Greetings readers of Blazing Minds, I’d like to bring you a Blogger Interview and this time it’s with blogger Todd Walton from The Hip Hop Democrat, which incidentally relaunches on June 15th, so let’s get on with the interview 😉

The Hip Hop Democrat

Please tell my readers a little something about yourself?

First off, I would like to say thank you for reaching out to me and adding me on Twitter, it’s a privileged to engage with you and everything your doing with Blazing Minds. To formally introduce myself my name is Todd, but I also go by Fokus which is my stage name. I would consider myself to be a “Social” Entrepreneur, being that a lot of the things I’m involved with I see to be ultimately for the greater good of someone other than myself. Well, not everything I do is directly for other, but I would say most, lol. I started out in music back in 2005 putting out a project entitled Fokus: Presents Chicago’s Kid Vol. 1. which had a pretty good turnout for a premiere independent release. Music from the project was also used for commercial/publishing purposes including some music I did for Playboy, which was fun, lol.

In 2008 I launched TheHipHopDemocrat.com and also formed Hip Hop Democrat, Inc. which I will go more into detail about later. The following year in 2009 I purchased 6 more domains, and incorporated 2 as companies for future development (Hopefully we can discuss those in a future interview). I am also the Chicago Events Reporter for Examiner.com, and recently this year in 2011 I co-Founded the Music Blogger’s Association of America which I’m really excited about and I feel will make a huge impact within media and journalism as a whole.

So tell me about your blog, when and why you started it and how you came up with the name for it?

TheHipHopDemocrat.com Launched October 2008, The name honestly came from an afternoon of leisurely web browsing, lol. I stumbled upon a website relating to Hip Hop and Republicans and was honestly blown away at what an oxy-moronish idea that is, if that’s even a word. I honestly feel that the ideology behind Hip Hop, the music as well as the culture and the ideology behind the Republican conservative party are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. So I felt I had to create that outlet for those people like me that were raised within the Hip Hop generation but believed in democratic principles.

So once the outrage passed, I started brainstorming other solid reasons for a site like this, what it REALLY should be about. It started as an idea to create an outlet for dialogue concerning the buzz revolving around Barack Obama and his connection with the Hip Hop community. That along with the question of how this tremendous idea of achievement within the black community can compare with what has been called a tremendous downfall of the black community with hip-hop/rap music. In the beginning the majority of the posts were editorial pieces, which stemmed from my own thoughts and opinions on various subjects, mainly linking in some form to hip hop, then kind of spread to actually cover more music and current events as I started organizing the business around the website. And with our relaunch June15th we’re going to start infusing a lot of both, more editorial content with the new music, and current events. As of now content spans the categories of Hip Hop, Entertainment, Politics, Breaking News, Technology, etc… I have a great team with 4 editors that really bring value and great content. We have been voted a Top 20 WordPress blog by WPHost, Nominated for Best Website at the 2010 Chicago Independent Awards, currently Nominated for 3 2011 Black Weblog Awards in the categories of “Best Music Blog”, “Best Hip Hop Blog”, and “Best Political Blog”, I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and look forward to many more great things.

Do you find blogging takes up a lot of your time?

Blogging takes up a whole lot of time, a WHOLE LOT OF TIME….lol.. Time you can’t get back. Lets see… It takes time to figure out what you want the blog to be about, it takes time to setup the blog, it takes time to try and design the blog, then it takes even more time to figure out you don’t know how to design a blog and go find a template, lol. Then… It takes time writing the blog, it takes time to do the research regarding whatever you’re writing about, finding the right pictures or video’s to add, spell check, etc.. etc.. etc.. Then you get to do it all over again the next day, or next week, or next month or how ever often you decide to keep blogging..lol.. I’m lucky I LOVE Hip Hop and I’m lucky I’m passionate about politics and current events..lol

Where would you say most of your traffic comes from for your blog?

I would say its about 60/40 with 60% coming from direct links and about 40% coming from search engine referrals.

Do you use social networks to promote your blog and if so which ones would you recommend to other bloggers?

Yes, I mainly use the big 2 Facebook and Twitter, I also recently started being more active on Tumblr and You Tube as well, but have accounts setup at 10 different sites for branding purposes, once I get someone on the team that can solely handle social media I would like to be active on all of them from Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, I think I’ve even seen 2 or 3 hits come from the links that automatically post to Myspace, lol..

How do you promote your blog? Have you created a promotion plan?

I promote the blog EVERYWHERE, of course it’s mainly been online. But with our relaunch I’m constructing an offline/online strategy that will hopefully help increase brand awareness as well as promote the different writers we have on board and the new content. Promotion starts with just the daily feed that gets posted to Twitter, my Facebook profile, and our Fan page. I also plan on doing some online advertising through Facebook and Google, I just launched a reader loyalty program through Punch Tab which I really will continue to drive traffic and build loyalty through various contests and rewards. Our offline strategy will consist of mainly pounding the pavement getting into local events wherever we are or might be covering and giving flyers, stickers, etc.. I also would love to get involved in more events where we will have the opportunity to create that live experience for our readers that they can tie in with what we give online.

If you could give some useful advice to new bloggers, what would it be?

Be consistent, Be Entertaining. Understand what YOU want out of YOUR blogging experience…

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