my boss is a noob

How do people find your business online?

2011-12-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

Stop guessing and ask how people find your business online. Ask your target demographic how they would find you online. You might think you know the words or phrases people use to find you online, but what if you are wrong? What if there are a bunch of words you are missing which your competition isn't? What if they are getting the clicks and you are not?

Search from a business perspective is all about chasing clicks. Trying to be visible when your target demographic searches for the services you offer online. If you are not visible, meaning in the first 4 search hits, then it is unlikely anyone will click on your website and use your services.

My advice is to print off a card like in the image. Ask two questions from each of your target demographic.

1. How would you find our business, products or service in search?

2. First search result did not give you any good options, how would you refine your search?

ask how people find your business online?

The refine search is really important because often the initial search people make is too broad from a search engine's perspective. If you are searching for a dry cleaning business you don't care about all the businesses in the world. Just those in your isolated geographic area, so the refine search could mean adding a geographic marker such as "city name or postal code".

Getting people to write down things is also important because it will make people think and give you a hard copy to transfer into your spreadsheet where you are keeping track of this information.

This is step one of keyword research which for now we are defining as the process of discovering how people find your business online.

Ivan

I spelled the company name wrong

2011-07-20T22:41:00.000-06:00

When you get an email back about a job you applied for make sure you triple proof read the company name before responding. There is no good way to recover from the name of a company wrong. I suppose I should take comfort in the fact I am likely not the only person in the world who has made that mistake. It is hard for my fingers to keep up with my brain. It is natural that a few words would get missed here and there. Don't really know why people make such a big deal about spelling. I blame msn, twitter and sms.

I would sue but I dislike talking to lawyers. It costs too much money and means listening to lawyers talk which makes me want to run into a wall.

Do you laugh at terms of service on websites? I do because how can anyone without a law degree understanding what is being said?

why would RIM market the blackberry as a gaming and entertainment device?

2011-07-18T21:43:00.000-06:00

the playbook is kind of like being the guy in the adult film industry with the smallest feet. there is nothing worse than having small feet around people with big feet. the bigger the feat, the more area to stink. size does matter, at least in the tablet wars. What happens if you are on a plane and the guy next to you has a bigger tablet? You get a terrorist is what happens or at least that is what they call it you on the news as in a fit of smaller tablet madness you opened the emergency exit door and leaped to your doom or freedom depending on what comes next.

It could happen. People have done crazier things. If you don't believe me, it is called reality TV and people holding spiders. You want to know why you live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada which is just too frickon cold? Smaller spiders and very little cockroaches. Apparently it can survive a nuclear winter, just not a Canadian one. I am that scare of spiders. It is why I will never, ever, ever, ever go to Australia. They have more fauna of spiders than any other place in the world. I don't know what fauna means but it sounds like a lot.

Yes I am afraid of the jumping spider. What were we talking about?

The playbook which I am too insecure to use because of the phalical implications of having the smallest tablet. Not to mention people with big feat have big hands and big hands don't like little tablets.

What is your feeling on size and the tablet wars?

Sadly this isn't my only problem with the playbook. I hated and I mean, I hated the way they marketed the playbook as a gaming and entertainment platform.

Think about it for a second.

Blackberry really was the tool for business people.   Not everybody wants to be distracted by games and other stuff that just waste time. My boss would of never got me a tablet that allowed me to play games. It would of been the first thing he would of used to say not a chance. It was like blackberry stopped understanding it's core market.

If I am a boss, I want a tablet where I can turn off games, entertainment and anything else that isn't work related. I think a table is something that could increase productivity in certain areas.

With tools like square.com making it really easy to accept payments, paypal, facebook credits, amazon and google checkout you almost don't even need a cash registrar. Everything can be done with qr-codes and the camera on the tablet. We haven't even touched the surface in regards to what is possible with this. In time the product will cash itself out.

The point being there is a real need for something in the tablet market that was only really focused on business people.   People who are trying to pay the bills, feed their kids, traveling the globe. Those of us who don't want to play games because life is exciting enough.

Advertisers want you to spend your life online. Happiness lives is spending less time online. Apple does games great and is fantastic as a night time entertainment device. If I ever become a vampire, I am going to get myself a bunch of glossy screen tablets.

It is so maddening knowing that none of the tablets are even remotely mobile. You can use them in the sun without frying your eyes. At night it is fantastic. The curse of the glossy screen is you need perfect light.

Get rid of the glossy screen.

The next thing you got to do is deal with all the roaming charges. When I am paying someone a ton of money to be on a road trip I don't need them to worry about little sms cards or calling cards. If you are big enough to compete with the big boys then you are big enough to make miracles happen by making your lawyers figure it out with the phone giants.

If you can reduce the roaming charges for business even a little, that goes a long way to justifying the cost of a tablet.

It should sync and be able to mimic a subset of a company database that will use the internet to update using encrypted data to do. It would also have an admin over ride because your contacts are your business.   Data in any form is extremely valuable to most businesses and not something that should be shared without reservation.

That database should autosync to google maps where I can just drag my contacts onto a map. Click print directions, create trip report and send to gps or gps application. I actually prefer the Avis- Garmen GPS. The printed directions should really highlight how to get from airport to first hotel because GPS's never work in or around airports or boston.

I am done. My rant is over. I could go on, but you get the point. RIM wants to be a gaming platform and not tablet for the life of a business person which is really what everyone was hoping for.

people are fickle and prone to moments of madness online

2011-07-18T16:35:00.000-06:00

I am a thinker. When I do stuff, my mind is always counting the steps it takes to accomplish an action to see if the process is efficient. Each extra step reduces the probability that a person will be able to accomplish a desired action. Think of each step as reducing the chances of success by 50%. If n is the number of steps then the formula for probability of success would be .50^n. The lower number of steps required to accomplish a task, the higher the probability that a person will have success in completing that task.

In terms of the web the number steps it takes to accomplish each of action is extremely important. People are fickle and prone to moments of madness online. I know from personal experience there are moments when I go to a site, ready to try it out, only to look at the long sign in form and quickly click away. Too many steps which reduces the probability I am going to get everything right. This usually means having to deal with an ambiguous error message which takes a degree in computer engineering to figure out. My time and sanity is valuable to me and few websites are worth risking a moment of internet induced rage.

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only person that looks at the world this way. Do other people see the inefficient nature of too many steps to accomplish a task? What kind of things do you wish were easier? I wish computers could turn on and off with a single switch. No hibernate, no sleep. On and off like a light no waiting for crap to load.

not having a job is lonely

2011-07-17T13:04:00.000-06:00

It is hard not to feel ashamed when you don't have a job. The times in my life when I have been unemployed I have tended to avoid interacting with people who knew me well because of the question what do you do for work. You feel like such a loser because you haven't been able to find work. If you can't find a job there must be something wrong with you. In many ways I feel exactly what the propoganda tells me to. I am a worthless, nobody if I am not gainfully employed.

If you don't have a job according to a lot of people in our society you are a lazy, drug addict who is not allowed to have an opinion on anything. This of course begs the question how does one without a job afford an expensive drug habit? Not that logic matters when it comes to words that do cause more damage than sticks and stones.

I don't go out or even go on dates when I don't have a job. I mostly stay at home trying to find work because outside lives the dreaded question, always on people's lips, waiting for me to walk around the corner.

It is why I say not having a job is lonely.

I created this fun little video to highlight how in a digital world you could say or do almost anything on a cover letter and not get noticed because of the sheer number of applications. It is great that it is easy to apply for jobs online but it is also bad as ease of use drastically increases the competition for each job opening.

why is harder to apply for jobs you want than those you don't?

2011-07-13T17:18:00.000-06:00

It is easy to apply for jobs I don't want. It is much harder to apply for jobs I do want. It doesn't have anything to do with the job itself, as much it has to do with the low statistical probability that I might get the job. If I think a job is good then it is likely other people think the job is good. This means lots of resumes for the job resulting in a very low statistical probability that I will get hired. It is even unlikely the company would have enough time to read all the cover letters and resumes. I could spend a few hours creating the perfect cover letter and never have anyone read it.

Even worse would be the disappointment that would follow if I didn't get the job. Do I want to deal with that? What affect will it have on my confidence? Lots of little questions that deal mostly with my personal self doubt. I don't know if that is normal, other than it is normal for me. When I see something I want and don't get it, I am disappointed. I don't much like feeling that way in life.

Most times I am able to get past all the silliness within my brain and apply for the job. In order to more effectively deal with the disappointment I try to forget all about the jobs I want after I apply for them. That way if they call or email me it is a happy surprise. Less disappointment that way.

I am a social carpenter

How about you? Do you find it harder to apply for jobs you want?

There is more knowledge in failure than success.

2011-07-11T21:29:00.003-06:00

I can't afford to go back to school. I didn't really take advantage of the opportunity sports gave me. On the basketball court was really the only place things made any sense growing up. Off the basketball court I was a mess for various reasons I care not to get into here. Normal stuff that every person goes through as they try to figure out who they are. I never really knew who I was off the court or who I wanted to be.

At first I wanted to be a teacher. My old ball coach was a teacher and I was a pretty good basketball coach after my playing days were past me. Problem was every kid I met seemed hopped up on redbull and xbox. kids had become really insecure, lost in this idea that image is everything, which just perpetrates the eye for an eye violence that never ends.   Something I could show throughout history over and over again and compare it to the actions of the students in the hallways. Just because parents can't see past their own hate doesn't mean kids should be cursed with the same ignorance.

Maybe it hearing about the low pay. Maybe I didn't enjoy learning how to become a teacher as much as I had thought I would. A million little reasons leading to the same conclusion. I wasn't going to be a teacher.

Naturally, after deciding teaching was no longer my thing, I decided I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted my life to matter. Sadly I was better at flirting with the 60 year chem professor than putting the time needed studying in the library. I was in the gym or the gym. Shooting hoops and hitting the weights. I was in school to play sports and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

I even tried to be a sailor. Was a pretty good one back in the day. Always did well in the whole action adventure things.   I need to be challenged. I loved that about the NAVY. In another life I would never of gotten out of the NAVY. Sometimes I wonder if I should just give my 40-60 years to the armed forces and get out with enough money to travel from 60-80.

It is hard to know what you want to do with your life. A lot of times you don't figure it out till later in life when you can't afford to go back to school.

What you can do is learn to google. Find a few sites, how to videos and learn. I started with photoshop and moved on to dreamweaver after that. I am working on learning html5 and javascript currently. When I get finished learning those I am going to try to tackle PHP. Easy to say, hard to do with any in depth understanding. A lot of times I get things wrong because I don't know what I need to know to google it. You mostly just learn by getting stuff wrong and then once in awhile you get something right. Kind of like golf and chasing the illusive perfect shot.

I might even try to build websites for people if I can't find a job I like. Don't really want to because there is a lot of paperwork in web design. Legal crap which I really don't want to deal with. It is a difficult industry to give accurate information to clients on when something will be ready. Most people don't know the right questions to ask so they can protect themselves.

I enjoy learning to code. It is a challenge. I would prefer to keep that a hobby for now. I really want to work for a company that does something worthwhile or interesting. Even though I lack any formal training, I have had an educational life in many unexpected ways. I have failed and thus I have learned how to get up over and over again.   There is more knowledge in failure than success.

What have you wanted to be on the wave called life? What type of things changed your path?

Keep on learning even when you can't believe in yourself.

2011-07-05T20:23:00.000-06:00

ode to power

A man is not a man without a job. I am not trying to be sexist with that statement, merely honest about not having a clue about women. You want to know how a woman feels without a job ask a woman, don't ask a man. Men sadly are made to be stupid by god, evolution or both.

I am not whole without a job. I am not whole with one either. Life takes something from you. When I played basketball we always talked about leaving it on the floor. You only get so many opportunities to be brilliant don't let this one pass you by. You don't remember the wins or the games you scored 30 points, you just remember the moments you didn't give it your all.

When I think about what type of job I want, it is something that makes me think. Something that challenges me everyday to learn something new. Things I know now which I wish I knew back then.

It does not mean it is not possible to change one's fate? Just improbable, like maybe I am. If you look at how many steps had to go right for me to be here, right now, typing this blog post. I can live with improbable.

It was improbable that I would go from being a guy who tried to reformat his hard drive by deleting random files, nearly destroying the computer, to installing and training engineers on software for power plants. Life is never what you expect it to be. It is often deaf to our plans. I dislike capital letters and spellcheckers that don't know hastags or the names of famous people. When will the web be stupid enough for me.

They call me Ivan, meaning I call myself Ivan. Ivan "connect the dots" Mahoney. A part of a larger mind would be the way I would describe Ivan. He is the storyteller that lives inside me trying to imagine a way I might by pass the stars completely and just take a nap on the moon.

The picture is the child of this photoshop tutorial.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/shape-cluster/

The story comes from my life.

Welcome to unemployed insanity.

Medieval helpdesk with English subtitles

2008-11-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

This is better help than most companies provide....