Experts in the Industry: Susan Bratton (47 of 45)

It is an absolute pleasure to bring you today's featured guest, Susan Bratton. Not only is Susan on Powered's advisory board but I'll also be podcasting with her this Sunday and Monday at SXSW. In her spare time, she is CEO of Personal Life Media, Inc. and host of the fabulously popular Dishy Mix podcasts.

With that as our backdrop, here are Susan's most excellent answers to the Experts in the Industry series questions:

In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.

I'm a content "co-creator." Whether working with the hosts of the 40 shows at Personal Life Media.com; creating an episode of DishyMix with my guest, blogging, Twittering or designing new Information Products (coming soon!), my creative life revolves around finding the best in a person and bringing it to life in a multimedia context.

How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?

I started out in ad sales for video and multimedia magazines in the 80's, which led me into the broadband consumer web services in the 90's and now integrated social media publishing in the 21st Century.

If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?

Toss up for me between Facebook, Twitter and Ning but I'd go with Jeff Bezos and put my personal cash into Twitter.

Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

Bert Decker, author of "You've Got to Be Believed to Be Heard." Bert is a man of equally high ethics and enthusiasm. I use his Decker Grid System to prepare for all my DishyMix interviews and I attribute my love of public speaking to being "Deckerized" (trained) by his organization. 

Here's an interview with Bert.

Would you join a toothpaste community? Why?

I'm a fanatic about my teeth. I'm so tall, people can look right up into my mouth when I laugh, which I do A LOT.

If a toothpaste community could give me cutting edge oral care solutions, I'd be very interested in it. It would be helpful to understand tooth-whitening formulations.

Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.

TweetLater is my new lover. I scratch ideas on post-its all week long for my DishyMix blog, then spend part of Sunday writing and scheduling them. I use TweetLater to radiate different aspects of those blog posts to my followers through out the week, automatically. Then the rest of my Twitters are more personal and in the moment. It's a great balance and I love the tool - I have a dashboard for all of my Twitter handles and can post various Tweets to which ever accounts are appropriate in advance.