About

About

I’m Dana.

Experienced marketer. Award-winning writer. Born storyteller.

Looking for cool people to work with.

When I started my first freelance content business in 2015, people would reach out with requests like, “We need a monthly blog post.”

Cool, I would say. What’s the goal of your blog?

*crickets* 🦗

I mean, what metrics are you using to measure it? What is it supposed to do?

*deer in headlights* 🫎

Why do you need a monthly blog post?

“Oh, that’s our content strategy. We publish a blog post once a month, an email once a week, and a social media post once a day.”

Awesome. And what strategy do those things work together to achieve?

*blinking baby owl* 🦉

And that is why I started offering content strategies in addition to my writing work.

Because when I started freelancing, I was employed full-time as a marketing director. And I knew a content calendar was not the same as a strategy.

Without a connecting thread, without a larger goal, without strategic alignment, all those content pieces were just being set adrift to fend for themselves.

Then, the more I worked in strategy, the more I ran across people on the other end of the planning spectrum. They did their research, made a content plan, and almost immediately gave up.

Because there’s a ton of content out there about content marketing. But hardly any of it offers direction on what you actually need to do.

So small teams of two or three find themselves at the helm of a massive plan with an outrageous number of deliverables they cannot possibly create, distribute, and track within their resources.

It’s incredibly unfair. And frustrating. And unnecessary.

I swore that any time I created a content strategy, I would specifically design it to fit into the weekly hours and monthly budget my client has available.

Because I hate seeing the guilty look come across a marketer’s face when I ask about a channel and they say, “Well, we’re supposed to have that, but I just don’t have time to keep up with it.”

Because that’s fair. And it’s nothing to feel guilty about. No one has unlimited time. Or money. Or energy. And it does neither of us any good if I try to sell you a content plan that pretends like you do.

So if you need direction on where to start your content marketing…

Or you need guidance on whether you’re investing your energy in the right things…

Or you need a simplified, no-fuss plan to Get It Done…

give me a holler.

And if you have a content strategy and just need some help executing?

Call me for that, too. My team and I are masters at clear content that achieves your goals.

Let me know how I can help you get your story in front of the right people. If forms aren’t your thing, you can also email me or send me a direct message on LinkedIn.

Dana Herra

10 Random Things About Me

  1. I’m a Leo on the Greek zodiac and born in the year of the sheep on the Chinese zodiac. So I’m both a lion and a lamb.
  2. I live an hour’s drive from one of the biggest metro areas in the US, but I can see a cornfield from my office window. #midwest
  3. I’m a boy mom, loud and proud.
  4. I drink black coffee and white wine (not at the same time).
  5. I’m a geek. My favorite fandoms are Doctor Who and Tolkien, but I am a fringe member of the Marvel, DC, and Star Wars fandoms as well. And thanks to my geeky family, I can hold up my end of a conversation about Star Trek, Legend of Zelda, Transformers, or Mario.
  6. When my high school and college classmates were taking Spanish, I decided to take German. It actually came in handy later in life when I spent three years working in the US office of a German company.
  7. I don’t run. If you see me running, you should run in the same direction, because either something scary is behind me or I heard an ice cream truck.
  8. I’m a dog person.
  9. I love musical theater. In my early teens, I briefly wanted to be a Broadway star.
  10. I’m notoriously clumsy, with a particular gift for falling up stairs and walking into door frames.