What classes should I take for Internet success?

A reader wrote to ask, “Which classes should my high school and college age children be taking to get an advantage in today’s Internet intensive business world? I know that good computer skills are critical for many jobs.” My answer may surprise you as it did her.

If you want to have an edge over your coworkers, you should be taking every English class you can find. The best jobs with the best benefits are going to individuals who can communicate correctly. The writing skills we learn are critical to many other parts of our lives. If you can write clearly, the chances are that you can think problems through from different views. This is a core skill for most high paid occupations.

With the ability to write and speak clearly you will approach more situations with confidence. The feeling that you can solve a problem is the first step in solving it. Understanding what someone is saying to you is critical to your ability to work in a team effectively and other people will turn to you for help because you will be able to find more solutions. These are the traits shared by supervisors, managers, and team leaders.

While many of our tasks are completed alone, much of our day is spent in a team environment. Your ability to write clear messages or talk well in small groups will improve your team’s results and bring you to the attention of the top echelon decision makers. These people know that clear communication skills are rarely found in younger employees and watch carefully for the few bright sparks that are capable of handling more responsibilities. This is the track to faster promotions with higher pay.

As we can tell from SAT scores and the number of remedial English classes offered by colleges, most people get through high school with the bare minimum training available to them. In general, English classes are something that we suffer through instead of realizing that our language skills will be critical to our employment possibilities. By the time we do realize why someone else was promoted ahead of us, there is a new crop of younger employees competing for the better jobs.

These skills will also help you in your computer classes. You will understand when you are told that web pages get better SEO ranking when written with proper grammar. Your conversion rates will also improve when you can write effective sales copy. As a programmer, you will be able to utilize the higher languages with fewer mistakes and less time spent debugging. All of these are high paid skills in today’s job marketplace.

The ability to write and speak well will determine your lifetime earnings. If you want to make more money, enjoy more recreation, have better toys, and enjoy what you do, get back to school and take the English classes you have missed. If reading is not a part of your day, your next promotion will go to the person who has made it part of theirs.

Mike Myklin is an author, lecturer, and e-business owner who specializes in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. You can write to him at mike@myklin.com. We archive these articles at www.myklin.com.

Social Networking by Internet

Unless you are in college, it is unlikely you have met the social networking website Facebook yet. According to a recent Time® magazine article, it is only just less popular than Google for the amount traffic it receives.

Social networking sites have the most explosive growth of any Internet sites. Driven by young people who use the services to maintain contact with their friends, they can have thousands of visitors an hour using mostly free services.

Facebook requires you to register an email address connected with a college, university or some high schools. Some Oklahoma institutions including Carl Albert State College are now included in their network. Facebook requires the institutions to register in an attempt to create a safer environment for members. Other online networking sites have had many warnings issued about them for their open approach to membership.

Members can upload a lot of information about themselves at all the websites. Interest groups and location finders are common along with the chat rooms and message boards. The whole purpose is to have members connecting easily with people from down the road and around the world. Once you are in the network, it is also easy to add your current information when you move to a new area. CASC students who were already Facebook members from other places could quickly add their existing member information to the CASC network.

What may not be as obvious is the opportunity to reach these groups as an advertiser. All the websites accept advertising. If your product is youth oriented this can be a lucrative area for you to spend some advertising dollars. Not all companies compete in the same places and there may be hidden opportunities for yours.

In the same way, Google is not the only search engine. There are millions of searchers using specialty search services where your pay per click costs can still be in the five to ten cent range. That can mean true advertising values when compared with dollars per click in the crowded pages of Google. This becomes particularly important when you compare the demographics of users. If you sell to twenty year olds, why advertise where the forty-five year olds congregate?

Internet marketing is about finding your edge in an increasingly complex medium. There are many ways to use it to your advantage and to find customers your competition does not serve.
Mike Myklin is an author, lecturer, and e-business owner who specializes in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. This article is archived at www.myklin.com.

Native American Elder Care - Redbird Ranch

As our population grows older we are finding the weaknesses in the systems that we thought would be caring for our elderly. A large part of the problem is that there is little effort being given to caring for elderly in a culturally appropriate way.

I ran into this problem several years ago when I was trying to help a friend find a long term care facility for her father. He had been a farmer all his long life, living on a remote farm with few neighbors within 5 miles of his home. Virtually all the facilities she could find were in an urban setting with all the city noises that come along with this location. The staff had no experience with what he had been doing and little interest in what his life's goal's had been.

We finally found a small facility who's residents shared some of his experiences and understood his need for solitude as well as social activities. A man who had sunk into himself at the prospect of living in the crowded city environment became alert and much more like his normal self.

This week I found an organization who is trying to address these issues themselves. They have started the process of creating suitable space for Native American elderly and I think just as important, formalized a model for others who want to do the same thing. Here's a quote from their website,

"Redbird Ranch will be a four to six unit transitional and elder housing facility, in Ventura or Los Angeles County. Redbird Ranch will provide a supportive and sensitive atmosphere, offering peace and dignity to elders and their families, and hope for those facing times of personal crisis and change.

Many people face their own senior years without adequate means to care for themselves. Others are given a responsibility they are not prepared for when elders in their family need care. Redbird wants to approach this issue on a very small scale compared to the scope of the problem, with a four to six unit housing complex for the elderly and their care-giving families."

I encourage you to visit their site where you'll also find an intriguing book, The Wisdom Walkers, by writer Corina Roberts.