My copy of Rebecca Lieb’s new book, The Truth About Search Engine Optimization,” is on it’s way to me. I can’t wait to read it and am interviewing Rebecca on an upcoming DishyMix.

Rebecca recently left  The ClickZNetwork where she was editor-in-chief for over 7 years. Now she oversees the U.S. operations of Econsultancy,  an independent advice site focused on digital marketing and e-commerce. While at The ClickZ Network she also oversaw SearchEngineWatch.com.

On behalf of the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, I’d like to congratulate you on being named as one of the 2009 Women of Influence in Silicon Valley. You and 99 other outstanding women will be featured in our Women of Influence special supplement in the March 6th issue of the Business Journal.

You were nominated by your peers and selected by our Women of Influence judges, MetricStream CEO Shellye Archambeau; 1stAct Silicon Valley CEO Connie Martinez; Ysabel Duron, Latinas Contra Cancer Founder and Executive Director; and Wendy Beecham, CEO of Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Executives.

On behalf of our title sponsor El Camino Hospital, partner sponsor AT&T and everyone at the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, congratulations once again on your selection as one of the 2009 Women of Influence in Silicon Valley.

In addition to being featured in our publication, I would like to invite you to be my guest at a private reception and awards dinner that we will be hosting for you and the other Women of Influence on March 18th at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose.
You will also be included in the Women of Influence publication.

Your name:
Susan Bratton

Your title and your company’s full name:
CEO
Personal Life Media, Inc.

Boards on which you sit:

• ZEDO, Inc.
• Jingle Networks 1-800-FREE-411
• Powered, Inc.
• Collarity, Inc.
• NewsForce, Inc.
• Merchant Circle, Inc.
• ad:tech Conferences, dmg World Media
• Silicon Valley American Marketing Association

Organizations for which you volunteer:

• Vice Chairman, Association for Downloadable Media

First job:
Moped Sales in Vineland, New Jersey, 1974

Worst job:
Mailblocks – My beloved CEO unexpectedly passed away.

Business hero:
Bert Decker, founder of Decker Communications and Author of “You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard” because he taught me to speak with confidence and influence, which profoundly changed my life.

Proudest achievement:
Consistently producing more than 100 episodes of my weekly online audio show (podcast) “DishyMix: Success Secrets from Famous Media and Internet Executives.” Voted #1 Best Social Media Podcast by TopRank.

Biggest challenge in the workplace:
I’m a glutton for opportunity, so I take on too much work.

What got you where you are today:
“Tenacity,” which is the word that’s been on my vanity license place for more than 25 years.

Describe a goal you hope to accomplish in the next five years.
Create an insanely profitable business for my family, employees and for our team of “experts,” that powerfully enriches the lives of the people who enjoy our content.
———————

I was introduced to TimeBridge by my clever friend, Mark Michael Lewis, host of the “Money, Mission and Meaning” show. (he’s @TheThriveCoach on Twitter)

With TimeBridge, you can send up to 5 proposed meeting times to as many recipients as you want and everyone can see your preferred times amongst the selection and respond back with their availability. It helps converge groups around a single, best meeting time easily.

I’ve integrated the ap into my Apple Calendar and now propose meetings from a toolbar. I really like this ap, but be careful. It will prompt you to send an invite to everyone in your address book. If you don’t want to do that, you can still use it effortlessly and none of your recipients even have to register.

It’s a naturally viral ap and I think the company has done a great job with this utilitarian feature. I give TimeBridge two thumbs up.

Listen to Mark’s show here.

Money, Mission and Meaning: Passion at Work, Purpose at Play

Hi Susan,

Thanks for the great interview with Dacher!

I sincerely appreciate what you are doing to help humanity evolve our consciousness through everything at Personal Life Media.

Since Dacher’s work is about emotion I thought he may be interested in Reactr.

I’ve added his YouTube video and your first interview with him to Reactr.

The goal of our work with Reactr is to raise consciousness, on a global level,
through an awareness of emotion and it’s effects.

I feel that your goals are similar and appreciate your support.

Thank you very much,
David Levesque
President
David at WordofMobile dot com
www.WordofMobile.com
Word of Mobile…it gets around!

Dacher Keltner, Born to Be Good, Your Jen Ratio and Cro-Magnon CEO’s

Reactr is about sharing how you really feel about your favorite online video and audio.
And sharing your reactions with your friends.

Works with any YouTube video!
Watch the video to learn how.

SUPER INFLUENCERS LISTEN TO PODCASTS

Per Universal McCann’s latest global research “Next Thing Now,” the new “super influencers” index very highly against all active Internet users and are most likely to:

• Upload video clips
• Subscribe to an RSS Feed
• Start their own blog
• Download a podcast
• Upload photos to photo-sharing sites

Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners.com and author of the new book, “Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions” answered DishyMix listener questions about trust marks, integrating Web 2.0 elements into landing pages, balance education and sales offers, optimizing SEO and PPC, social proof, most effective offers, the value of audio and video, testing wild card ideas in A/B or Multivariate tests and what he’s seen as the most counter-intuitive positive changes he’s implemented on client’s pages.

Full of experience, depth of knowledge and real-world experience with a soupcon of rational logic, Tim endeavors to answer all these insightful questions.

Tune in to learn all about landing pages, the math of tuning, tuning methods and creating your action plan to take your main site, micro site or stand-along (squeeze) pages to another order of conversion.

Tim is giving me two autographed copies of Landing Page Optimization to give to DishyMix listeners. Just join the DishyMix Facebook Fan Club http://dishymixfan.com and post your desire. We’ll pick our favorites and send you a free copy!

Tim Ash of SiteTuners on Landing Page Optimization and Cultivation of the Complete Person

I learned about Jeff Jarvis’ new video book promotion on Daisy Whitney’s “New Media Minute” weekly vidcast.

Instead of purchasing the new book from Jeff, “What Would Google Do?,” Amazon is offering a 15-minute video synopsis from Jeff for $9.99.

Media Bistro has a great write up of the publisher/author revenue splits on vBooks.
Computer World says six trends are conspiring to drive electronic books into the mainstream.

Personally, I think it’s a brilliant use of video. These days, everyone is an author. Tiering online video promotion and distribution just makes sense. Create promotional trailers and distribute them on YouTube, Google Video and myriad sites via TubeMogul. Then offer a vBook on Amazon for the meat of the content. And continue to offer the tangible product to that smaller group who want to read your book from cover to cover.

You don’t have time to read all the great books that are out there anymore, do you? A vBook promotion will allow you to consume more content without the tree-killing of book production and the fossil-fuel guzzling UPS delivery of said book. The best part of digital distriubtion – it’s immediate fulfillment.

Cliff Notes, Executive Book Summaries, CEO Reads and the like have always been hugely successful. That’s why we produce a podcast, called “Book Digest” with Matthew Scott. Download it to your iPod, iPhone or stream it right from our site. It’s free.

Book Digest: Summarizing Business Books For Busy Business Leaders in Eight Minutes

Episode 6: Bill Treasurer, Courage Goes To Work

Episode 5: Paul Arden, Whatever You Think Think The Opposite

Episode 4: Dennis Perkins, Leading At The Edge: Leadership Lessons of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition

Episode 3: Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce

Episode 2: Paul B. Brown & Alison Davis, Your Attention Please:How to Appeal to Today’s Distracted Audiences

Episode 1: Tim Berry, The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan-Simplified Planning Process

Jim Sterne, is the producer of the international eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits and is the Founding President and current Chairman of the Web Analytics Association.

I interviewed him on DishyMix and here’s his advice about who you should follow if you want to learn more about Web Analytics.

Click below to listen to the whole show as he also answers listener’s questions on web analytics.

Susan Bratton: Jim, you say the two of the gods of the web intelligence industry are Eric Peterson and Avinash Kaushik.

Jim Sterne: Yes, they’re gods for two reasons.  One, they’ve actually done the work. Avinash did web analytics for Intuit, Eric did web analytics for a multiple web analytics vendors.  So, they actually are in the guts of it and then they wrote books.  These guys continue to put out stuff about how to make it happen, technically from a business perspective, from a people, process technology perspective, but then they’ve done something far beyond that, they’ve been focused on the online community.  So, Avinash has an astonishing blog at kaushik.net and if you can’t spell it, it’s Occam’s Razor, and/or just actually, just Google “Avinash.”  He’s that popular.  He’s brilliant at the long blog post and lots of comments and really thoughtful and you could read if you just read all of his blogposts, you would be set to manage web analytics.

Jim Sterne: Eric got into the nuts and bolts, and if you read all of his stuff, you understand all the technology and how to make it actually work.  Oh, by the way, also the philosophy, Oh, by the way, also the business side, and then he did the web community.  So, Eric Peterson created the Web Analytics Wednesday, which is a distributed meet up, one Wednesday a month, anybody who wants to can put on a WAW, Web Analytics Wednesday event at a bar.

Jim Sterne: I should identify Eric at webanalyticsdemystified.com. Click on community.  There is the list of the upcoming social meetings of web analysts around the world. And so, that’s brilliant, and the biggest ones of course happen in conjunction with the eMetrics summits where we’re happy to work together him on that.

Jim Sterne: The other thing he did is he created a Yahoo! Group.  It’s the Yahoo! Web Analytics Forum, which is now moderated by the Web Analytics Association. Eric kind of ceded it to us to manage.  He’s still an active moderator. It is a very active discussion forum, it is people who are brand new to it, how do I get started.  People been in it a long time, “I have this technical issue.”  People had been in it a long time, “I have this philosophical issue.”  There’s probably 10 or 12 posts a day and it is strictly moderated, in other words, there are a team of moderators who read everything before it gets posted.  This is good solid stuff.

Jim Sterne: So, between Eric and Avinash…

Susan Bratton: …you can learn so much. And joining the WAA is another inexpensive way to connect with the leaders of Web Analytics by joining that community. It costs$199 a year to join.

Jim Sterne on eMetrics, Must-Have KPI’s and Cocktail Parties of the Future

My friends Scot McLernon and Doug Weaver produce a series of training programs for sales people in the digital media world. They are the best at what they do and there’s a training session coming to San Jose in April.

If you need to motivate your top sales people, investing in training is the best way to do it. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Check it out.

Our free weekly show featuring downtempo inde music that’s perfect for late night romance or chilling while at your computer has been featured by a microphone company for the quality of the host’s intro sound.

If you love the music in trendy hotel lobbies but have no idea about the world of electronica, this is a curated 30 minute show you’ll love.

Music For Midnight: Downtempo | TripHop | Ambient | Chill Out | Lounge | Independent Electronica

Home : News : Press Releases : TOP PODCASTER SELECTS AUDIO-TECHNICA AT2020 USB CARDIOID CONDENSER MICROPHONE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TOP PODCASTER SELECTS AUDIO-TECHNICA AT2020 USB CARDIOID CONDENSER MICROPHONE

Stow, OH 02-09-2009 – One of iTunes’ top-rated podcasts is Music for Midnight (www.music4midnight.com), produced weekly by Ohio-based music aficionado Austin Beeman. The show regularly ranks in the top 10 music podcasts and top 50 overall. Music for Midnight is a half-hour showcase of independent and non-mainstream downtempo electronica, soft rock and jazz, distributed through the San Francisco-based Personal Life Media network (www.personallifemedia.com). Beeman relies heavily on his AT2020 USB Cardioid Condenser Microphone from Audio-Technica, a leading innovator in transducer technology for over 45 years.

“I use the 2020 USB to record my own voice, which gives the lead-in at the top of every show,” stated Beeman. “I have no formal training in broadcasting, so I really needed something that would make my voice sound great, and the 2020 USB did that for me. I had experimented with a couple of other microphones from other companies, but it always had that ‘basement’ feel! I needed something that would provide professional quality sound and make it sound like a studio, even though I’m recording it in front of my computer.”

Beeman plugs the AT2020 USB directly into his laptop’s USB port, and using an online program called Propaganda, he creates MP3s, which are uploaded to his personalized media page and distributed on the web as a podcast.

“I don’t use any effects or anything to enhance voice,” stated Beeman. “The signal chain is simple as can be. The 2020 USB is able to take my voice and give it a wonderful broadcast quality, without me having any knowledge of how to operate complicated gear or software. It’s just plug and play.”

To Beeman, the independent nature of his show is very important: “Since I have a lot of independent music featured on my show, and a lot of music that’s released on the Internet, there’s a lot of do-it-yourself philosophy, from the artists to my broadcast to the show’s distribution. The AT2020 USB lets me stay true to the show’s independent nature while still creating a professional product.”

For more details on the AT2020 USB, please visit www.audio-technica.com.

Celebrating over 45 years of audio excellence worldwide, Audio-Technica is a leading innovator in transducer technology, renowned for the design and manufacture of microphones, wireless microphones, headphones, mixers, and electronics for the audio industry.

—For more information on the complete range of Audio-Technica products, contact Karen Emerson, Audio-Technica U.S., Inc., 1221 Commerce Drive, Stow, OH 44224. Tel: (330) 686-2600; Fax: (330) 688-3752; Web: www.audio-technica.com