nashville Business Journal’s Largest Public Relations Firms in Nashville list! It’s been a dream of mine to see Green Apple Strategy’s name alongside so many other renowned PR firms in the city, and to have that dream realized in such an unprecedented year means more than I can say. Thank you to the NBJ, my team, and our clients,” said Samantha Pyle, Owner and Chief Marketing Strategist of Green Apple Strategy. To learn more about this distinguished honor, and see the full list, visit the Nashville Business Journal’s website. 

Let’s Share Your Story Together!

Do you want to share your company’s story with the world? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a PR consultation.

Meet Our Orchard Members: Jenny Mann

Jenny Mann

What makes our team so incredibly versatile is our partnership with freelancers through The Orchard—a collective of highly-talented professionals who help us achieve our clients’ goals. The Orchard allows us to assemble a team (including our core team members) that is perfect for our client, and as a bonus, we get to work with creative professionals like the amazing Jenny Mann.

Jenny’s Role as an Orchard Member

Jenny works closely with our in-house Client Relations Specialists and Digital Marketing Specialist to produce graphics for various print and digital projects—everything from brochures, flyers, and presentations to social media and podcast graphics. She is our go-to graphic designer and produces fantastic work every time, without fail. Owner and Chief Marketing Strategist, Samantha Pyle, says that “Jenny has a wonderful ability to create graphics that follow clients’ branding guidelines and are totally unique to the client.” It’s her attention to detail that makes her such a great addition to our Orchard team.

Jenny’s Background and Career 

Originally from Bowling Green, Kentucky, Jenny has led a diverse 19-year career path, working as a designer and art director in publication, product and packaging design, and freelance design. She attended college at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She eventually returned to her hometown, where she and her husband, Brian, live with their two dogs, Pickles and Olive. 

How Jenny Found Our Team 

Jenny found Green Apple Strategy in 2019 through her ties to AIGA Nashville, a professional association for designers, where she heard that we were looking for a freelance designer. She thought it looked like a great fit, so she applied and began working with our team. 

“I was drawn to the diverse mix of projects and clients from different industries that Green Apple had to offer. As a designer, it’s refreshing to have a fresh set of problems to solve, and an assortment of clients to solve them for,” said Jenny. 

What Jenny Brings to Green Apple Strategy

Jenny brings a passion for branding and beautiful design to the Green Apple team. “Branding goes so much deeper than a logo or a pretty pamphlet, and making sure everything I produce feels authentic to the client’s mission and values is always my top priority,” she added. 

We couldn’t agree more, as this is exactly what we’ve seen from Jenny in our time with her—precise attention to the essence of our clients’ brands. She has an uncanny ability to tune into what makes them unique and how we, as a marketing agency, can share that with their target audiences.

Jenny’s Personal Life

“I might be a bit of a workaholic,” she says. When she’s not spending time on design, which is rare, Jenny loves spending time with her family and friends. She and her husband enjoy hosting board game nights and cooking together. And, of course, they spend much of their time spoiling their two adorable dogs. 

We are lucky to have Jenny as a member of our Orchard team and are thrilled that she chooses to share her talents with us. Thank you for your contribution to our clients, Jenny. We appreciate you! 

Could your brand benefit from top-notch graphic design services? Contact Green Apple Strategy to schedule a consultation.