Web Worker Daily

Personal branding reflects how you represent yourself in the digital world from both a personal and business view. I believe that in this social media age everyone — from high school graduates to established professionals — needs to pay attention to his or her personal brand. Here are some tips for pumping up your image and improving your branding online. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past four days, as far as my social network, email and IM contacts were concerned, I disappeared completely. No, I didn’t unplug all my devices or sit in the dark with my power cut off, or even have to exert any willpower. I simply took a trip, up beyond the range of my cell phone carrier’s data network, to northern Ontario’s cottage country. The cottage my family visits there is not only beyond cell phone range, it also has no cable, no satellite and no local dial-up service available.

It’s an anachronism, but a welcome one for a web worker looking for a true vacation. Not that I didn’t work. Because I love (some) work, so it doesn’t feel like an imposition when I bring it with me on vacation from time to time. And what better setting for getting some web work done than at a remote location surrounded by nature and devoid of any Internet access? Read the rest of this entry »

YouTube’s not just for posting silly videos of sleepwalking dogs and other embarrassing moments — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. You can use it to show off your expertise, share knowledge, market your products and connect with customers, colleagues and prospects.

Here are 34 ways to use YouTube (and other video hosting services) for business. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I shared some tips to help you get more out of Google Blog Search. I prefer Google Blog Search for vanity searches, where I want to see every mention across every blog talking about any of my various efforts. I generally use it as my starting point, but for some very broad topics, I just get too much noise and not enough relevancy. When that happens, I have three fallback search engines that allow me to filter out the less popular blogs and focus on ones with more authority.

Ask Blog Search Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a strange thing, but in times like these, when prospective clients have fewer dollars to spend and when there’s more competition in the marketplace due to higher unemployment rates, instinctive responses have a tendency to take over our business decisions.

Recently, it’s been much easier to work from a place of desperation, taking every opportunity that comes our way and doing every marketing tactic imaginable to maintain a contracting sales pipeline. Suddenly, the “fight or flight” reaction becomes almost routine, an up and down roller coaster ride that started as an attempt to keep our businesses afloat during these tough times. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently wrote about why I think it’s more important to spend time creating great content instead of focusing on developing your personal brand. It even inspired reader Jordan Curzon to get back in the habit of regularly blogging, and in his post, he touched on an important point. Every blog post doesn’t need to solve some tough technology problem or cover breaking news. People tend to make blogging much harder than it needs to be.

Here are a few ideas for people who want to blog more frequently, but who sometimes have a hard time coming up with ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

When I started working remotely, I had the nice — if misguided — idea that I’d spend my days working away in the home office with a pot of tea at my elbow. But in the last couple of weeks I’ve done more work out of my office than in. In fact, I’m writing this post on a public bus, in the dark, at 8.40pm.

I know I’m not the only one who has times like this. Of course, working quite literally on the road has some serious limitations, and I’m not just talking about technicalities like power supplies and web access (and potholes). It can be extremely difficult to focus if you’re in a public or unfamiliar space, or if you’re not in one place for more than an hour at a time.

Even if you can find a reasonably quiet corner to sit down in, putting in the time is one thing; actually being able to produce quality output under such conditions can be a mighty challenge. But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and over these last few weeks, I’ve developed a few tricks to help myself concentrate and be productive in the least conducive, and highly pressured circumstances. Here are my top five. Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one thing doctors and lawyers hate, it’s being repeatedly asked for their professional opinion about something outside of the office by friends and acquaintances. First of all, it’s professionally irresponsible to advise people without a full grasp of their specific situation and context, and secondly, complying with requests of that nature effectively amounts to giving away for free what you normally do for others for a fee.

Web workers, too, have to deal with these kinds of requests, but I personally find that people are even less abashed about asking for advice and help related to blogs, social media, networking and other web work because they don’t regard it as a specialized service the way they do with medical and legal expertise.

I’m not saying giving away freebies is always a definite no-no, but I do think that as web workers we need to start reinforcing the value of our work by drawing a line between friendly advice and working for free. Here’s how I’m trying to create that demarcation. Read the rest of this entry »