Author Archive | Dana VanDen Heuvel

We hear all the time how social media allows us to put a human face on our business, but I’d venture to say that many brands are stuck on what that really means to their organization. It’s great advice for talking points or to sound really smart when you’re talking to your higher ups, but […]

Surprise and delight your social media followers this Holiday season with a little friendly competition. Social media contests are a great way to generate fan engagement and grow your  following. A fun contest with a desirable prize spreads fast on Facebook, so put some thought into creating a contest that fits your marketing message and […]

I’m not sure how, or why this happens, but a few times per quarter I receive requests from a variety of people who are either thinking about a transition, transitioning, just displaced or otherwise looking to go from where they’re at to a better place in their career, and somehow that intersects with marketing, and […]

Once considered a novel set of marketing tools and channels, social media has evolved from an experimental phenomenon used by only the most adventurous organizations to a must-have set of tools that every marketer and business owner is challenged to deploy effectively. Moreover, organizations are investing thousands to millions of dollars in their social media […]

9 Lives of the Social Media CXO The job of someone managing social media for the average business is not unlike that of the average small business owner. Personally, in my situation, as someone who owns a small business and both manages social media for our business and for our clients’ businesses, both roles boil […]

In the mid 1980′s, most police forces and the FBI carried the old standby Smith & Wesson revolver as their service weapon, but that was all about to change. Over the past twenty years, the Smith & Wesson revolver has been all but eliminated from police forces around the county while the Austrian Glock handgun […]

I get it. Not everyone has the time and resources necessary to implement an all-encompassing social media marketing campaign. Especially when you’re spending 40 – 60 hours a week running a business or managing a department, it’s hard to find spare time to spend updating your Facebook page or writing blog posts. So for that […]

Sorry if I got your hopes up, but there’s no magic formula for tracking sales generated by your social media campaign. As with more traditional marketing methods, tracking a campaign’s effectiveness is not an exact science. The right method for you depends on the nature of your business, and no matter which method you choose, […]

When it comes to social media marketing, it’s important to interact with your followers on a personal level. But then again you’re representing your business, so there is a level of professionalism that must be upheld. So how do you go about striking that delicate balance between the personal, down-to-earth individual that people can relate […]

Imagine that someone creates a website or Facebook page that is dedicated to taking down your brand. Imagine that the page has more fans than your corporate page. What’s your plan for handling that? The Packer’s general manager Ted Thompson has had to contend with the website firetedthompsonnow.com since releasing Brett Favre (the photo above […]