Nothing says “I love you” like a steaming stack of 10 sliders, two 21-ounce sodas and a heap of fries glowing in the candlelight as it flickers against your true love’s cheek. And all for just $10.79.

That’s what White Castle thinks, anyway, and considering that the fast food chain has been running its Valentine’s Day promotion since 1991, it may be onto something.

“A lot of our loyal customers — fondly known as ‘Cravers’ — either met in a White Castle Restaurant or have other enjoyable memories they like to celebrate here,” says Jamie Richardson, White Castle VP-corporate relations. (AdAge)

And it’s clear from White Castle’s social-media-enriched website that the brand does a lot to encourage customer interaction. The Cravers tab of the site features some clever content such as the Craver Hall of Fame, and includes user-uploaded Flickr photos and YouTube videos.

But it’s the nearly 20-year V-Day promotion that really warms our hearts.

Unfortunately, there are no WCs in our neck of the woods. Guess we’ll have to schedule a field trip.

Image courtesy Flickr: Blaseur

With his book, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, having recently been named a Top 10 book of the year by Amazon, Chris Brogan is social-media marketing’s man of the hour.

And if you spend even a little time on his blog, it’s easy to see why. First of all, even though Brogan is president of a hot-shot marketing company, he is directly engaged with his audience, building relationships with his blog readers at the same time as he builds his brand — these two activities being, of course, mutually inclusive in social media land, whether you’re mom or a pop or a millionaire CEO.

Brogan is both wise and warm. Human is the word you’ll hear in conversations about the guy, such as this one, in which he’s compared to another social media expert, Gary Vaynerchuk, who is definitely engaging but a bit more over-the-top. (If the two geniuses were cast in a production of Dumb and Dumber, Vaynerchuk would be Jim Carrey; Brogan, Jeff Daniels.)

If you’re someone who’s still trying to figure out how to make blogging, new media, social networking, and so forth, work for your brand (read: everyone), Brogan is a guiding light, dishing out practical advice without bombarding you with jargon. His archived post from well over a year ago, Basic Business Blogging Suggestions, is one of the best primers we’ve run across in a while on getting started blogging. (Even though we’ve been at this a while, we always like returning to the basics, especially when guided there by really smart people.)

See that first point, “Above All Else, Be Human”? There’s that h-word again. Many business types don’t think it’s appropriate to show a human side when participating in online-based marketing. Being open about your life and yourself on social media compromises your privacy, right? Leaves you open for attack?

Come on. What are you afraid of?

Fact is, potential customers, clients, partners, employees — anyone who might end up working with you in any capacity — want to know what you’re like as a person. From his blog, to his Flickr (from which the above image was cribbed) to his tellingly @reply-ridden Twitter, Brogan has used the transparency (there’s that word again) factor of social media to present himself to the world as a guy you would like to have in your corner.

And that requires a certain fearlessness.