Susan Bratton: This is Susan Bratton. I’m here live at South By Southwest and this is Community Powered, the podcast series, and I’m here with Angela Benton. Angela is the founder and publisher of Black Web 2.0. Welcome.

Podcast Here and Transcript Below

Angela Benton: Thanks for having me.

Susan Bratton: It is my pleasure. So you are the brave one who’s willing to answer one of the questions that I was very interested in getting some opinions on. When you think of brands and companies who have a well-executed social media strategy, who comes to mind and why Angela?

Angela Benton: A couple of companies come to mind, and these are just might personal opinions. H&R Block comes to mind mainly because of their work on Twitter. They’re actually using Twitter to help people with real life situations like tax questions. And it is consumer focused, but it can easily be focused to a small business as well. So, so I guess that’s H&R Block. Another one, oh, Kodak. So I really like how Kodak is outreaching to bloggers and just other people who they may be determined influencers who use their products, and they’re actually moving them over to their site, so… The only thing that I don’t really, that I don’t really like is they’re only, they’re only soliciting feedback that’s positive. I mean obviously, you know, consumer products do that, but I think like in an effort to be transparent and authentic, I mean, clearly not everyone is always satisfied with all Kodak products. But, I mean, I still think they’re doing a good job. There was one other, I forgot, oh well in terms of I guess a personal brand, someone who I think that I’ve been following, I’ve been kind of addicted to following lately is Diddy, Sean Combs. So he’s on Twitter under I Am Diddy, and I think he’s really using his YouTube channel and his personal brand on Twitter to I guess get a much larger following. I think he goes up like at least 10,000 followers like everyday…

Susan Bratton: Wow!

Angela Benton: Yeah. Initially when I first started following him and noticed that he was on Twitter, he had about 45,000 followers, and now, I mean, I haven’t checked in the past couple of days, but last time I checked it was like 100,000. I mean, and I just started following him like literally a week ago. So he’s someone that understands transparency, and I think that’s why he’s been so successful. If you see any of the stuff that he does from a personal branding perspective, he’s totally himself, even though he does go on record to say that he edits his video, but even with him saying that he’s still being totally transparent and still being totally himself, so…

Susan Bratton: Those are three really great examples. And I liked that you talked also about the pros and cons of what brands can do like Kodak, and being willing to embrace your imperfection. I think that imperfection can be a really good way to get people to bond to your brand these days. No one expects anything or any one or any product, in light of Enron and the banking melt down…

Angela Benton: Right.

Susan Bratton: and, you know, the world coming to the end, we realize that imperfection is a part of having and being in business, so that’s great. So based on that, if a company wants to create a solid social networking community around their brand, you know, it’s a lot of work to do that, what are some of the most important things that you think a company should know about creating a community and their brand?

Angela Benton: I think a lot of people are focused on just contacting influencers right now, and I personally think that’s a mistake. One of, the panel that I have here tomorrow is called Digital Urbanites: How to Become Part of the New Social Capital, and the theory around it is everyone who’s not an influencer, so who doesn’t have, you know, 10,000 followers and who’s not a social media celebrity or web celebrity, they are just as influential as those people, but for some reason their kind of being left out and…

Susan Bratton: Marginalized in some way…

Angela Benton: Yeah, marginalized.

Susan Bratton: You don’t have 100,000 followers, you don’t count…

Angela Benton: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: And you don’t think so. You think they’re important still.

Angela Benton: Yeah, I actually think they’re more important than the actual influencers, so… In the aggregate they actually have more social capital than those, like what, 10 to 15 individuals that we seem to hear and talk about all the time.

Susan Bratton: Got it. That’s a good point. So you’re saying that if a brand wants to create a community, they should be embracing a much larger constituent than just the top level influencers…

Angela Benton: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: How would you recommend they do that? How do you still find the people who might be influencers for your brand?

Angela Benton: It’s really about outreach and what channels you use. And I feel like it’s easy to find people if you’re actually looking for people. So as a part of their strategy, if they make their strategy trying to find people outside of the standard influencers, then they should have not problem because in essence that’s anybody and everybody.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm. Anybody who cares about their brand.

Angela Benton: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: So tell us about Black Web 2.0.

Angela Benton: Black Web 2.0, essentially, I mean, it’s a technology blog that focuses on African Americans. So we do a lot of stuff for, I guess, African American entrepreneurs and start-ups that, you know, it may be harder for them to get coverage on other larger blogs, so we try to cover them there, but in the African American space we also focus on media companies. So we’ll focus on larger media companies who has, who have a presence online, so it may be, you know, Radio One, who has a division, Interactive One who, you know, last year bought Community Connect, which owns blackplanet.com which was really the first social network before Face Book and before MySpace.  But no one covers that at all, and I actually, I guess a few years ago, we’re coming up on our two-year anniversary, realize that…

Susan Bratton: Congratulations.

Angela Benton: Thanks. We realize that, you know, if you go to, you know, most tech blogs you kind of see the same kind of stuff, and I’m like, I know there has to be other people out there that kind of look like me, that are still passionate about me, passionate about what I’m passionate about, but they’re not really getting coverage. And actually once I started to, I guess, really look for people like that, I was able to find them. So I guess that kind of goes back to being a digital urbanite and how companies and brands, if they actively look for people, you can find them.

Susan Bratton: Who do you think are some of the biggest unsung heroes of the African American tech community. You want to give us some shout-outs so we can get some awareness?

Angela Benton: Ohhh, wow! Sure.

Susan Bratton: We got a lot of people who’re going to listen to this, so….

Angela Benton: Right.

Susan Bratton: So who comes to mind for you that we should be paying attention to? Besides you, Angela Benton, Black Web 2.0, who else?

Angela Benton: Besides me, there are a lot of really cool applications, there’s a lot of really cool individuals. One person who I guess is kind of like a mentor and on our advisory board is Lynn D. Johnson who’s at Fast Company….

Susan Bratton: Love Lynn.

Angela Benton: Yeah.

Susan Bratton:  Love you Lynn, love you Lynn.

Angela Benton: Actually, he introduced us actually, yeah, so…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Angela Benton: Another person who has I guess a social network for groups is Collective X. The founder, Clarence Wooten, he actually had a company in the first dot com boom called Image Café who he sold to Network Solutions for like about $20 million dollars and…

Susan Bratton: Good.

Angela Benton: these are people that I was able to find. I had no idea, you know, they existed. Another, another person is Michael Sibel, I think his name is. He’s the CEO of JustIn TV. I mean not, people don’t know…

Susan Bratton: That’s great.

Angela Benton: you know, really that he’s black, so…

Susan Bratton: That’s right.

Angela Benton: and, I mean there’s tons, tons and tons of people like that. There’s a lot of smaller, smaller sites; Appfrica, which is, it’s a blog that really does pretty much what we do, but they focus on applications in Africa, in, I mean the guy John who runs it, he’s here too and I actually just met him for the first time even though we’ve been communicating, so…

Susan Bratton: Plenty of people.

Angela Benton: Wow!

Susan Bratton: Lot of people.

Angela Benton: It’s so many, it’s so many people. But, I mean, if anyone is actively looking, there’s a start-up section on Black Web 2.0…

Susan Bratton: Right.

Angela Benton: right in the top navigation, you just click on that and there’s a whole list of different people with a variety of different kinds of start-ups.

Susan Bratton: Absolutely. Lets keep the conversations integrated and the connections happening.

Angela Benton: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, that’s great. Well thank you so much for the work that you’re doing in the world to surface all of the great people in the African American community who are, who are making a difference.

Angela Benton: Thank you.

Susan Bratton: That is awesome. It’s so nice to meet you, and I wish you all the success in the world and thanks for the great advice.

Angela Benton: Thank you.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. Alright. I’m Susan Bratton. And you are listening to Powered Community, Community Powered… I keep saying it backward, I don’t know. I think it should just be Powered Community, Community Powered, whichever one comes out…

Angela Benton: They’re interchangeable.

Susan Bratton: They are, exactly. It’s all the same. And you got to meet Angela Benton from Black Web 2.0. I will be talking to you soon with another luminary, and thanks for tuning in. I’m Susan Bratton. Take care.