Your Questions About Business Online Services Group

Jere answers:

According to the US Department of Labor (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos103.htm):

“Employment in this field is expected to grow faster than average. Job prospects should be very good; technicians with a strong background in medical coding will be in particularly high demand. Employment of medical records and health information technicians is expected to increase by 18 percent through 2016—faster than the average for all occupations—because of rapid growth in the number of medical tests, treatments, and procedures that will be increasingly scrutinized by health insurance companies, regulators, courts, and consumers. Also, technicians will be needed to enter patient information into computer databases to comply with Federal legislation mandating the use of electronic medical records.

New jobs are expected in offices of physicians as a result of increasing demand for detailed records, especially in large group practices. New jobs also are expected in home health care services, outpatient care centers, and nursing and residential care facilities. Although employment growth in hospitals will not keep pace with growth in other health care industries, many new jobs will, nevertheless, be created.”

That said, Pinnacle is not regionally accredited. If you prefer a regionally accredited school, Colorado Tech, AIU, and Capella all offer this degree online.

Jere answers:

Essentially you’re talking about private lessons. What you need to do is present yourself as a small business and have a few cards printed up (online, very cheap) and maybe a small website to direct people to.

Make sure you call the hotels before you visit and arrange an appointment – if you turn up and no one is there then you have missed half a day.

Jere answers:

Programming is not for everyone and I would not get too concerned about your lack of skills in that area. I can do some scripting and out of my co-workers I would say only 10%-15% can do any programming.

Here is a list of some common non-Programming jobs:
Computer Technician – Works on computer hardware at user location or in service center. (entry level IT Job)
Service Center Coordinator – Schedules the repair of user community computers, orders spare parts, schedules staff, establishes priorities, maintains loaner laptops and non-US laptops for travel outside of US.
Help Desk Staff – answer questions and resolve problems for the user community. (entry level IT Job – Tier 1 support)
Storage Administrator – in charge of mass storage servers and devices.
Network Administrator – Works on routers, switches, hubs, cables, load balancers and all the other hardware that handles LAN and WAN network traffic. Also, may be responsible for IP phone service.
Systems Administrator or Systems Engineer- Works with servers, laptops and desktop computers to keep them free of problems and secure the data they contain. Responsible for Security group creation and memberships, server patching, anti-virus protection updates, password changes and any automated mechanisms that make these changes. These positions may be divided into server and desktop teams. Tier 2 support.
Enterprise Administrator – Handles Enterprise support and design issues. Tier 3 support.
Active Directory Administrator – Designs and administers Active Directory infrastructure, AD policies, access permissions, roles, group policies, separation of duties.
Exchange and Messaging Administrator – maintains mail systems servers, other mail related devices and the company messaging infrastructure.
Backup Administrator – Maintains backup devices and determines backup strategies so data that was deleted accidentally or intentionally can be recovered. Design and control how and when data is backed up, where the backups are stored and how long the backups are retained. They will test to be sure backups are valid and usable.
Disaster Recovery Specialist – Plans for disaster events so the company data and infrastructure can be brought back online as quickly as possible after a fire, flood, earthquake, terrorism or other disaster event. Plans for failover of services to alternate locations, if the primary location is not available.
Database Administrator – Maintains the company databases which may include customer and sales records, billing information, inventory and other data.
Computing Security Specialist – A company’s biggest asset is its data and the Computing Security Specialist will work to try to keep that data protected from loss. They may be dealing with and defending against viruses, hoaxes, malware, keyloggers, phishing attacks, internal attacks and domestic and foreign intrusion. Develops monitoring and interception systems, filters and strategies and works with appropriate government agencies.
Ethical Hacker – performs intrusion and vulnerability testing of systems. Works with Computing Security to insure intrusion prevention systems are working correctly.
Corporate IT Acquisition Specialist – Works with acquired outside companies to establish migration into the corporate computing infrastructure.
Data Center Administrator – Maintains the data center facilities where the company’s servers and other devices reside. They are responsible for physical security and may review badge reader and camera information to be sure that only individuals with proper access are getting close to the company’s servers and other critical devices. Also, maintain backup power devices (UPS or generators).

In a small business the list of jobs above might be performed by one or two people doing all these jobs. In a large Enterprise environment this could be hundreds of people.

Best wishes!

Jere answers:

This boils down to “How do I market my web jewelry store”. High competition is common and should be handled by any good online marketing campaign.

COMPETING:
1. It’s often best to find the a market niche and not try to compete in the over-crowded main market.
If you deeply understand your UVP (Unique Value Proposition), as you must, you’ll be able to narrow your market down to exactly what you do better than others. Then redesign your site or landing/sales page to fine tune it to the thinking of your niche prospects. If nothing about your store is better than the competition, you’re in the wrong business.

2. Excellent market research is the key. Obviously, you succeed by giving people what they want. But do you understand EXACTLY what they want better than your competitors? If so, you can beat them.

3. Determine who your top 4 competitors are and thoroughly inspect their sites until you know how they are succeeding. Copy and improve on their best methods and avoid their worst. Same for their keywords.

ONLINE MARKETING – GENERAL:
There are over 1 Billion web pages online vying for the first 3 Google pages.
The Search Engine Marketing (SEM) process goes like this:
Your Unique Value Proposition
Write down your UVP
You must state it clearly, in writing, in a very few sentences and just a few seconds.
It must quickly and clearly answer these 2 questions in the minds of your prospects:
1. “Why should I buy your product or service, (what’s in it for me) how will it solve my problem?”
2. “Why should I buy it from you and not your competition?”

Market Research (know your audience):
What is your best target market niche? Look for market niches, not full markets, to avoid competing with the big corporations. Which market niche is looking for your solution to their problem?
What are their problems, needs, fears, desires, frustrations?
What are they thinking?
What key phrases will they use in the search engines?

Competitor research:
Who are your most successful competitors?
What are they doing right that you should emulate?
What are they doing wrong that you should avoid?
What key phrases are they using?
What are their UVPs?
Which market niche(s) has/have the best fit to your UVP and also the fewest competitors?

Key phrase research:
Make a starting keywords list from your own experience, from friend’s suggestions and your research.
Using a good keywords tool:
Discover new key phrases derived from your list
Analyze your key phrases. Rank them according to the most searches per month Vs fewest competitors.
Use key phrases from 1 up to 4 words long (ignore “stop words, like “the”, “a”, “of”, etc.).Group them according to similarity.

Design your site with a separate landing/sales page for each keyword group. This gets each market niche member to the perfect page for their exact need. Don’t use your home page as your selling page.

Put your best 1 or 2 key phrases in the lading/sales page’s file name (e.g. “green-widgets.html”), in the page title, in keywords and description metatags (Google ignores metatags, other search engines may not), in only one H1 tag, in the anchor text of your links, in your navigation, in one or more H2 and h3 tags, in the alt tags of images, etc.

Also use your keys in body text. Keep your content readable by both humans and search engine bots. Don’t overdo the percentages of keywords Vs other content. Avoid pages that seem “keyword stuffed” or don’t read naturally.

Don’t use images, Flash or video instead of text, for your UVP. It’s fine to use those to support your UVP further down the page – only after the prospects read your UVP text.

Keep all distractions off your landing/sales pages. Those pages must only lead your prospect smoothly through your sales process and to actions you want. Along the way, reinforce your UVP by always showing the benefits of moving farther along in your sales process. Follow the best practices expressed on the MarketingExperiments.com web site. Check out their free webinars every other Wednesday.

If you can afford the typical $30 a day for a Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click campaign and know how, go ahead. Otherwise, only use PPC to run cheap, quick market analysis runs.

Use free Google services, like “Google Webmaster Tools” and “Google Analytics”

Subscribe to the best online marketing blog feeds and use the best online marketing forums.

Avoid “Guru-of-the-month” scams, where “guru” groups sell each other’s latest “get rich quick online” products to their sucker lists.

There are special considerations if you are marketing a blog:
You’ll need an SEO plugin. If you use the superior WordPress as your blogging tool, there are good SEO plugins. Do a Google search to find the best blog directories. There are social bookmarking plugins for WordPress.

Hoped this helped…
_jim coe

Jere answers:

I am not sure what, if any, nationality specific restrictions are imposed on the acquisition of a Visa to Russia. For U.S. Citizens, tickets are not necessary prior to the obtaining of a Visa… At least not for Business Visas; perhaps not for Tourist Visas either. Keep in mind that the designation of the Visa (tourist or business can be irrelevant to the purpose of the trip — eg. You do not need to have business activity planned in Russia to obtain a business visa; the designations are relevant to other elements of your plans — how long you plan to stay, how many times you would like to enter, etc.). You do need officialy residency arrangements before obtaining a Visa, but these are generally provided by agencies… Www.waytorussia.com provides good, detailed, information. Be aware, though, that some of the information on the site is out of date — eg. Some information regarding Visa registration; but they also have a new section on this issue that is NOT out of date, and that supercedes the old sections. The sections on obtaining Visas seem to be at laregely quite informative; I am not sure if all details are up to date. With regard to train tickets, I have been looking for some as well! It seems that Beijing-Moscow is more expensive than Moscow-Beijing. I suggest taking a look at this site: http://www.seat61.com/Trans-Siberian.htm
This was one of the most informative starting points that I found. One of the places that you can purchase tickets from for the China-Russia trip is CITS:
according to site:
You can book trains from Beijing to Moscow, Irkutsk or Ulan Bator by emailing support-en@cits.com.cn (you can check details on the CITS website, www.cits.net) or by calling CITS on + 86 10 6512 0507 or + 86 10 6512 0503).
I have sent the office e-mail, and the office was responsive. I have not yet booked tickets, but was given the opportunity. I am not sure of current availability, as the international route, it is said, sells out in advance often. You should heed the note regarding Summer Olympics-related closures. I do not believe Beijing-Moscow is available this year June-September. But, in May it is. You can also purchase through Russian travel agencies… WayToRussia (same site, as used above) uses several agencies — I have tried Svezhy Veter, and they are responsive. Again, I have not yet made the decision to actually book tickets. WayToRussia, by the way, provides an interface to a Visa support agency, which I have used. You can find Visa support agencies online as well… And you can get a sense of their reputeability. I do have the sense that the one WayToRussia uses is reputable (intelservice). You could also purchase Trans-Siberian tickets through other agencies… I believe Western ones may come to be more expensive, though, perhaps, their services appear or are more strongly associated with the context of group tours.
To add, $600.00USD does seem to approximately represent the cost of the Beijing-Moscow train trip (I assume Trans-Mongolian route; there is also Trans-Manchurian… Which of course may be similarly priced) on Second(or First?)-Class sleeper cars (four beds in room). Http://www.cits.net/citsonlineWeb/online/homepage_EN/transportation/2008_inttrain.htm.
Trains 3/4 are the Trans-Mongolian BeijingRussia trains; Trains 19/20 are the Trans-Manchurian trains. One of the numbers in each pair corresponds to Eastbound route, the other to the Westbound route (I believe the 3 is the Westbound in the first case).