She dives deep into social media to help her clients

Emily Hessney Lynch thought she wanted to be a teacher. During her undergraduate years she had the opportunity to student-teach while studying abroad, and she soon realized that teaching wasn’t the right fit.

After graduating from the University of Rochester with a bachelor’s degree in English and history in 2012, she stayed at the campus leading the communication efforts of the financial aid department. In addition to counseling students financially and managing all of the email communications and social media presence, Hessney Lynch spearheaded a financial literacy programs to educate college students about budgeting and managing money. Though she wasn’t a teacher in the traditional sense, she was still exploring ways to educate others.

During her four years in the financial aid department at UR, Hessney Lynch took advantage of the tuition benefits and earned a master’s degree in higher education administration from the Warner School of Education. Impassioned by helping students with financial literacy, she wrote her thesis on the need for more financial literacy education in the high school curriculum after seeing how lost college students were when it came to budgeting and money management.

Between her four years as an undergrad and four years of working full-time and pursuing a graduate degree, Hessney Lynch felt it was time to get off the UR campus and into the Rochester community. She spent the next two-and-a-half years of her career as the digital marketing & communications manager at Nextcorps, a nonprofit committed to aiding technology startups. There she handled the content strategy, including overseeing seven different social media accounts for Nextcorps and Luminate, an optics and photonics accelerator program. She also coordinated Nextcorps’ rebranding from High Tech Rochester to Nextcorps in February 2018.

Along the way, Hessney Lynch, 29, tested the waters in freelancing. In 2013 she was the ghost writer from the perspective of dads writing their holiday gift guide. Then in 2017 she was approached to run a social media account, which she accepted as her first social media management client. Hessney Lynch noticed a trend: local business owners either didn’t know what they were doing when it comes to social media or they didn’t have the bandwidth to do it themselves.

“In May 2019 I was ready to spread my wings and give it a go. I left my role at Nextcorps to work for myself full time,” says Hessney Lynch. “I love being able to shape my own career path and choose what types of clients and projects I work on. The nice thing is that I’m constantly learning what I love most and about different industries and getting to dive in deep on all different topics.”

Hessney Lynch, a Rochester resident, already claimed the Twitter and Instagram handle @ServeMeTheSky, so she ran with it and now owns Serve Me the Sky Digital.

“I see a lot of freelancers naming their business after their own name, but Emily Hessney Lynch is kind of long, so I figured I’d lean into the personal branding of Serve Me the Sky,” she explains. “It actually comes from a song lyric by a band The Nationals, and the line is ‘Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon.’ I think it’s optimistic and evocative—like blue skies, broad horizons—and it’s memorable and hard to misspell.”

Hessney Lynch’s work breaks down into four categories: social media strategy; social media management; content writing; and education. For the first, she puts together a big picture, comprehensive plan on best practices and creative tactics for clients to implement. From there, the client can choose to use internal personnel to execute the social media strategy or hire Hessney Lynch to manage their social media.

“For content writing I’ve done both the editorial side, getting a byline and writing something, as well as marketing oriented writing for startups,” says Hessney Lynch. “I’ve also written in the literary industry and done some humor writing, which is really fun.”

The social media aficionado calls back to her education roots through public speaking opportunities at conferences, as well as teaching at the Rochester Brainery and 540WMain Inc.

“I think teaching others about social media has been the right version of teaching for me,” she says. “It’s something I definitely want to continue in 2020.”

Only eight months into her new career, navigating the world of being self-employed has been a challenge for Hessney Lynch.

“You’re your own boss, so you don’t have someone telling you when an opportunity is right or wrong,” she says. “But I have a good support system of other freelancers and my husband and lots of people whose opinions I trust that I can brainstorm with. Ultimately it boils down to me, so it’s been a learning curve with going self-employed.”

Another struggle? Keeping up with the ever-evolving landscape of social media. Hessney Lynch makes sure she stays up to date on all of the latest trends and apps, and she aims to be a thought leader in the social media realm by writing engaging blog posts and speaking at conferences.

Hessney Lynch worked with 24 clients in 2019; some were one-off projects, others were longer or multifaceted jobs. Six of those clients were nonprofit organizations—including Flower City Arts Center, Cameron Community Ministries and Cancer Wellness Connections—and Hessney Lynch says she’d like to boost that number in 2020.

An avid reader, Hessney Lynch is striving to do more bookish writing this year.

“I really love writing, so I’m also hoping to do more writing work in 2020,” she says. “I’m currently working with a couple different writing clients, and one is called StoryCombs. It’s a startup based in Upstate New York, and I’m writing for their blog regularly.”

Hessney Lynch is member of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce CLIMB Leadership Development Program class of 2020.

“Each month we go on different field trips to learn about different industries in Rochester,” explains Hessney Lynch. “We get to talk to different leaders and learn about what the hot button issues are across industries, and we also get paired with a mentor that we meet with regularly to brainstorm what’s going on in our lives and our businesses and how we can learn and grow.”

Mentoring her along the way is Lauren Dixon, CEO of local marketing agency Dixon Schwabl.

Hessney Lynch was looking to get out into the community when she left UR, and she is doing just that. By building her own small business and participating in the CLIMB program, she is seeing firsthand how supportive Rochester is.

“Rochester is a very well-connected community and people go all in on hiring local; people are more likely to hire a local social media consultant than outsource to a company in another state or country to save money,” says Hessney Lynch. “We want to keep our money in Rochester and support each other and raise each other up.”

[email protected] / (585) 363-7031

Small Business is a biweekly feature focusing on local entrepreneurs. Send suggestions for Small Business stories to Reporter/Editorial Assistant Nicole Sheldon at [email protected]. (585) 363-7031