Your future office's address

Is this your "online office"?

           I don’t often spill the beans on this secret, but I am sort of a psychic. It’s true. I have the ability to predict to most any professional their future office.

            I can see yours now. It’s white. There are pictures displayed along the middle of it. The background seems clean. I can read the listing address. It reads, “www.Google.com”.

            So maybe I’m not Nostradamus, but I was not lying either. The dynamics of the relationship between businesses and potential clients is changing rapidly and drastically. The modes for finding people and businesses are progressively relying more on internet search engines. As a result, businesses need to consider all the ways they are being represented, like an office for example.

            Consider everything that goes into an office. Professionals dedicate considerable time, money, and resources into their office.  They purchase offices in convenient locations with pretty views. They have it decorated in a manner that they believe best reflects them. They pay for a cleaning crew to keep it tidy. They staff people who will interact with both internal and external publics in the appropriate manner.  

            Consider this. There is a generation of people growing into potential clients that will never step foot in your office. The modes in which they have been groomed to research differ staunchly from generations of the past.

            This generation of people is capable of locating information faster and more easily than ever before. They expect results instantaneously. They get them, too. If they cannot achieve the results instantaneously then they find a quicker alternative. This generation of buyers largely will not conduct the due diligence of research beyond plugging a name or a phrase into Google and Facebook. So the issue is what your office looks like online.

            Imagine this. Someone out there unknown to you is ready to spend. Not only are they ready to spend, but they want to spend whatever it takes to get the job done. This could be the turning point for the firm. They walk up the stairs to your office. They open the door, and they get confused. They had the name spelled right, they went to the right place, but you are not there.

            Instead, there are pictures of a dozen different people on the walls. Your logo is not anywhere to be found. The receptionist does not speak the same language and cannot understand what the person wants. That potential client gets frustrated and leaves.

            This is the online office of many businesses. The problem for many professionals is that despite gorgeous and well run offices on top floors of expensive buildings, their online office does not show it.  Their online office is a collection of loosely affiliated terms and links that disable the client from finding them.

            The password to renovating your online office is S.E.O. "Search Engine Optimization" is an online business strategy with constantly growing importance. Web professionals everywhere are revising their current strategies as to best accommodate S.E.O.

            S.E.O. is a technologically complicated concept with very simple ramifications. It deals with the many variables search engines such as Google take into consideration when compiling its list of results. The key from a marketing stand point is obviously coming up high in the results. The key to that from a web stand point is taking every effort possible to ensuring that traffic, content, and activity relevant to you is actually being registered to you through keywords and phrases.

            There are many different ways to do that. Social media platforms have grown to become powerful S.E.O. tools. The amount of traffic and activity these sites generate enter into the search engines very favorably. It extends beyond social media though. Businesses need to be S.E.O. minded in everything they do within their social networks.

On behalf of Working Wonders:

“Armageddon for sushi lovers?”

            Sushi has become an American phenomenon. It continues to grow in popularity as consumers strive to incorporate healthy alternative food choices into their diets. Many sushi fanatics cite its natural qualities as supporting reasons for choosing it over other food types.

            Those natural qualities are being compromised by another phenomenon. This phenomenon is a frightening one, worthy of being used as scare tactics. Quite simply, it is actually scary.

Brace yourself to gasp. Ready? Scientists have discovered trash in the Pacific Ocean.

            Wait. Actually brace yourself this time. Ready? They discovered trash in the form of a singular mass roughly twice the size of the state of Texas. That’s right. A body of trash approximately the same size as the fictional asteroid threatening to destroy the Earth in the movie “Armageddon.” While it may not be Armageddon, it is not fiction either.

            You might have heard it recently described as “trash island” in the news. Realistically, it’s worse than an island. The enormous body of trash is a tight collection of tiny waste particles constantly roaming the Pacific gathering more mass. Through a process referred to as bioaccumulation, this body of mass is affecting the entire globe, and could be directly affecting you sushi lovers.

            As this body of mass moves around it passes through the homes of all kinds of fish and other ocean dwelling organisms. These organisms, fish, and birds often mistakenly try tasting the miniscule pieces of trash. The organisms do not have any sort of digestion systems that break down the matter any better than waste facilities, so the matter just gets processed like any other food. It becomes part of the organism.

            “As an example, say some plankton (very small animals at the bottom of the food chain) eat some of this plastic. Then, a hundred of these plankton are then eaten by a small fish, like a Sardine. Then a Mackerel eats 25 of these Sardines. Then a Tuna eats 10 of these Mackerels. Then you eat a Tuna. Well guess what, you just ate a bunch of plastic, just how much? 100 (plankton) x 25 (Sardines) x 10 (Mackerels) = 25,000 pieces ingested by 1 Tuna.” (The Chic Ecologist)

            As a result these fish are full of dangerous and often poisonous toxins. How many pieces of Tuna have you eaten recently? That is just one species.

            This is a real problem. It exists. It is double the size of Texas floating in the ocean right now. No, it might not be Armageddon. It might not be the end of the world. But what if sushi, or any other sea food, means the world to you.  What if you were one of the thousands of people out there dependent on seafood in one form or another in order to live. Define the word “world” as you know it.