On Tuesday, Tara de Nicolas, Director of Marketing and Communications and the Editor/Publisher of the Washington Humane Society (WHS) Blog chatted with us on social media. Tara discussed the WHS blogging campaign, and their five-year plan to find homes for adoptable dogs and cats through the program, Good Home Guarantee.

BB: What inspired the Washington Humane Society to engage in social media?

TD: When I first came on board in October of 2006, I was in awe of the heroic and inspiring day-to-day tales that the Washington Humane Society staff and Humane Law Enforcement Officers had to tell, and I wanted to create a way to get these stories out to the community regularly. I first started by creating a blog for our Humane Law Enforcement Officer’s on the MyFoxdc.com web site, and the Officers sent me blog entries weekly to post on the animals they rescued in the field, with stories of how each animal was saved, etc. It was not until I met WHS volunteer Isabel Wang this past August, who is a cyber guru that we decided to add this new Inside WHS blog, with me as the Editor/Publisher posting regularly, as well as posts by our staff and volunteers.

BB: How successful has the campaign been?

TD: Since launching the blog this past September, I secretly enjoyed logging in each day to check the stats to see how many page view we have had. The blog has been a great success, I think mostly because it has broken down the walls, and opened a window to the community, allowing them to see in and learn about who the people are behind WHS and the lifesaving work we do. Now, the community can read all of the exciting day-to-day activities and stories, and know the substance of the people who work on the front lines of WHS, saving the homeless, lost, abused and neglected animals of DC, and then getting the chance to meet everyone in person at our special events.

BB: What is your favorite story of a happy adoption as a result of the blog?

TD: There is no one story I can point to, as the results of this blog have reached far and wide, helping the animals in our care in a variety of ways, from introducing new potential adopters to WHS, to the media contacting me to follow-up and do a story on an animal we blogged about, the results are heartwarming.

BB: Is the Washington Humane Society engaged in any social networks? Which ones and why?

TD: Yes, Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and soon will begin working with Monkeysee.com. We realized the world around us was changing quickly, and we needed to evolve with it, and engage the dynamic generation moving up the ranks.

BB: How has the community reacted in these networks?

TD: The community has welcomed us with a warm reception and open arms. The blog has been a wonderful tool allowing us to educate the DC community and beyond on the various programs and services we provide on a daily basis, that I do not believe the general public knew about. The part that has been most fascinating and surprising to me is that people follow it as much as they do, and take the opportunity to seek me out at our special events and introduce themselves, giving me their positive feedback on the blog in person. It has been so rewarding for me, as well as the rest of the WHS staff. In a age where everything happens so quickly and at such a fast pace, the blog allows us the instant gratification of writing a new post daily on the work we do, an animal we helped, or a community member’s whose life we touched, and having it read and released to the world in seconds.

BB: What’s next for the Humane Society blog etc.?

TD: We have a lot of exciting plans to take our blog to the next level, adding more guest blogs by WHS staffers and volunteers, as well as by our President and CEO, Lisa LaFontaine. Soon, we will be adding video blog posts, and for the rest of the exciting happenings we have in store… readers will just have to keep checking in to see them all unfold!