There's a lot to wrap your mind around with the approaching Chicago Ideas Week, and we're helping with series of speaker profiles designed to highlight the benefit to you.
In this profile: Amy Martin
Accolades: The Wyoming-born microblogger can easily be credited as one of the first pioneers in helping celebrities establish their identities on Twitter. If you follow Shaq's consistently hilarious feed, then you've witnessed her handiwork firsthand.
Why you should care: Some might portent that social media has already faded into the background of the Internet's signal-to-noise ratio, but that hasn't happened yet. For now, individuals and businesses aspiring to be influential and court an audience should embrace the platforms wholeheartedly. When you get right down to it, Shaq is a brand name like any other, and Martin's roster with her firm, Digital Royalty, is further proof she knows what she's doing when it comes to social-media strategizing: the White Sox, Nike, and the UFC are just a handful of her clients. And you've heard of them, haven't you? If those companies can trust her firm to take them into the digital age not as followers, but as leaders, then surely you can spare an hour and a half to listen to the woman speak.
When you can see her: Oct. 11, 4p.m. to 5:30 p.m., at a to-be-determined location that'll likely be announced here.
You can check out the full list of speakers here, and register for passes here.
