If the cornerstone of your career was having yourself or a client appear on Oprah…there’s not much time left

There are less than two  years left if you’ve ever planned to mark your career with an appearance on the Oprah Show. Be prepared to hustle like you’ve never hustled and potentially feeling the backlash of bumping previously scheduled interviews, if your story is that good enough.

The Queen of media announced yesterday that she would be ending her talk show in September 2011 and that the shows that remain would knock your socks off. After 25 years, Oprah says that she loves her show enough to know when it’s time to say goodbye.

Even if your plan was to sit in the studio audience one day, the clock has already begun to tick on when you can make that a possibility. If anyone is putting in any extra effort to get on the Oprah Show in the next year, we would like to hear your story.

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Black Ink Magazine appoints former BBPA Director to Editor-in-Chief

Black Ink Magazine, a publication for Canadian black professionals, recently announced the appointment of Sandra Gabriel, former Communications Director for the Black Business & Professional Association, to the position of Editor-in-Chief.

“I do feel a bit of an absence where the BBPA used to be,” says Gabriel “I miss working with my former Board members to serve the black community, but this will be another vehicle for me to relay the issues of the community and open the forum for discussion,” Gabriel adds.

After serving four years with the BBPA, Gabriel stepped down in May 2009 to pursue opportunities that would build on the skills and experience that she gained while working with the BBPA. Aside from overseeing communications for the BBPA, Gabriel was also in charge of PR/Media for the annual BBPA Harry Jerome Awards.

“Looking at her experience in the black business community, combined with her education in Public Relations and Communications and her passion for writing, there was no doubt that Sandra would make an excellent Editor-in-Chief for Black Ink Magazine,” says Black Ink Publisher and owner of Black Ink Media Corp, Lennox James.  “I think she’ll make a wonderful addition to the team and we’re very excited to be working together,” James adds.  Managing Editor, Diona Dolabaille’s reaction upon learning Gabriel’s credentials was “What a perfect fit!”

Black Ink Magazine has also brought on Editorial Director Natalie McFarlane as part of the Editorial Board, and they are still looking to recruit a number of individuals for the editorial team.

“Sandra’s involvement is pivotal at this stage as we prepare for our launch and we are extremely pleased to have her join the team,” says McFarlane.  “Sandra knows and understands the vision as we do, and has demonstrated her commitment to bringing it to realization.  We are very excited about the possibilities.” She adds.

The magazine is set to launch in Spring 2010. Visit www.blackinkmagazine.com for more information.

View the Black Ink Magazine mock-up

NY Times | “Bank of America Chief Forgoes Pay for 2009″….would you?

The New York Times reported today that Kenneth D. Lewis agreed on Thursday to forgo his salary and bonus as chief executive of Bank of America, as new legal questions emerged about the troubled takeover of Merrill Lynch that led to his downfall.

You read it correctly, Lewis is forgoing both his salary and bonus for 2009. Putting yourself in his shoes, would you do the same? All your blood, sweat and tears for the year has been spent on running and sustaining your business and you agree to let it all go…for what? Considering Lewis’ situation, does that not say guilty all over it?

The Times report goes on to say that Two weeks after abruptly announcing his resignation, Mr. Lewis promised to return the pay he received this year to avoid a confrontation with Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration’s overseer of executive compensation. Mr. Lewis, who plans to retire on Dec. 31, still stands to collect a $53.2 million pension.

Ok, so he’ll still be well off without his entire salary from 2009, but in my eyes, he essentially spent an entire year working for free. What about all the travel and meetings, early mornings, late nights, time away from family and friends? Was all that sacrifice worth nothing?

I guess it’s the price you pay for dealing in big business; one must be prepared to make even bigger sacrifices if it means saving your butt. Many will look at the size of his pension and feel no sympathy, I know I don’t. But it’s important to remember that the more money you make, the more problems you have. Someone with a 50K salary, takes home approximately $3,000 monthly and expenses that amount to about $2,000 or more. On the same token, someone with a $1,000,000 salary might take home anywhere from $50K to $60K or more, monthly and have expenses in the area of $30-$40k a month…what with the nice big house, nice car, wining and dining, vacations, your kids are in the top schools…the point is, you come into a little more money and you live accordingly. We all do it…although now we’re seeing more people start to save and spend more wisely…we can thank the recession for that one.

Anyway, while I’m glad to see top executives take responsibility and demonstrate their commitment to the credibility of their business, I can’t say that I would be ready to make such a sacrifice. Would you?

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Women Entrepreneurs, Why They Are Taking The Lead

The biggest change ever in entrepreneurship is occurring right now. For centuries men have lead the entrepreneurial frontier. But, for a multitude of reasons it is changing. It’s now the women’s turn to be the leaders of entrepreneurship. Here are just few (yes, just a few) reasons why

Reason #75 donated by SG PR

Thanks TPE!

Microsoft and Yahoo together at last

Well…it’s official, Microsoft and Yahoo have now joined forces in an effort to provide some healthy competition to our friends over at Google.

The Washington Post reports, “the deal marks the latest move in a long dance between Microsoft and Yahoo, which have both struggled to remain relevant on the Web as Google steadily marched toward dominance in search and advertising.”

The thing that gets me about deals like this is that it’s never about the consumer or the end-user. Competition for competition sake as opposed to competition to provide a better service for the end-user. Maybe I don’t read the blogs as much as I should, but I never heard or read any negative feedback on Google that would make me think that we needed another Google-type platform. Microsoft probably has their ear a little closer to the ground than I do.

The details of the deal have Yahoo using Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, as the underlying technology on its popular content sites, which will give Microsoft instant access to Yahoo’s millions of daily visitors. Yahoo, meanwhile, will abandon its expensive search business and focus on building content for its sites. It will also handle sales of premium advertisements for both companies.

So what does this new competition mean for Google? If you can even call it competition, with Google holding 65% of the market and Yahoo with 28%. I’m guessing Microsoft/Yahoo will have to come up with some pretty heavy tools and resources to lure Google users and advertisers over to their side. But I don’t doubt that Google already has some stuff in the works to stay ahead of the competition.

Read the New York Times report:

Microsoft and Yahoo Are Linked Up. Now What?

Public Relations becomes the new weapon of mass “cultural resistance”

The New York Times reports that Hamas has suspended its use of rockets and shifted focus to winning support at home and abroad through cultural initiatives and public relations.

Go figure! If you thought that the new PR revolved around social media and SEO, it appears that war stricken countries are now using PR to bring peace and create a “culture of resistance.”

“Armed resistance is still important and legitimate, but we have a new emphasis on cultural resistance,” noted Ayman Taha, a Hamas leader and former fighter.  Some of the tactics used to stimulate the culture of resistance include: a movie premier, an art exhibit, a book of poems, a television series and there are even plans for a documentary competition.

Hamas PR initiative to engage the world is driven by their desire to raise awareness to the amount of suffering that goes on there. Apparently, Israeli officials also believe that they must improve public relations and message management, setting the stage for a battle for world opinion.

“We are not terrorists but resistance fighters, and we want to explain our reality to the outside world,” commented Osama Alisawi, the minister of culture. “We want the writers and intellectuals of the world to come and see how people are suffering on a daily basis.”

al-Bettar, writer and director of the play “The Women of Gaza and the Patience of Job,” (one of the plays created in the name of cultural resistance) says, “we need to engage the world, not isolate ourselves.”

Imagine having your client approach you and say, we want to roll-out a PR plan that would engage the world and welcome public opinion…where would you even begin? What type of previous experience and knowledge would a PR professional have to encompass to  take on such a task, especially considering the nasty war taking place in the midst of everything?

Read the full article here

Microsoft wastes no time

Forget about waiting for your search tool to grow through traditional, more viral methods; get ahead of the competition (or significantly close to it) by buying their major competitor. Campaign Live reports that just two months after launching its Bing search engine, Microsoft is said to be on the verge of agreeing a deal to buy Yahoo!’s web search business.

Microsoft and Yahoo! have been in talks over a potential sale of the search business for more than 18 months. A successful deal would give Microsoft almost 30 per cent of the American market.

So why was Bing.com even created if Microsoft knew that they would be bringing in the big guns that would give them a fair advantage in the search engine market share? We’ll have to keep an eye on this relationship to see how things pan out.

Bing.com vs. Google

I am not one for stirring up any trouble, but when this matter came to my attention, I just couldn’t help myself.  Bing.com launched back in May 2009, is “a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.”

A friend of mine sent me a text message the other day saying that “she was unhappy” with Bing.com as the search engine turned up less results than Google for a search she was doing. I was not at all surprised. According to Wikipedia.org, Bing.com was formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search, all MSN search platforms which, in my opinion, never got much play, so I didn’t believe that a simple rebranding would invoke the MJ effect on Bing.com. From what I understand, it will take time for Bing.com’s popularity to grow, but even with time, does it stand a chance against Google??

I thought I would conduct a short experiement to determine exactly what Bing.com was up against. I did searches for the same keywords in both search engines. The scores were as follows:

Search word: blog
Google: 2,970,000,000
Bing.com: 69,300,000 (top three results included Google Blog Search and the Official Google Blog)

Search word: social media
Google: 195,000,000
Bing.com: 1,740,000,000

Search word: recession
Google: 53,900,000
Bing.com: 4,510,000

Search word: Michael Jackson
Google: 126,000,000
Bing.com: 105,000,000

Of course my research is very elementary, but it still speaks volumes about each contender.

Google clearly turns up more results than Bing.com, proving it’s ability to reach to the furthest corners of cyber space to provide you with more results, except where the subject of social media is concerned where Google produced over 1.5 billion results less than Bing.com.

Another experiment led me to do a search on both search engines for the other search engine i.e. search Google for Bing.com and vice versa. Now this particular search was out of plain curiosity and what I found was that Google had dropped the ball when it came to the laws of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Best practices for SEO will tell you that things like page description and title and keywords all play a key role in getting your page caught in the web of search engine spiders. Bing.com has clearly adhered to these practices where Google has not.

Bing.com page description: Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.

Google page description: Web Images Video Maps News Groups Gmail more »

But does Google even need to abide by these best practices? The same search engine spider webs that everyone wants to get their website caught up in, are the very same spiders put out by Google; so big deal if they don’t have the proper meta data on their site, it certainly doesn’t stop people from Googling, but with Bing.com having the top search results for a hot topic like social media, Google could be in for some strong competition.

To tweet or not to tweet?

I created a Twitter account one day and I deleted it within the same hour. I had heard about Twitter through the airwaves and decided to test it out, but when I saw that there was nothing more to it than entering “what you’re doing” in less than 150 words, I believed that there was no value in it and decided not move forward with the account.

But now as the Twitter community grows and I seek to maximize on my social media strategy, I wonder if it won’t be valuable resource in my arsenal of social media tools?

My concerns are with the time committment for maintaining a Twitter group and not wanting to annoy my followers with updates that may or may not mean anything to them.  But if I can find the right balance of providing relevant information in a timely manner (and in less than 150 words), then this Twitter relationship might actually work out!

Still debating…

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