how has Oprah Winfrey managed to be SO successful for SO long?  What has given Oprah her unique staying power?  The Washington Post wanted to know.  So, they polled a panel of successful men and women, of varying backgrounds and areas of expertise,

Since I first read the panelists’ responses a few days ago, I have been thinking a lot about how Oprah’s recipe for success can be applied to business.  Personally, I relate to “Oprah the Entrepreneur.”  Three thoughts have continued to resonate with me, from this panel’s responses and my own ruminations.

These are:

Oprah’s Connection

Oprah identifies with her audience. She exudes a genuineness that allows her audience to relate to her. As an entrepreneur, it is important to connect with each client. Delivering best-in-class service, in each client’s genuine best interest, will always set you apart from your competition.  Know your client.

Doing Good Oprah was able to recognize, early on, who she was; what made her tick.  Knowing jer own strengths (and shortcomings), Oprah has been able to find situations that value who she is.  As a small business owner, it is crucial to understand who you are, recognize your strengths, and channel those strengths to pursue and develop business opportunities that are comfortable for you.  Do not chase projects that require skills that you do not have, are not interesting to you, or that may compromise your values.  Do not seek relationships with clients who you cannot help.  In other words, seek comfort.  This does not mean that you should not have a reach that exceeds your grasp.  But, it does mean that you should not compromise your values or promise anything that you cannot deliver.  Know yourself.

Knowing What is Next Oprah has announced that she will end her television show after over twenty years on the air.  She is leaving at the top.  You can bet that she did not make this decision without a lot of thought.  This may be the most challenging part.  No doubt, as entrepreneurs, we are consumed with our business 24×7.  We are constantly looking for ways to serve our clients and help them to achieve their goals.  Sometimes we can lose sight of our own goals for a project.   We should always have personal goals for a project and, periodically, we should re-assess these goals and make necessary adjustments.  Sometimes, knowing when to call it quits, learn from the experience, and move on may be the best option.  Be honest to yourself and to your client.  Know the Relationship.

A week later, I am still thinking about my Walk-Away Impression: Branding is more than your logo.

We are accustomed to thinking about branding our company name or our product name. But, we should think beyond the customary.

Branding is not just a logo. It is a strategy.

Everything associated with your company — your products, your staff, your leadership team — is your brand.

For a small business, branding is even more important.

Your brand is: how you execute your projects, how you conduct customer service, how you, personally, represent your company to the public.

“Brands are promises which we value and are prepared to pay for and if we feel those promises have been broken, we’re less likely to trust.

But some brands are resistant to recession. While consumers may have less cash for big-ticket items such as cars, and their distrust of banks has increased, they still have enough coins in their pocket for Coca Cola, McDonalds, Gillette and H&M.”

-          Jez Frampton, Interbrand Chief Executive

What about top-end brands like Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton or, perhaps, Bentley?

Surprisingly these luxury brands have held their own, falling less than the average drop of 5%.  (Though, I am part of the 5%. No more expensive purses for a while)

Here are the world’s Top 10 Most Valuable Brands in 2009:

1.     Coca Cola $68.7bn

2.     IBM $60.2bn

3.     Microsoft $56.6bn

4.     GE $47.7bn

5.     Nokia $34.8bn

6.     McDonald’s $32.2bn

7.     Google $31.9bn

8.     Toyota $31.3bn

9.     Intel $30.6bn

10.  Disney $28.4bn

See the full list from Business Week.
Interestingly, IBM knocked Microsoft off of the second-place it held for years.
But where is Apple? (One of my personal favorite brands) Apple made it into the top 20, right below Samsung.
Hewlett-Packard almost made it to the top 10, trailing at no. 11

What do these brands have in common?

• They are all large, established companies that have proven stability and earned the trust of consumers with a reliable product(s).
• They have clear product strategies. They are good at what they do. Take Google as an example. Need I say more?
• They give consumers what they expect. This is the no. 1 reason McDonald’s is so successful. People all over the world know what to expect when they enter a McDonald’s.
• They sell products that nearly everyone can relate to.
• They are classics; traditional and not controversial.
• They each target a large base of consumers. i.e., most people drink soft drinks, most people need appliances, most people drive cars, and most people use computers & technology.
• Half of these brands are technology companies. The message? If you do not already have your brand on the web, accessible from mobile devices, now is a good time to get it there. Chances are, if you are reading this blog, you are cognizant of how technology affects your business.

I will go out on a limb and say that most employees in these top companies are proud to represent their brand. An example of branding from inside out, I worked for Hewlett-Packard for 12 years. The reason I was in the company for so long was because of its people, its company culture. No matter where I travel in the world, when I worked with fellow HP colleagues, we always collaborate and look out for each other.

Most of us do not have the advantage of 100 years of company history or a staff of thousands behind us.
So, what do we do?
We take advantage of “The Long Tail,” described in a book of the same name by Chris Anderson, who is the Editor in Chief at Wired Magazine, and the Keynote Speaker at this conference. As media choices expand, so do the opportunities to address your particular market.  The Top Ten companies that I listed above have the “head” of the market.  But, all markets are strange animals.  They have long tails.

Think of the image below.  We don’t see the head of this dinosaur.  We don’t have to worry about it.  We can let IBM, Microsoft, and Google worry about the head.  Our job is to focus on those consumers who do not need, do not want, and cannot use the mass marketed, top ten brands.  They need the attention to detail that we small business people can provide to their specific market.  We can do well by focusing on the customers who don’t just want any product or service, but one that is designed specifically for them.

Attend our Free Seminar to learn the Secrets to Social Media Success!

When? Wednesday, July 29th 2009   7:00 pm EST

Who? Small business owners, professionals and those who are interested to learn ways to leverage the internet to work for you.

Simply fill out your name and email below to receive seminar information:

The next generation of communication is here!

Whether you are an individual, small business or a large corporation, you should have some social media component by now. If not, you need to aboard the express train and catch up with social media.

Are you tired or hearing about twitter, blogs and even wikis? Let us share with you our secrets of using social media to help you build your brand, expand your customer base, better control public relations and make money!

Learn how marketing is changing and how social media marketing campaigns are taking hold.

We will explore the convergence of old media vs new media. Why it matters, and how it affects your personal and professional world. Let us teach you how to leverage web 2.0 and use the power of communities to impact your message and increase sales, which establish a whole new customer dynamic.

You will learn:

• On overview of social media
• Old media vs new media
• Definition of the latest web 2.0 words like twitter, blogs, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking
• How social media is impacting our professional and everyday lives
• How to use Twitter to expand your communication and increase your brand
• The difference between using Facebook Fan page vs. Facebook Group
• How to effectively communicate using blogs

• And as a bonus, I will be sharing with you Kadidid’s tool box: My favorite tools that has helped me to work smarter!

Social & Startup Rockstars DC #6 Demos Night!
We’re doing it again! Startup Rockstars is presenting some of the most interesting tech startups in the DC area. Light refreshments & snacks will be available.

For more information and RSVP, please visit: http://www.meetup.com/socialweb/calendar/10921529/

6:00 – sign-in
6:30 – demo’s start:

(signup options will be available by August 10)

7:30 – Introducing… GaZuBO Networking!

Please click here to RSVP

Topic/Theme: Everyone bring one tip to share (or a question) related to web traffic or online web promotion.

Search Engine Optimatization (SEO) meets Social Media Optimization (SMO)… a mashup of meetups & conversations. Plus generally a discussion around having a website or blog.

This is a recurring special event, as we bring different meetup groups together to discuss SEO as it relates to social & web 2.0 aspects… or is it that we’ll discuss how social & web 2.0 can benefit from knowing SEO?

Also joining us is the Washington DC SEO meetup group, for sharing ideas & experiences (their event listing adds more people to the event).
Starter ideas and questions for the night’s conversation:

• Are you more familiar with SEO, SMO, or neither? Or both?
• Is it better to focus on SEO to get traffic, or focus on SMO? What is the difference?
• Is traffic all that you want, or do you want a benefit that traffic will bring to you/your site? Examples of benefits include branding, signups/registrations/orders, advertiser ROI (including text ads), and
• How do links from comments (in blogs, on YouTube, etc.) help in SEO?
• Does having a blog risk a “duplicate page” penalty from search engines? Blogs can display the same page with different url’s, such as site.com/?p=1 , www.site.com/?p=1 , site.com/post_name , and www.site.com/post_name . Is this seen as content spam, or is it ignored by search engines?

What? Discussion on Change Management

Where? La Madeleine

7607 Old Georgetown Road
Bethesda , MD 20814

Discussion on experiences with change management in both traditional and newer web 2.0 areas. What experiences or challenges do you have in bringing transformational changes to an organization? What tools & techniques – web 1.0 through web 3.0 – can be used to make the process more effective?

The result of this discussion will help drive a separate series of events on change management.

Some writeups found online relating to change management:

* http://home.att.net/~…
* http://www.change-man…

Click HERE For more information …

We’re joining the DC Entrepreneurs for their monthly Entrepreneur Mixer.

From 6-7:30pm.

Who should come? Anyone looking to network with fellow small business owners, independent consultants, start-ups, and other professional service firms.

Bring your business cards, your 15-second pitch, and a givers attitude. We have the bottom floor to ourselves!

About The Science Club.

The Science Club (website) is a long established lounge in the Dupont Circle area. It is a constant hub for business professionals and for organizations like ours looking to host networking mixers at their venue. It has 3 floors with various set ups and rooms on each floor.

Learn more..

HomesBook.com: Marketing research and competitive analysis. Defined user requirements.

HP: Social media strategy for the HP CIO customer program. Event management

Fashion Fights Poverty: Enhance communication and awareness with social media.

According to Pandemiclabs.com, SOCIAL MARKETING is a catchall term often used to encompass other forms of new media marketing such as viral marketing and buzz marketing.

SOCIAL MEDIA is a form of online marketing characterized by the use of user-submitted and community-moderated content sites such as social news sites, social networks, social bookmarking sites, photo, and video sharing sites in order to propagate a marketing message. Viral Marketing can sometimes be considered a subset of social media marketing.

Now it makes more sense. So social networking is a component of social meda.Buckle up as we speed through the social web super highway. And along the way, there will be more new buzz words to pick up. One thing for sure, it is now time to embrace and leverage the power of social media and social marketing.

Buck, a graduate student from the Berkeley University was covering an anti-government protest in Mahalla, Egypt.  when he and his translator Mohammed Maree were arrested April 10.

Uncertain of his future, Buck sent a Twitter message using his cell phone – ‘Arrested’. Seconds later, Buck’s friends received the news that he was being held in Egypt. The Twitter message helped him find contacts in US, coupled with Buck being American enabled him to be released so quickly. Buck’s translator Maree however, was not so lucky, Maree was transferred to another jail. Egyptian government told US that Maree was later released, but so far Maree’s brother still has not heard from him, he suspect that Maree is still in jail. Want to read more?