Nice to meet you!

Me, my husband Jeff and our dog Niles

One year in social media time is more like seven. Tweets disappear just hours after they're published and just about any social platform is bound to look drastically different in December than it did in January, that is if it even survives to see the end of the year.

That's both the blessing and the curse of this job. What may have been true yesterday might not be tomorrow. Industry articles with a time stamp more than six months old - well, that's like a car manufacturer researching the horse and buggy for tomorrow's model.

While keeping up-to-date is a constant struggle, there's never a dull moment. This is especially convenient for someone like me, who can't ever sit still for more than five minutes.

Social media, at its core, is a constant stream of data. As of today, CARE has more than 540,000 Twitter followers and almost 230,000 Facebook likes. I tend to send out between 30 and 40 tweets a week and publish up to 10 times on Facebook.

Craig Newmark named us one of the most vocal nonprofits on social media, but with our audience, this constant communication works, because they're communicating back by replying, commenting, sharing, liking and retweeting our posts.

This high-energy, fast paced environment provides new learnings every single day. What are people saying about the things that we post? What are they saying about the things we're not posting? What do they want to share with their friends? When do they click over to our site?

When you post on social as frequently as we do, the answers to these questions are constantly changing in steady, high-volume streams of data.

That's essentially why I decided to start this blog. There are so many insights I come across all the time both from our engaged audience and by watching what our peers are doing that I wanted a place to share and document it all.

I named the blog "Dog-eared Social" not only as an homage to my dog (pictured above), but also because my goal is that this space will serve as a well-loved book, where the pages are so rich with information and ideas that they're folded over at the corners as personal reminders to remember this, do that, come back to this part on a slow day.

But unlike a book, I want this space to be interactive. I encourage you to comment on my posts or send me a tweet. Tell me if you've experienced what I have - or the exact opposite. I want the opportunity to learn from you and to know what you want to learn from me.

My intention is that you'll find my experiences useful, and they will inspire you to find new and exciting ways to engage your own audiences. As not everything is applicable to everyone, I hope you'll at least find it interesting. I hope it challenges you to think about content and communications in new ways, as my peers, colleagues, industry mentors and most importantly, CARE's supporters do for me every day.