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As the new Social Media and Community Relations Manager at Healthy Child, I'm basically being paid to take a deep dive into what you may be doing on the sly at your job.

If you're like most people, you may not fully understand what social media is. But if you're reading this blog, you're participating in it right now: you're reading a blog, which is a highly interactive form of communication. I write something and, unlike a newspaper, television show, or radio broadcast, you can respond immediately and directly, with no intermediary. If you use Facebook or have ever looked at someone's MySpace page, you've experienced social networking. If you ever Googled something and landed on a Wikipedia page, you've read a collaborative encyclopedia (referred to as a wiki). Maybe you've checked out images on a photo sharing site like Flickr, watched videos on YouTube, looked up restaurant reviews on Yelp, researched hotels on TripAdvisor, compared products on epinions, added your two cents on a message board- that's all social media. See, you're a social media expert too!

I consider myself an early adopter and fan of the internet. In high school, I frequented BBS's, online bulletin boards, and in college, I was attracted to how email compressed time, fell in love with a boy who went to college 100 miles away (and often skipped classes to chat online with him), and created one of the first websites.

After graduation, I realized that I wanted to be part of the internet revolution. I ended up working at an agency that built a variety of websites, the best of which is still around, Beliefnet. The dotcom bubble burst so I retreated into safer territory, an
administrative job at Avon Products where my favorite project involved strategizing how to police rogue Avon Representatives online.

Since my job lacked intellectual stimulation and creativity, I decided to start a blog. I was more than a little curious about pregnant celebrities and their kids and honestly, I needed a hobby. So at my husband's suggestion, while watching the Golden Globes, I created the Celebrity Baby Blog on my couch in January 2004. Even though the topic of celebrity + baby seemed a little weird at first, after a while, I wasn't the only one who wanted to peer into the lives of the adorable offspring of gorgeous famous people. The site became quite popular, with approximately 3 million monthly readers by 2008.

As the site developed and as I became a mother myself in late 2005, the site became less about celebrity per se and delved into common themes in parenting. I made a special effort to highlight topics that don't get much positive coverage in celebrity media like breastfeeding, baby-wearing and natural childbirth. I also added product reviews so moms (and aunts!) could find out if the gear we saw celebs using were
as fabulous as it looked.

After a few years it became so popular that People.com wanted to buy it. After helping the site transition, I left the blog to pursue the next chapter in my life. Everyone wanted to know what my next step was going to be. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to focus on my new baby, Asher, and my daughter Anya. I planned to take some time off to enjoy my "babymoon" and knew that I would know the right opportunity when I saw it. As the saying goes, it found me.

My friend Isabel Kallman, founder of Alpha Mom, recommended me for a new position here at Healthy Child Healthy World. The organization was looking for an influential parent to engage their on-line community, expand their social media presence, and coordinate an advisory committee of other influential digital parents. It was serendipity. Here I was, a (semi-) experienced mom with a new baby, concerned with the toxins my family was being exposed to, trying to leave a smaller dent on the world, and immersed in the world of Twitter and Facebook.

I've been on Twitter and Facebook for a couple of years and use it primarily to talk about my family, as many do. I use Facebook to stay in touch with family and IRL (in real life) friends, posting photos of my little loves on a regular basis. But I love the immediacy and brevity of Twitter, how it enables you to reach out to strangers and make them part of your life by sharing your passions and engaging them in discussions, learning from them. Both are great for spreading Healthy Child's message. There's a sizable community of parents just like me on Twitter and Facebook, who juggle home, work, shrinking budgets, but above all, want to ensure and preserve the health and happiness of their little ones.

If you're not yet on Twitter, I encourage you to give it a shot and see what it's about. Please follow Healthy Child at @healthy_child and me at @that_danielle, Janelle at @greenandhealthy and Mandy at @healthymandy and I hope you'll join us for our weekly Thursday #healthychild Twitter parties at 6 pm PST/9 pm EST.

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