Rebecca Lieb on The Truth About SEO, Journo Interview Techniques and Oceans & Otters
DishyMix
Susan Bratton
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Episode 92 - Rebecca Lieb on The Truth About SEO, Journo Interview Techniques and Oceans & Otters

Rebecca Lieb is one of the most important and distinguished journos in the digital media world. She's taken all she's learned at the ClickZ Network and Search Engine Watch and is launching US Operations for Econsultancy, the leading digital media analyst organization in the UK.

Rebecca shares her three most contemporary ideas about Search Engine Optimization from her new book, "The Truth About Search Engine Optimization." Learn why universal search, your content strategy and search categorization are the most important things to focus on in SEO today.

Then Rebecca, one of the best press interviewers ever, shares with you her press interview techniques. If you are a journalist or a blogger, you must listen to these tips.

Hear Rebecca's "no reservations" vacation stories from the hinterlands of Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Suz gives her insight into her Spirit Animal, the Otter. And get tuned into one of the TED prize winners, Sylvia Earle, who needs the interactive industry's support for her wish to establish more marine preserve areas to protect our Oceans. As a scuba diver and wanna-be marine biologist, this connects deeply with Rebecca's interests and perhaps it will also impress you?

Transcript

Transcript

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Susan Bratton: Welcome to Dishy Mix. I'm your host, Susan Bratton, and on today's show you are going to get to meet Rebecca Lieb. Rebecca is the Vice President of U. S. Operations for a company called Econsultancy. She's also the author of a new book called "The Truth about SEO".

What's interesting about it is you probably know her very well in that she was the Editor-in-chief of ClickZ, the ClickZ Network, as well as for many years managed Search Engine Watch. So, we're going to learn a lot about search engine optimization among other things, including how you can be a bronze winner, adventurous women - everybody loves them - interview techniques, the truth about SEO and otters and oceans. We're going to talk about all that today.

Before I bring Rebecca on the show, I wanted to let you know that I have something new for you. I always have stuff for you, always have stuff for you. The latest thing is that Tim built me something I'm really happy about. He built me something that is a sign-up program. You can actually get an email automatically from my lovely computer system now when a Dishy Mix episode goes live.

You can actually get a notification of any of the shows on Personal Life Media, so if you're listening to more - some people listen to Buddhist Geeks, The New Man; Just for Women, Living Green. You can sign up to get a weekly digest that tells you which shows on the network went live and what they're about. I'd love for you to sign up for that notification service. It's at personallifemedia.com/signup s-i-g-n-u-p and I hope you'll do it because I'd love for you to not miss a single episode of Dishy Mix.

So, let's get Rebecca on. I've got great goodies for you, and you are going to have so much fun getting to know Rebecca Lieb. Welcome, Rebecca.

Rebecca Lieb: Hello, Sue, and it's always fun talking with you.

Susan Bratton: It is. We always try to make our moments in any city we're both in at the same time, don't we?

Rebecca Lieb: As long as we're in the same city at the same time, we go to dinner. We go to the museum, but we make a point of getting together.

Susan Bratton: That's right. We just went to the Craft Museum. It was the American Craft Museum that just opened.

Rebecca Lieb: It's the American Design Museum, actually.

Susan Bratton: American Design Museum in New York. That was a really fun, short little afternoon, wasn't it?

Rebecca Lieb:  It was a lovely afternoon on a rainy, rainy day.

Susan Bratton: It was pouring and at the end I snuck into a Chinese foot massage place that you showed me, this little doorway. I went in there and had the best foot massage, like all the way up to your knees kind of foot massage. It was fabulous.

Rebecca Lieb: What a good excuse to get out of the rain.

Susan Bratton: Exactly. It was really good. So, you have a new job and a new book. Let's start with Econsultancy. Tell us about the company because you've moved into a more operational role now. You're VP of U. S. Ops, not just editorial, but running the business.

Rebecca Lieb: Exactly, but I'm not going to stop writing ever, you know that.

Susan Bratton: We don't want you to.

Rebecca Lieb: After running ClickZ for close to eight years, I think it was time to move on, much as I loved that and almost everything about it. Econsultancy and a lot of your listeners will appreciate the analogy. It's kind of the ClickZ of the UK. Econsultancy has been around for about 10 years, and it's the absolute leader there in information and best practices, about digital marketing and eCommerce; tons of great research reports, events, lots of training to help digital marketers do their jobs better.

And organically, over the 10 years that Econsultancy has been in existence almost 10 percent of the users are from our fair shores, and that's without Econsultancy ever having done a thing about it or done anything to encourage it.

When people ask me what my role is here, I say it's actually to try. We've got to do better if we try a little bit after 10 years of not trying. We've developed quite a robust membership over in the U. S.

Susan Bratton: It kind of reminds me of a Forrester style thing where there are a lot of reports and perspectives and analysis as well as job boards. Tell us about all of the different components.

Rebecca Lieb: There's lot of reports and research covering best practice, user experience, benchmarking, market data. There are supplier directories in the UK that we are going to hope to get up to speed over here in the U. S. You know, a lot of this is about recreating and rescaling our content to a much, much bigger marketplace.

We offer template files. Say, you've got to do a RFP for email marketing. You know, just the template for that RFP is a pretty complex chore and document.

Susan Bratton: Wow, that sounds really good.

Rebecca Lieb: Trends reports. We even do a report on what the new and cool companies in the States are. We've got the training division. We offer courses in things like special media, optimizing the ROI of campaigns. We have courses in search. Pretty much, you name it; we've got it.

We have a lot of high level summits where some of the most august personalities in our business get together and sit down at roundtables and talk about what their challenges are and how they are solving those challenges.

We offer press release distribution service. It goes out over the usual online channels, and lives in perpetuity on our sites for that much more Google juice. We've got job boards and so we're working now on building all of that stuff out in the United States.

Stay tuned for our events, but we're already starting to fill up our site with a little more U. S. oriented content. We've got an editor coming on board by the time your listeners hear this, and we are very serious about conquering America.

Susan Bratton: You know, you sold me just on having that email RFT template and the press distribution thing alone, not to mention the special reports. Here's what I think is interesting about Econsultancy. You know, the beautiful thing about being a British-based content company is that it's a whole different microcosm. There are different mores in the business and the way it's done in the UK that you can learn and get some different ideas from, yet you can get it in English.

It's a really nice combination in that the Brits approach things in different ways than we do. They have a different culture. They're beautifully creative people. And so, just having the opportunity to, maybe, get an idea or two that you don't get by just talking to your American counterparts is worth the effort of going there and learning about Econsultancy.

Rebecca Lieb: And it's also a great place to network with American compatriots as well. Although the majority of our members are currently British, we offer forums and we've got profiles of all of our members up on the site, for registered members. Obviously, we don't share people's details with everybody, so it's a really good hands across the ocean networking opportunity.

Susan Bratton: Hands across the water and you have a special gift for Dishy Mix listeners. Tell us about it and thank you.

Rebecca Lieb: I do. Just for your listeners, if they post a request on dishymixfan.com. Have I got that URL right?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, that's my Dishy Mix fan club, dishymixfan.com.

Rebecca Lieb: By April 30th, 2009. It's got to be before the end of April, 2009. I will sign these listeners up for a bronze membership with $500 worth of free goodies. We will give them a free research report of their choice, and we've got dozens and dozens to choose from. We will give them a free press release distribution on our site and a free job posting listing.

Susan Bratton: Wow.

Rebecca Lieb: So, the sign-up is free and I will take care of the rest. They can just sign up on the site, Sue, and you'll shoot me their names, and I will take care of the rest.

Susan Bratton: Rebecca, thank you so much. I'm definitely going to take advantage of this. Just the opportunity to have the press release distribution and get the report is awesome and it's unlimited. If anybody, usually I give away two of something; you're telling me that any Dishy Mix fan can go to dishymixfan.com and post that they want it and they'll get it. It's not two people. It's as many people as want it.

Rebecca Lieb: Exactly.

Susan Bratton. Sweet.

Rebecca Lieb. Exactly. Come one, come all.

Susan Bratton: I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I think that might be the nicest gift that's ever been given away on Dishy Mix.

Rebecca Lieb: Well, I'll throw in some other gifts to sweeten the pot once we start talking about my book.

Susan Bratton: Thank you. I know you are the bearer of wonderful gifts today, so I want to talk about that. Let's just go there right now. You have a new book out. Congratulations. It's "The Truth about SEO", and I just finished it last night in time for our interview today.

Rebecca Lieb: You're a fast reader.

Susan Bratton: I am a fast reader. Well, I read in bed for an hour or two, you know, at night.

Rebecca Lieb: So do I. Otherwise, I'd never fall asleep.

Susan Bratton: [Laughs] I have a hard time staying awake. There's so much in there. And what I liked is they are like mini chapters. They are snacks so you don't have to read this long huge thing. It's kind of - forgive me for saying this - but a bit of a bathroom book in that you can pick it up and put it down whenever you need to. You've got 15 minutes. Just open the page; read one of the tips.

Rebecca Lieb: I'm so glad you said that, Sue, because it's intended to be digestible just like that. You don't have to read it from chapter 1 to chapter 51. It's snackable. It's digestible. It's non-technical and it was really written to help people who aren't geeks wrap their minds around the concept of SEO.

So, if you're a chief marketing officer or if you're managing an internal or an external SEO team, this is the book that is not going to help you write any code because I'm too much of a girl to write code. I'm not like Tim, but it is going to help you understand what you can and cannot expect from search engine optimization.

And really, what you need to think about as you go through a SEO campaign and a SEO campaign, as you know, has a beginning but it really doesn't have an end.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, no kidding. It's the task of Sisyphus. I asked you before you came on the show today to tell me three - what I wanted were in that whole book of all those ideas, I just wanted you to give my listeners kind of three of the most contemporary, the latest thinking, most evolved concepts around SEO. Not the foundational stuff but the things that you thought were really the current and latest game changers and you have three for us. So, tell us what those three are.

Rebecca Lieb: Well, the number one and this could almost be number one, number two and number three is universal search. Universal search is a very big appellation for what the major search engines, particularly Google, are now doing on, not all, but many searches particularly many searches for topics that have a lot of media assets associated with them.

Let's just say Madonna because she's a singer. She's a dancer. She's an actress. She's Madonna. So, if you search for Madonna on Google right now, the top result might not be to her home page or to People Magazine. You might get a video about Madonna. You're going to get pictures of Madonna. You're going to get YouTube results on Madonna. You might get books on Madonna, news stories on Madonna. All of this stuff is relevant to a search on Madonna, but all of this changes the SEO game because these are organic search results and they have many and varying effects on SEO.

The good news is the more material you have on Madonna, even if it's not just plain double text, the higher your odds are of actually showing up in a Madonna search result for not a web page but, say, a video.

On the other hand, if you're trying to get a website found, all those assets, all those digital assets and images on the top of the page, are pushing down the regular old plain vanilla SEO results down, down, down. So, if you were, say, the number three result on Google for Madonna, you might now be on page two not on page one of results anymore. That's a real game changer.

Susan Bratton: So, people who are really savvy about things like video and imagery and getting those things ranked, that's what you need to find; someone who really understands that.

Rebecca Lieb: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: And localization.

Rebecca Lieb: Because you optimize the heck out of those things.

Susan Bratton: What's number two?

Rebecca Lieb: Number two and this only gets more important as time goes by. It's not new. It's just increasingly important. It's content. The fundamental foundation of SEO is having a content strategy. The more your site or website has changed, the most content is updated, the greater your changes of being spidered by the search engines and spidered frequently and having that content updated and refreshed in search engines.

Also, the more content you throw out there, the more quality content you throw out there, the better the chances are that people will link to you and your SEO rankings will increase. This is something across the board in interactive marketing that I can't stress enough is you've got to start thinking like a publisher, like an editor or like a producer. You can't just throw up the brochure-ware, as we used to say, website and expect people to come and expect search engines to be interested in that website.

This is why, for example, blogs are such a wonderful strategy because blog sites are built for SEO and blogs, more or less, demand frequent updating, assuming it is not a blog that you've just started and abandoned. But, in order to do that, Sue, you know this; you've got Dishy Mix. You've got to find new guests. You've got to think of new ideas for new programs for this and all of the programs on Personal Life Media. You have to look for ideas all the time. You have to line up guests. You have to ask questions. You can't let it just sit there and expect it to happen.

Susan Bratton: So, keeping your content fresh and innovative and moving forward.

Rebecca Lieb: And relevant.

Susan Bratton: And what's number three?

Rebecca Lieb: Number three is interesting. I don't think people appreciate all of the categories that they want to optimize for and I'll give you an example. I'm sitting here in New York and we were just talking about museums. So, take the Museum of Modern Art. It's a museum, right?

So, they want to be found as a museum, but it's not just a museum. It's a theater. They have movies there. They want to be listed under movie listings. They've got a restaurant in the museum, so they want to be listed as a local New York restaurant. They've got a book store. They've got a gift shop.

You've got to chop your business and chop your services into all of those little niches that you want to be found in and then optimize accordingly. So, while your overarching strategy if you were the Museum of Modern Art, might be to be found in museum listings of New York City guides, you might also want to be found in the Zagat Guide or in the book shop listing of yelp.com.

It's important to take a step backwards and think of all the reasons why people do business with you or walk through your door and optimize accordingly. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: I love that. Thank you. And it's funny, too, because when I had Danny Sullivan on Dishy Mix I asked him: what was the single most important thing we should focus on about search engine optimization right now? He said that universal search. It was his number one. It was your number one.

Rebecca Lieb: I think it's everybody's number one right now as closely associated with search as Danny is, as I am, as Mike Grant is and a lot of our mutual friends in the search world.

Susan Bratton: So, I am going to set you up with a question right now just before we go to break, and then I'm going to expand on your answer to this question when we come back. I asked you: you are so smart. You are an amazing, intelligent woman with a massive range of interests, and I so admire you.

And so, I wanted to know who you thought was the wisest person that you had ever met in your life, and I'd like you to just briefly tell us about her because that's going to bring me to my question for after the break.

Rebecca Lieb: I told you that person was a professor I had in college, Professor Helen North, who is currently the Professor Emerita of Classics at Swarthmore.

Susan Bratton: And what did she teach you?

Rebecca Lieb: Well, she was a visiting professor and I took her class one semester. It was time for the term paper, and I was discussing term paper topics with her. There was something I was very, very eager to write about. I came to her to discuss it, and I said, "You know, this is a problem and I am very interesting in tackling the problem but I'm afraid I can't do it because I don't know the answer".

She stopped me right there in my tracks and said, "That's not what scholarship is about. Scholarship is more about knowing when to ask the right questions than it is about learning the answers". Those are words that I live by for the rest of my life.

Susan Bratton: I love that. It's extremely powerful and there are two things. One, I just came across and became aware of the idea of Socratic questioning. I was so taken with it that I blogged about it at dishymix.com. So, I put the list of Socratic questions up on Dishy Mix. That's a really good foundation for asking the right question about something. It's a structured way of thinking about a line of questioning so I recommend that.

And then, I want to go to break. When we come back, I want to ask you more about the right question in the construct of interview techniques. The first time that I met Rebecca I went to the ClickZ offices in New York and I had a press meeting with her. I don't even remember which company I was with. It might have been Maven at the time, and I went in to meet Rebecca. I hadn't met her before, and I was doing a press pitch. She asked me a whole series of questions, and she scared the shit out of me, man.

Rebecca Lieb: You never told me that.

Susan Bratton: She was so good. Yeah.

Rebecca Lieb: I didn't ever mean to scare you.

Susan Bratton: No, it was good. You put me on my edge, and I was kind of intimidated and massively impressed by you and how you asked your questions. I never forgot that, and that was the day that I knew that I wanted to get to know you better because you rocked my world in the way you asked questions. I am going to ask you to tell us what is it that you do that is so unique when we come back from the break.

I'm going to thank my sponsors and we'll be right back. You are going to get to learn more about Rebecca Lieb. She is the VP of U. S. Ops at Econsultancy. Don't forget at dishymix.com, you get to get a bronze level access to Econsultancy if you do it by April 30, 2009. When we come back, we'll talk more with Rebecca. Stay tuned.

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Susan Bratton: We're back and we're with Rebecca Lieb. She is the VP of U. S. Ops at Econsultancy and the author of a new book, "The Truth about SEO".

Rebecca, before the break we were talking about the fact that I love your interview technique. You probably don't even know what the heck it is, but I want you to go into yourself now and tell us what your strategy is when you do interviews to write stories. It's really about that part that I want to know, nothing about job interviews but abut how you query people to get the information you need to write a really good story.

Rebecca Lieb: Well, the first thing to do is know the subject matter. Like you said, I don't remember what company you were working for when we first met. It might have been Maven, and whether or not I knew a lot about Maven -  and I did know something about Maven in those days - was not as important as knowing the landscape of what space it may have been played in which, of course, was online video.

You can't just take the corporate line. You have to say, "Yes but we're doing this" and "Yes, but what about that". You've got to challenge. You've got to make people defend the information that they are telling you, and that's probably what I did a little bit to you was I put you on the defensive. I didn't say you were wrong. I said, "Why is that right? Why is that the smart thing to do? If A, why not B?"

But, I've also done other interview techniques. You know, when I lived in Germany I was working for Variety, and this very much depends on who I am talking to and what they think you are. Sometimes, I'm not above playing dumb. I had a lot of very patronizing interview subjects in Germany where there were not a lot of women working in media at the time that I was working there.

I would get top executives at top companies who would start explaining things to me from Adam and Eve, and as Variety's Bureau Chief I really didn't need them to explain to me how film distribution works. I knew that backwards and forwards. But, sometimes if you are just patient and let your mind wander and let them go through their spiel and pretend to listen attentively and then ask the zinger question, they are so caught off guard they'll actually answer it, but you've really got to play off the individual. But you've got to know your stuff before you walk in the room.

Susan Bratton: What else?

Rebecca Lieb: I think you've got to not be afraid to ask the question, no matter who it is. I remember one year at search engine strategies, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, came in. He was talking metrics, metrics, metrics, and this was how Google was going to focus in the future, and everything was going to be metrics-based.

You know what? He's Eric Schmidt. He doesn't do a lot of interviews. He's the CEO of Google. I was in a room where he was conducting a press conference, and everybody there was just kind of grooving on the fact that they were in a room with Eric Schmidt. You can't be distracted about that.

I stuck up my hand and said, "You're talking about metrics but you just built all these new platforms on Ajax and Ajax is measurable. So, how does that jibe with what you're telling us?"

A lot of people came up to me after that and said, "You asked the best question at the press conference". And I was like, "Yeah, I can't believe I was the only person who asked that question at that press conference". Anybody in the room could have asked it.

Don't be intimated by your subject, and I think that maybe the fact that I started my career doing this in show business and got to interview a lot of big movie stars and directors has kind of inured me to celebrity. I think you've got to be inured to celebrity in order to do your job in this space, especially when you encounter a real live specimen.

Susan Bratton: I'm going to read these back to you, and it might trigger any last thoughts. If not, we'll move on but I really wanted to take a minute to it. I'm putting you on the spot and you weren't prepared for this, so it might trigger something else that you want to give us some advice.

First was know the material and the landscape. Challenge the person's assumptions. Play dumb or begin as a beginner in some cases. Be patient and wait for the zinger. Let things flow. Don't try to drive the conversation completely but be open to where there might be opportunity for getting some piece of information that no one else is going to get. Don't be afraid to ask any question, no matter what it is and don't be distracted or intimidated by celebrity or your subject being a VIP.

Rebecca Lieb: I think I've got one more for you.

Susan Bratton: I knew you would.

Rebecca Lieb: That's know when you've got a good answer. Sometimes, the good answer, the real piece of news, the real piece of information, is going to be a throwaway comment. It's going to be buried in something that somebody else would ignore. It's your job as a good interviewer to pick that nugget of gold out and expand on it.

Susan Bratton: Got it.

Rebecca Lieb: And that's thinking on your feet.

Susan Bratton: Yes. Exactly. That's great. Thank you so much. I wish people could see you in action. I mean, it would be great just to have a little hidden camera watching you do this work that you do.

Rebecca Lieb: I think your listeners get to hear you in action doing this all the time. You are one of the pros of the pros, Sue.

Susan Bratton: Thank you. I appreciate it. Well, obviously, I study it pretty diligently to try to figure out exactly what it is that makes somebody... Everybody is doing consumer generated content. Everybody is a blogger. Everybody has got their video and they are asking people - point the camera and asking people questions. Frankly, they are doing a terrible job.

One of the things that I think is important is to do a particularly excellent job asking and posing questions and really understanding what that person can bring that no one else in the world can bring and then getting the answer.

Rebecca Lieb: I don't know how aware your listeners are of this, but you sent me a list of ten of the hardest questions I've ever been asked in my life prior to this interview and we know one another.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. I loved your answers. They were spectacular. I'd love to publish a book some time of the answers to all of my Dishy Mix guests.

Rebecca Lieb: In your interview prep, you really get ready for this.

Susan Bratton: Oh yeah, I really do.

Rebecca Lieb: You get major kudos for that.

Susan Bratton: Thank you. Well, that's it. Know the material and the landscape. That's your number one tip, right?

Rebecca Lieb: Yeah, it is.

Susan Bratton: Well, I want to move on. A couple things, I want to make sure that... I have a special gift. I can't wait. I have a surprise for you.

Rebecca Lieb: Oh, boy.

Susan Bratton: OK, so this is going to be really fun. You know I'm your California girl, right? I like all the trippy, trippy stuff so my latest thing that I like are these power animals or spirit animals. And I asked you if you were reincarnated. I love this question. I think it's from - oh, I forget who asked this. Marcel Proust, it's one of his questions. If you were going to be reincarnated into any animal, what would it be?

Rebecca Lieb: It was Bernard Puseau [sp], actually.

Susan Bratton: Was it? Thank you.

Rebecca Lieb: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: There was a run on dolphins lately, frankly, but I loved your response. You said that you would like to be an otter. Well, I have a power animal oracle card guidebook that I just got from amazon.com, and I'm going to tell you...

Rebecca Lieb: Oh, boy.

Susan Bratton: If the otter is your spirit animal, here is the information that the otter wants you to know. You're going to love this. Are you ready?

Rebecca Lieb: Oh, I'm at the edge of my seat.

Susan Bratton: [Laughs] It's goofy and totally fun. It's kind of based on Native American stuff, so the otter stands for surrender. Let go of control. So, you think you're in control of the situation, do you? Well, that's something that everybody thinks much of the time.

These efforts at maintaining control are most often based in habitual conditioned fear borne out of many experiences where you witness others who are out of control. It was scary, dangerous and maybe even life threatening. You can be assured that now there is no more danger and you are safe.

You can now safely relinquish control. Letting go of control doesn't mean giving up. Giving up means throwing up your hands in the air and admission of defeat. Instead, true surrender means releasing any attempts to force your agenda on life. It means opening your hands and heart and accepting the direction of spirit. In that acceptance your will becomes the will of spirit, and life flows much more easily through you and as you.

Additional associations for the otter are sensuality, merging, family and playfulness.

Rebecca Lieb: That makes so much sense. I mean, what you didn't tell the listeners when I told you I would be an otter it was because they looked like they had just tons and tons and tons of fun.

Susan Bratton: Playful. They let go and play.

Rebecca Lieb: Playful but you have to really surrender to have that much fun, don't you?

Susan Bratton: Yes, you do.

Rebecca Lieb: And to eat raw oysters.

Susan Bratton: [Laughs] I love raw oysters. I would like to frolic in the water, eat raw oysters and play. That sounds really good. Let's make it a date.

Rebecca Lieb: OK. You've got all the kelp out there. Let's do it.

Susan Bratton: We do. So, when I also asked you what you would be if you were not a fabulous writer, author, journalist and now VP of U. S. Operations for Econsultancy, you told me that you would like to be a marine biologist because you're a scuba diver. As a matter of fact, a lot of what you do is scuba dive all over the world.

Rebecca Lieb: Yep.

Susan Bratton: And you do this thing that I call "no reservations". Tell us about your "no reservations" vacation policy.

Rebecca Lieb: Well, every year and for the last 10 years or so, it's been Southeast Asia because I love that part of the world and because there's a lot to explore there. I pick a country and I get on a plane, and with the exception of the first night that is always booked in a hotel because you really have jet lag when you get there and you need to go somewhere, I have no reservations and no itinerary.

I almost always go alone so I'm not beholden to anybody else's whims or desires as to where we're going to go or how long we're going to stay, or whether now is lunch time or two hours from now is lunch time. I do whatever I damn please in a very, very foreign environment. I love being somewhere where I can't speak the language or even read the alphabet. I find that really challenging and stimulating, and it makes me look at things in ways that I don't look at things when I'm in the Western world.

Susan Bratton: I love that. I think it's very courageous and adventurous. You are an adventurous woman.

Rebecca Lieb: You know, everybody says that but if you're really desperate you can always find the bathroom or a sandwich. I haven't really failed on either account yet.

Susan Bratton: Exactly. I'm good at the sandwiches. Well, I want to bring somebody into your vision. I was introduced to Sylvia Earle at the TED Conference, the Technology Entertainment and Design Conference, just about a month ago. She's one of the TED prize winners. There are three every year, and Sylvia Earle - she's called "her deepness" by the New Yorker and the New York Times called her a living legend.

She's a hero for the planet from Time Magazine. She's an oceanographer and explorer, an author and a lecturer. Her TED wish is that we - I'll read it to you. I wish you would use all means at your disposal; films, expeditions, the Web and more to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas; help spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of our planet.

So, Sylvia Earle, her deepness, wants people from all over the globe to help support her to create some more marine protected reserves. She wants help creating a media campaign in support of MPAs. She wants backing for the upcoming gorgeous documentary called "Oceans", absolutely beautiful movie coming out in late May, early June.

She wants media space and distribution. She wants PR and marketing assistance. She wants a boat that we can use called "TED at Sea" for a brainstorming expedition on the oceans. She needs help with event management. She needs a website that highlights the issues and nurtures a network of supporters who can begin to create, map out, locate, legislate and create these marine protected areas of our ocean.

I just thought that would be the kind of woman that you'd really like to know about, and her TED Prize Wish video is at TED.com.

Rebecca Lieb: I have been going through those, snacking my way through those, and I haven't gotten to her yet. But, you know what? You're making me think that I've been complacent because for years I've been a supporter of and a donor to the Jacques Cousteau Society.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Rebecca Lieb: Maybe, it's time to broaden my horizons on that front just a little bit.

Susan Bratton: Well, Sylvia Earle is your kind of woman.

Rebecca Lieb: I think she is.

Susan Bratton: I think that you and she would have a really marvelous time together, and I think that our industry could provide for her so much of what she needs donated. I mean, the listeners who are listening to this episode, they have media. They have PR. They have event experience. This is the Dishy Mix listener. We could literally make this thing happen for her.

Now, everybody has their things to do, but at least, we can create some awareness around it. Our industry could rally to this.

Rebecca Lieb: Our industry can rally to a lot of causes, and I am beginning to see glimmerings of that, that are very, very encouraging; people who are doing all kinds of good work projects on the side.

Susan Bratton: Me, too, and speaking of good works, we're at the end of the show. And I forgot to say that you have offered to give away two free copies, authographed, right?

Rebecca Lieb: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: Will you personally autograph them for me?

Rebecca Lieb: Personally autograph them for you of my book.

Susan Bratton: Yes.

Rebecca Lieb: And you are going to tell me who gets them.

Susan Bratton: Yes. The way that you get a copy of Rebecca's new book, "The Truth about Search Engine Optimization", is just the same as getting a bronze access to Econsultancy. Go to dishymixfan.com on Facebook or just type in Dishy Mix, all one word, into Facebook and you'll find it. You just post your desire there.

Make sure that I can connect to you so that I can get your address and if you are one of the lucky people we select, you've got to write something good. We want some good requests not just like, "Hey, can I have the book?" but tell us why you need the book and what you're going to do with it. Rebecca will personally autograph a copy for you, and we'll get it to you.

Rebecca Lieb: I would be delighted to.

Susan Bratton: Thank you so much for your generosity of spirit and goodies today, Rebecca. I really appreciate it.

Rebecca Lieb: I've wanted to be with you for so long. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Susan Bratton: It was great to get to know you better, and I know everybody enjoyed it. The interview tips will help people with their blog posts because I bet everybody is a blogger these days, and that can really help them, too. So, you've given us a lot of gifts. Thank you very much for coming on Dishy Mix.

Rebecca Lieb: Thank you and thanks to everybody who listened.

Susan Bratton: Alright, I'm your host, Susan Bratton. You got to know Rebecca Lieb and take care to get some of those goodies that she was so kind to bring. I will talk to you next week. Have a great day.

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