Once just the purview of cheesy late-night infomercials (“buy now and get this beautiful set of six steak knives at no extra charge”), free has taken on a life of its own in the new economy. Even the prestigious and pricey New York Times offers its stories online — yes, for free.

One area that seems to be a “free-for-all zone” is advice. I’ve listened in on a dozen complimentary teleclasses over the past year — all free — and most have been worth exactly what I paid for them. The vast majority were a thinly veiled promotion of the speaker’s services, with less than 10 percent content. A few savvy souls actually provided 90 percent content as a way to show their stuff and entice people to sign up.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not against giving people an appropriate taste of what you can do for them. I personally place a high priority on showing some sample value to my potential PR clients before asking them to become full-fledged patrons. I find that doing so helps my productivity by increasing my closure rate. But as with most things, if you’re a freelancer, or even if you work for a company, giving away too much for free — be it a product, service or advice — can backfire, and eat into your productivity and profit.

“In the name of ‘marketing,’ many businesspeople are providing way too much information for free,” says business coach Maria Marsala. “If you don’t value your services, no one else will,” says Marsala. If you find yourself walking that fine line between holding back on information and services that you rightfully should be paid for, yet fearing that you’re missing the marketing boat, consider this: If you contacted your doctor, lawyer or accountant for a professional consultation, would you expect to be charged? Would you be shocked if you went into Best Buy to pick up Season 6 of ‘24′ and they asked if you wanted to pay by credit card or cash? The bottom line is that, in general, we believe it’s fair to pay for the expertise and time of the vendors we value and the products we want to possess.

Marsala says setting boundaries on just how much “free” you are going to give away is not always easy, especially when you are asked outright for free advice on how to design a web site, solve a software snafu or cope with a computer crash. To get around the dilemma, here are Marsala’s top ten phrases for turning “at no charge” into cash:

1. My charge for an initial consultation is “x.” If we turn out to be a good match, and you hire me, I’ll apply 1/2 of “x” toward your commitment.

2. Yes, I do work with clients on “name the issue.” Would you like to set up a consultation?

3. That will cost “x” per hour.

4. There’s a lot I can do for you that’s similar to the work I did for “xyz” client. Would you like to get together and build a marketing plan? I charge “x” for that service.

5. Are you looking to hire _____? Well, I’d love to talk to you about that; my fees are “x” per hour.

6. “Well, the answer to that question depends…” and then spend a few minutes explaining some of the options and considerations. “If I were to work with you on this project, here’s how we would do it and what it would cost…”

7. A complete answer to your question is going to take more than 15 minutes over the phone. Would you like me to send you a proposal on this?

8. I have really enjoyed talking with you and would like to help more. May I send you one of my brochures and a rate card?

9. Do you have a time line and/or budget in mind for solving this problem?

10. It’s not a good time for me to discuss this right this minute. Would you like to briefly discuss project guidelines and fees?

Remember, part of what you contribute to your clients, and what they value from you, is the knowledge and expertise you’ve built up over the years. Being paid properly is about honoring those skills. But hey, that’s just my free advice.

How much work do you do for free? Is it too much?

We’ve all heard the horror stories of difficult clients. Anyone offering client services has been there.

No company can function effectively when confronted with clients who operate from a place of fear — which is often at the root of most difficult clients you encounter. You can’t do your job well or be recognized for a job well done when your client contact is inadvertently — or deliberately — standing in your way.

Here are six common “bad client” archetypes that can impede your success. After the definition of each client type, I’ve listed some possible tactics you can use to tame those wild beasts in your client roster.

1. Micro Manager

Description: This person wants to control every aspect of your work. It may feel like they don’t trust what you do or that you can never do your job to their satisfaction, but their obsessive compulsiveness is often driven by fear. They believe that if you make a mistake, it is their neck on the line. So they go through painstaking editing processes, which often delay progress and rack up unexpected expenditures on your part.

Tactics: Understand that the micro manager is operating from a place of fear. Instead of riding their fear wave, have a heart-to-heart and find out what you can do to help them feel more comfortable with your work. Also, express how you weren’t prepared for so many revisions on every aspect of your work and how much it is costing you. Could they train you on how to deliver the work in a way that better suits their needs? In the future, put a clause in your contracts that stipulates the number of revisions included in the deal (say, up to three) with a trigger to charge hourly for each additional round.

2. Panicker

Description: For the Panicker, everything is an emergency. There’s always a fire to put out somewhere, real or imagined. Something is always about to go wrong, and chances are it is all your fault. The Panicker who will suck you into their panic mode if you’re not careful, setting a work tone that can be extremely disconcerting.

Tactics: Panic is also a manifestation of fear. Why is this person so afraid? Maybe there are machinations behind the scenes at their job that you’re not privy to that have set them into panic mode. Your job is to help alleviate their fears. Ask them flat out what can you do to make their job easier, better. What can you empower them with to help them prove to their higher ups that they — and you – are doing a good job. Work with them to bring the panic level down to a minimum so you can all get your work done without raising anybody’s blood pressure.

3. Puppet

Description: The Puppet is not in a power position. Somebody else is pulling the puppet strings, but they have been put out there as your client contact whether they – or you – like it or not. They may be the fall guy for someone else, and if they fall, they’ll inadvertently take you with them. They most likely are inexperienced and may not even understand what you are doing for their company, creating a stream of misunderstandings.

Tactics: If you can’t get to the Puppet Master, then empower the Puppet. They may not even know how their ignorance is undermining your ability to get things done, much less communicate what you’ve accomplished to their boss. Offer to train this person — on your dime — to provide them with enough knowledge so they can play a more productive role as client contact.

4. DIY-er

Description: The DIY-er knows everything, and thinks they can do it all themselves. But somehow you’ve been hired to do what they perceive to be their job. Or perhaps they’ve been charged with cutting corners so they’d rather do some of the work that should be assigned to you in order to save a buck in the short term. Then they proceed to muck things up which could potentially set you up for failure from the start. This person may have backed themselves into a corner by saying they know more than they do, or biting off more than they can chew.

Tactics: There may be a lot of ego involved here — sensitive ego that, in a pinch, will point fingers of blame at you if anything starts to go wrong. It is up to you to make this person look good while not diminishing your own role in a job well done. Give them kudos often — both directly to them and to their team members or boss. Help them shine within their own organization as an important member of your client relationship. Once they view you as an ally and not the enemy, you can actually shift the situation so you can do the work well and everybody wins.

5. Bean Counter

Description: Bean Counters want numbers. They may stand in the way of progress and innovation if they feel they don’t have the numbers they need. Remember that the Bean Counter might have to report to someone else so they feel they need numbers to justify their every move. You’re just caught in the middle of their insecurities.

Tactics: They want numbers? Give them numbers. It may serve you well to do the extra research to find comparable statistics, to develop spreadsheets that calculate growth, to make a few charts to help assuage the fears of the Bean Counter. Yes, this will take you some time to compile the data, so make sure to build that into future contracts. But if it is numbers they want, go the extra mile to get them numbers.

6. Silo-er

Description: Beware the Silo-er. They are the most challenging of bad client types because they are wily creatures. They strategically set themselves up as the conduit by which all of the communications between you and the decision-makers flow. They do this so that if there are successes on a project, they can claim them for themselves. If there are failures, you will be the first one they blame.

Tactics: Without direct and open lines of communications with all the key players on your client’s team, you may become silo’d before you even know what has happened. It is up to you to open up or re-open up those communications channels before it’s too late. Offer to travel to the client’s office — on your dime — to meet with the whole team so you can re-establish key connections. Start requesting that other team members join meetings or calls so that you aren’t at the mercy of a single person. If no amount of overtures on your part work to break down the silo walls, try the last ditch effort of copying other team members on key email correspondence so they are somehow in the loop. Carefully document everything you do and all conversations just in case you’re set up to take the fall at any point.

Every client relationship can be peppered with moments of misunderstandings and disappointments — like any relationship. But without a strategy in place that can help you bring harmony to your client relations, your revenue stream could be negatively impacted by one or more of these bad client types. Ultimately, it is your responsibility to identify and address problems head on because when push comes to shove, you may end up being the one that is most dispensable.

What are some of the bad client types you’ve encountered, and how have you dealt with them?

If you don’t have a professional blog or web site, you may think that you don’t need to worry about content strategy. Think again. Celine gave some great advice in her article “How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog,” but these days our blogs and web sites aren’t the only windows to our professional souls. If you use social media platforms for professional purposes, you should consider having a content strategy for the material you publish on them as well.

What is Content Strategy?

Kristina Halvorson sums it up nicely in her superb article “The Discipline of Content Strategy” on A List Apart:

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”

If you’re tweeting or updating on Facebook or elsewhere, you’ve got creation and publication of content down. But what about all the other keywords in that definition?

Developing a Content Strategy For Your Social Media Presence

Putting together a content strategy for your social media presence can be a real challenge, especially when you mix business with pleasure; my Facebook friends include relatives, old friends, new pals and purely professional contacts, some of whom I’ve never met personally. You can’t please all the people all the time when you have such a mixed audience, and the privacy settings are too global to adequately address this issue. (My only strategy for Facebook is not to publish things that are too personal. Content strategy is as much about what you shouldn’t publish as it is about what you should.)

But Twitter, for example, is a different story. It’s easy to have separate “personal” and “pro” Twitter accounts. And if you have a pro Twitter account, it’s also easy to apply a content strategy to it. The same is true of professional networks like LinkedIn.

Planning and Governance of Useful, Usable Content

Here are some ideas that might help you get started on a strategy:

• Planning: Define your mission (what you want to achieve with your content). Define your audience. Define what you want your content to do for your audience (inform, persuade, entertain). Define the nature of your content (what it should consist of and the tone of the content). Decide how often to produce it. Decide how you will interact with your audience.
• Governance: In this context, I interpret this to mean managing and monitoring your content and its impact, as well as your own role. Are you meeting your audience’s needs? What’s working and what’s not, and why? Is the quality of your content consistently high? Are you responsive and available?
• Useful and usable: Most of the blogs and Twitter accounts of small businesses I see need a content strategy. They tend to be too inwardly focused, all about their own updates and services (boring), or else they are too much about the owner/founder. These businesses generally need to figure out how to provide some real value to their audiences in order to keep them coming back and turn them into real fans, or even evangelists.

Here’s an example: I discovered a nice app the other day called Memory-Life. It’s a site where you can store media and other files in a virtual “box of memories.” (It’s still only available in French, but hopefully not for long. You can see a demo by clicking “Voir la démo.“)

It has a Twitter account, but it could be doing a lot more. Its audience is interested in preserving memories, so in addition to the occasional updates about upgrades and features, it could share links to articles about repairing old photos, or compressing large video files. It could provide creative suggestions, like “Upload pictures of all your grandmother’s jewelry to your box of memories” or “Create your own art gallery with Memory-Life.” It could suggest alternative uses for the app; designers could use it to create inspiration boards, for example.

If you want to connect with and engage an audience, your content has to provoke thought and action. You know you’re adding value if your content is being retweeted, liked and shared. It takes work, but it’s worth it.

You Too Could Be a Content Strategist!

Content strayegy is a relatively new career field. Large corporations are beginning to have in-house content strategists, but there is no reason why this job shouldn’t be done by consultants, which is where you come in. It could be an ideal occupation for a web worker.

If you’d like to learn ore about content strategy, in April, several chapters of the Society for Technical Communication are putting on “Content Strategy Forum 2010,” a two-day conference on content strategy in Paris. The conference is intended for:

“…anyone who develops, manages, or delivers content within their own organization or for their clients: user experience designers, information architects, business analysts, technical writers, web project managers, documentation managers, translators, web marketers, practicing content strategists, and those looking to break into the field.”

Learn more about the conference program and register here (tickets are very affordable).

Here’s some additional recommended reading on content strategy:

• “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data,” a great article by Rachel Lovinger
• There are several good articles on A List Apart about content strategy.

Have you implemented a content strategy for your social media presence?

Image by the_franz from sxc.hu

Last year, I attended a professional workshop where the instructor asked us to write out our worst habit. Unfortunately, more than one answer flooded my brain, and I had to seriously consider which to choose. In the end, I decided that my most unabashed, shameless and ubiquitous bad habit is impatience.

My impatience invades every aspect of my personal and professional life. For instance, I constantly find myself wondering, “Why do these people take so long in line at the grocery store?” Counting out each precious penny, then pulling out a coupon, then deciding they don’t really want the milk after all. Instead of an express line for 12 items or less, I think grocery store lines should be divided up into only two lanes — a line for those of us who move fast, have somewhere important to go and something worthwhile to do and a line for those who don’t. See, I told you I was impatient.

In terms of how it’s affected my productivity at work, I’m embarrassed to say that my impatience has led to countless instances of emails sent in a hurry, which only needed to be retracted or clarified latter; decisions made on quick assumptions  — that turned out to be wrong — and occasional crankiness with those around me who are not moving fast enough.

Having pulled back the curtain on my own worst habit in the workshop, I decided to do something about it. I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last year working on my bad habit of impatience. And while I’ll never be “the soul of patience,” I have made progress. I’ve learned to quell my initial reaction to respond immediately, and, instead, take a deep breath and wait things out a bit. It’s helped my productivity by saving me time, money and stress.

“We all walk around on a daily basis with habits that are detrimental to our productivity,” says Larry Tobin, co-creator of Habitchanger.com.

Tobin, whose 42-day online habit-changing program deals with everything from quitting smoking to reducing stress, says that science has shown us that we can teach an old dog new tricks.

“A habit is an involuntary, unconscious action,” says Tobin. “Habits are learned, not instinctual. They are something we have taught ourselves to do, so it is possible to unlearn them,” he says.

In fact, a whole slew of recent scientific research in the field of neuroplasticity has proven that the brain has the ability to adapt to new information, if it’s consistently presented over a period of time. “It takes between 30 and 60 days of doing the same thing over and over again on a daily basis to create a new habit or break an old one,” says Tobin.

According to MedicineNet.com, Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

Why not put the power of your flexible brain to work? Here’s a simple, two-step process I teach my consulting clients to help them break down their bad habits and build up their productivity.

Step 1: Call out the bad habit and identify its negative consequences.

“To break a habit, the first thing you need to do is step aside and become aware of what you are doing,” says Tobin. In my 25-plus years as a consultant, I’ve noticed a consistent group of productivity-killing habits including procrastination, disorganization, being ill-prepared and operating in crisis management. What are your bad business habits and what negative impact has the bad habit had in your business (and perhaps personal) life? Here are a few examples:

• You work full-time for a company and often find that you arrive at meetings unprepared. The negative impact might include: Feeling unable to make a decision in the meeting, or the progress of the group being hindered by your lack of preparation.
• You’re a freelancer and procrastinate to the point of lost productivity. The negative impact might include: Missing a deadline for submitting a proposal for a new piece of work or delivering late on a project to an important client — hurting your credibility and chances for future work.
• You telecommute and have a disorganized home office. The negative impact might include: Being late to meetings at the office due to looking for needed documents at home or becoming distracted by to-dos around the house, rather than confronting cleaning up a messy home office.

Step 2: Create alternative actions.

One way to change an old, bad habit is to replace it with a new, better one. By practicing the new action, a pathway is created in your brain that, over time, can become as strong as (if not stronger than) the previous behavior. The key is to start small, with little actions you can implement easily. So get creative and think of some alternate actions you could take to counter the bad habit you identified. For example:

• I will schedule my computer alarm to notify me 30 minutes before the start of the meeting so that I have time to look over the meeting agenda and my notes before I arrive.
• The next time I have a proposal to write for a potential client, I will set aside a specific block of time in my calendar, on a specific date, to get it written.
• The first thing I will do every morning when I go into my home office is spend 15 minutes clearing off my desk or cleaning out a file.

Just remember, good habits don’t suddenly appear overnight; instead, they develop slowly over time, as certain behaviors — repeated over and over — begin to overlay the way you work. The good news is that, given a mind as malleable as yours, breaking bad habits is just a few new neural pathways away.

What’s your worst bad habit?

A good bio shares your experience, builds your credibility, makes a first impression and displays your personality. Having a great Twitter bio is important as it can make or break a person’s decision whether to follow you or not.

Not only do you need to pay attention to what your bio says about you, but also the other fields in your profile including “Web” and “Location.” The Twitter bio may be small, but it’s powerful. Here is a checklist to ensure you your bio passes muster.

Does your bio include relevant keywords? Do you want people to find you by your career, company, industry, location? Why are you using Twitter? Who are the people you want to connect with? Use these to figure out what keywords to use.

The keywords for me include “writer,” “editor” and “games” (I do game reviews.) I built my bio around those and added a personal touch at the end: “Content maven aka writer, editor and bookwormette who plays with words and games (www.thegamezen.com) in between PTA work and refereeing the kids.” Yes, I snuck in a URL, even though it’s not clickable.

Does your bio cover what you do? People who use Twitter for networking and business tend to follow people based on what they do and their topics of interest. The “what you do” part can also get you on people’s lists. For instance, I have lists for writers, marketers, PR peeps and so on; and it’s the bios that helped me with building my Twitter lists.

What do you have under “Location”? While many of us can work with people all over the world, our locations can lead to surprising opportunities. In fact, I had lunch with someone I met in Twitter. Within just a few tweets, we found out that we live within a mile of each other! Again, this can get you on location-based Twitter lists like mine, which covers Dallas-Fort Worth.

Have you seen nonsense numbers for location such as UT: 12.345678, -234.5678? This comes from Twitter applications like Ubertwitter, but these mean nothing to most people. (FYI: you can enter these coordinates in Google Maps to find the person’s location.) Originally, I had “Plano, Texas” and changed it to “Plano, Texas, north of Dallas” so those searching for “Dallas” will find me.

What does your web link look like? This might seem like a strange question, but some people put in short URLs (tinyurl, bit.ly, ow.ly, is.gd, etc.) in this field. Most of us have learned the hard way not to trust this. Twitter doesn’t shorten the links in this field, so don’t use a shortened URL link. It reeks of spam. “Hidden URLs are usually spam sites or MLM marketing,” tweets Suzanne (aka ZeroCattle.)

Where does your web link go? There’s no one single obvious answer. Often I want to go straight to a person’s blog, if they have one. Sometimes I just want to read more about the person. Some people create a landing page specifically for Twitter, which is where my link goes. However, I wonder if pointing to my blog would be a better idea.

Suzanne suggests linking to your business’ web site or to a profile on a social network site, if you don’t have your own site. While it’s easy to set up your own site, not everyone has the need for one especially those in corporate careers. Peggy Dolane (aka FreeRangeMom) likes to see a person’s web link take her where she can learn more about them or their passions.

Don’t worry too much about having the perfect bio. Many of us have tweaked our bios over time while becoming more comfortable and familiar with Twitter. Even my own is probably version 3.3. Remember, be yourself. That’s what makes you stand out.

What do you look for in a Twitter profile?

I recently had a day started like any other weekday, apart from a little light rain. It ended with an overflowing inbox of client requests and a that awful feeling of being overwhelmed.

I spent the morning on a Windows 7 article that I needed to finish. Several emails came in. “No problem.” I thought, “I can handle them in the afternoon.”  Every Wednesday at noon, I have a weekly status meeting with a client. It forced the article and my eyes to take a break from each other.

At the end of the meeting, my day crashed with a thunderous roar. More email requests had arrived. Like the rain, the work started to pour in. This doesn’t happen often, but it turned this organized planner into a panicky gal. Plus, I managed to lock myself out of an important account, something I never do.

One of my worst habits is checking email too often. I do this because I don’t want my inbox to pile up. I scan my emails frequently and then delete, file, respond or or leave them for later if the message needs more than a few minutes of my time. On this day, many of the messages met the “leave” requirement. So they remained in the inbox where they caused my stress to climb even further.

So what do I do to stop getting overwhelmed like this? Here are the steps that I took to regain control:

• Pick the most urgent task. Complete the task, celebrate accomplishment and get a quick lift.
• Delete email newsletters and updates. You can always catch up on them later, but reducing the number of unread messages is a quick way to reduce the  stress that comes from an overwhelmed inbox.
• Add tasks from emails to the to-do list. Then, prioritize and assign them so I can see what needed doing now and what could wait. This way I can move the emails where they belonged and out of the inbox.
• Skip or postpone events, meetings, appointments, etc. You can always skip or move non-urgent meetings or events to concentrate on urgent matters.I had more meetings than usual that week, so I rescheduled one so I could have more time at the office.
• Let go of social networking. Not forever — just for the day. Though social networking is an essential tool in my business, I let it go that day because I knew it wouldn’t help my productivity or stress levels. Besides, if I had tried, I may not have communicated as well as I do on a normal day. I returned to it the next day.

Although following these steps didn’t completely cure that feeling of being overwhelmed (there were still a lot of email to deal with), it definitely helped to regain a sense of control and order.

How do you handle overwhelming situations?

Holiday season is just around the corner. Some of us will stay home, some will go away. Some will work every day that’s not a public holiday, or on which our presence is not required elsewhere by friends and family. Others will take days, if not weeks, of time out from work. Some will remain connected at every moment, come hell or high water. Others will switch off, kick back, and only get online to read the news, check personal accounts, or find out if the weather will be fair tomorrow.

Whatever your plans, there’s a lot for the web worker to prepare before the holiday season hits and business in many parts of the world grinds almost to a halt. Here are some of the steps I’m taking to ensure things don’t go pear-shaped over the next month or two.

1. Work Plan

When time is short, I like to prepare a work plan which outlines what I need to do and how much time I have to do it in. I break those tasks down to a daily to-do-list and endeavor to stick to it. I make note of the date on which I can expect work to return to normal, so that I can ensure I’m prepared to hit the ground running when the wheels of commerce start turning again.

Like many freelancers, I’ll also be looking at my task list from a budget perspective this holiday season: How many billable hours will I need to fit in between now and when things pick up again in the new year? And where can I find work to fill any budget gaps?

2. Holiday Plan

You probably already have an idea of how much time you’d like to take off this holiday season, and how much vacation time you’ll be able to take. Once I’ve got an idea of the amount of work I have to do, I can schedule my break time to take in commitments with family and friends. But my vacation timeframe will also be affected by my colleagues’ and clients’ schedules.

We’ve all been through the frustration of working when everyone else is holidaying: you can’t get the inputs you need, you have trouble accessing information or gaining approvals — it can be a real nightmare, not to mention a complete waste of time.

Of course, depending on the types of jobs you have to do, you may find this “quiet time” while everyone else is vacationing to be a blessing for your productivity.

3. Connectivity Plan

Whether you’ll be Twittering pictures of your Thanksgiving turkey as it’s being devoured, or you’re heading for the hills, to a little place with no phone or web access, it’s fair to say that all web workers need some sort of connectivity plan for the holiday season.

For me, that plan will entail periods without connection. But work commitments will necessitate that I’m not away from my computer for more than a few days at a time. I’ll build this into my schedule as well, and try to stick to it on the basis that the break from the everyday will do me good.

Your connectivity plan may, of course, necessitate a packing list if you’re going away and need to take your gear with you, or even a wishlist of equipment you’d be happy to receive as gifts this season…

4. Goal Plan

Depending on your work and workload, you may choose, as I will, to set a rough goal plan for next year now.

Yes, now. I don’t want to sail into the new year and then start wondering what I’m going to do next. As a remote worker, I find that planning past the holiday season helps my motivation, and lets me maintain momentum through the lazy days ahead.

In some ways, it even helps me to relax over the holiday season: since I know I have things to get on with after the break, I don’t spend the time worrying about what’ll happen when the fun stops.

These are the kinds of plans I make against the ravages of the heady holiday season. How about you?

Conducting a thorough editorial, technical and content review of business and technical documents is challenging for many organizations, but a geographically dispersed workforce can make it even more difficult.

Here are some tips to help better manage document reviews at a distance:

Establish review guidelines. Truth be told, many organizations don’t know how to review and approve a document. As such, it is important to set out how you want your reviewers to check over each document. Your review guidelines should:

• Instruct the reviewers to follow procedures step-by-step. Tell them to point out incorrect steps and identify why the step is in error.
• Encourage the reviewers to look for better ways to present data, or identify if a different function or listing that would work better in the same situation.
• Instruct reviewers to check to see if the artwork (listings, figures, illustrations, tables) corresponds with the references in the text.
• Tell the reviewers to test  each line of program code and describe any problems.

Designate document stakeholders. Have a designated document stakeholder check over the document(s) undergoing review to help set review priorities and free up resources to ensure the document review happens on deadline. The stakeholders can also tie the document review into the overall project plan, if needed.

Identify primary and backup reviewers. This is a commonsense first step when project teams span multiple time zones, and even continents. If the primary reviewer is unavailable to resolve a question, then the team can always go to the backup reviewer.

Set a realistic review schedule. It is rare that a stressed and harried project team can make a full document review in just one pass. So depending on your project schedule, take the initiative to manage expectations and set a review schedule that ensures reviewers are going to add value to the documents they are reviewing.

Use online collaboration and version control. WebWorkerDaily regularly covers the latest in collaboration tools. Using one of these tools can help you better manage the review process with your team.

Use electronic document review tools. With Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat you can mark up and comment on electronic documents just as you can with pen and ink on a hardcopy document — there’s no need to fax documents any more. If your team is reviewing an XML-based document, look towards a solution like LiveTechDocs (I reviewed it for WWD).

LiveTechDocs Application

How do you manage document reviews?

Image credit: svilen001 from sxc.hu.

If you read Aliza’s post outlining the five best web working lessons she’s learned so far, you might have noticed a trend: all of those lessons were focused on control.

For the web worker who works remotely, relies on someone else’s technology, and/or needs to coordinate disparate, diverse inputs to some kind of timeframe and standard of quality, control is always going to be an issue.

Accepting the Limits

We’ve all had those times when an erroneous keystroke has undone hours (if not days or even months) of toil. The times when we’ve missed a deadline due to power outage or loss of Internet connectivity. The times when someone or something we needed urgently were simply unobtainable.

The nuances of web work dictate that we need to be able to relinquish our need for total control, because the environment in which we operate will not support such a goal. In some way, every new tool that’s released is designed to give users a feeling of greater control over what they’re doing. But the reality is that no matter how well you’ve bookmarked an article, uploaded a file, or composed that email, if the service, your web connection, or your contacts are offline for any reason, or a necessary device is out of power, it’s no good.

Perhaps rather than adopting the latest carefully-devised productivity philosophy or downloading a new work tool, we should accept that total control is impossible — we should let go of that idea. Then, we should work out the ways in which we might be able to influence our work success within a context of very limited control.

Managing the Uncontrollable

Of course, those cool apps we all subscribe to have their purposes. But there are other approaches we can take to help manage our work processes to take account of the uncontrollable.

• Delegation. Aliza mentions the importance of learning to delegate in her post. Recognizing and accepting the unique capabilities of each of the individuals you work with is the first step in learning to delegate effectively. Leaving them to do the work while you attend to other tasks, on the other hand, may take a little practice.
• Plan for unavailability. Web workers tend to be good preplanners, saving valuable information using decentralized means, backing up their work product, and operating around colleagues’ various commitments, timezone differences, and so on. But it’s also good to plan for the possible unavailability of services, people, and resources at any given time. If this means you need to get things done ahead of time, expand your remote work kit, or confirm and re-confirm the details of meetings, processes, and project plans, so be it. Perhaps, if you feel unconvinced about the reliability of an arrangement (a site, a meeting service, etc.) you’ll make your own contingency plans, just to be on the safe side.
• Accept the limitations of an offsite life. There’s no point getting frustrated that a contact’s not available, or that you left that important file that you need for your ten o’clock meeting in your home office. We need to accept that, as web workers, we must be super-organized and plan ahead. So make sure you have everything you need for a day on the road the night before. Don’t leave it to the last minute before you try to get in touch with a contact who has an input you need for your project. If you’re in a bind, don’t panic (too much). Remember that you’re at a the mercy of the online environment, and you can’t control everything. Then try to think laterally about how you could solve your problem.
• Learn when to step up and take the lead. We all know there are times when teams lack leadership, people place too much faith in the system, and we find ourselves in a train wreck waiting to happen. If you feel uneasy about the way a project’s going, think about what you can do to make yourself more at ease. This doesn’t have to necessitate your taking responsibility for the whole project, or taking control of aspects of the job that are beyond your sphere. But in some cases we can help work tasks happen more smoothly if we accept a little more responsibility. It can be hard to tread the fine line between responsibility and control; the key is to know and accept the point where your responsibility ends.

Are you a control freak? How do you handle the aspects of your web work that are beyond your control?

While trying to log into Facebook a few days ago, I got the message, “Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.” I checked with friends, and they were able to access their accounts, so the problem seemed to be limited.

It turns out that there have been widespread complaints about this issue, which Facebook has acknowledged on its Help page:

“Site Maintenance” error
Some users have experienced difficulty logging in to and using the site for several days, receiving “Site Maintenance” error messages after logging in. We are aware of this technical issue and are working to resolve it as soon as possible. We apologize for the delay.

I was lucky, and was able to get back into the Facebook site fairly quickly. While I was locked out, I couldn’t post to my personal Facebook page, but fortunately I could use some Facebook functions because I’d set up RSS feeds and access via third-party programs in advance.

Unfortunately, Facebook seems to be discouraging RSS feeds for Notifications (messages like “Jane Doe has commented on your link”), so you may not be able to follow the RSS instructions given in the Facebook Help. Status Updates (like “Jane Doe is ready for a long weekend”) can be accessed via a Facebook application that creates an RSS feed for your status updates.

If you administer any Facebook Groups and Pages, these should be unaffected by log-in failures. So make sure that you give a friend administrative rights to your group or page. If their accounts are not affected, they can post material for you. You should also be able to post to Facebook Pages (but not Groups) via third-party programs such as Ping.fm and Seesmic Desktop, if you set up these programs with posting rights ahead of time.

It’s frustrating when you can’t log into the Facebook site, but you may be able to do more than you expect. Let’s hope that while Facebook is having log-in issues, it allows easier access to our data through RSS and third-party programs.

How do you manage when you can’t log into Facebook?

Recently, I’ve noticed that more new clients are coming my way with a single request: to help them revive or resurrect a project, web site, or product that has failed in the past. I’m also capable of creating failed projects myself — sometimes I look at my track record and try to fix my worst projects hoping that I can make them better.

How do you know if a project has failed? Although you can have specific quantifiers such as revenue or number of users, the simple way is to ask yourself this: “Did it meet any of its objectives?” If the answer is no, then that means you’ve got a failed project in your hands. Some of these projects can remain buried and forgotten, but there are others that you can’t stop thinking about even years down the road.

What do you do if there’s an old failed project that you want to bring back to life?

Why Try Again?

The first thing I do when I try to resurrect an old project, whether it’s mine or a client’s, is to evaluate why it should be done. The reason is sometimes simple. It could be that when the project started, the people working on it weren’t mature or skilled enough to give it the proper follow-through. Now that they know better, they think it’s time to try again.

This was the case with one of my new clients. When he started his blog, he bought into get-rich-quick schemes and short-term tips on how to boost traffic. As his blog’s advertising income diminished and he saw few returning visitors, he called the project a failure. After looking into his mistakes, he’s determined to try again. It’s the classic case of being passionate about a project but not knowing enough to execute it well.

There may be many reasons to revive a failed project, but there’s one you should avoid. Don’t bring it back to life just because you have nothing better to do. I have to admit that sometimes this is the justification I have, and every time I use it all I get is a new way to fail at an old project. “Well, I need something new to work on…” is not going to cut it if you want to rework an old mistake and turn it into something great.

Evaluate Your Past Efforts

The first things we need to look at are our mistakes. In “The Dip“, Seth Godin lists 7 different reasons why one might fail. This includes the lack of time, money, or enthusiasm. Other reasons include picking the wrong thing to try, getting scared, not being serious enough, or focusing too much on the short term. In the failed projects I’ve evaluated, I can see that all of them failed because of at least one of these reasons.

Many of my failed projects, and even some of my clients’ failed projects, were also the result of a lack of definition. Here are some of its common symptoms:

• Saying “Our target audience is everybody.”
• Adding all the possible features and widgets into the project, even when they are unnecessary.

Apart from looking at these past mistakes, we also need to celebrate our successes. In the midst of all the chaos, what worked for you? What went well before the project failed? By looking back at both our successes and our mistakes, we can be better prepared for our next attempt to make it work.

Starting Over

If you’ve realized that resurrecting your failed project is the best thing to do, there are some things you need to keep in mind:

• Remember to quantify. “What’s measured improves,” as Peter Drucker once wrote. If you can, quantify the hours, cost, and other resources used up by your project. Other necessary statistics such as sales, users, and bug reports should also be recorded. By keeping a close eye on the numbers, we can predict most incoming challenges and plan for them accordingly.
• Things to avoid. Instead of just writing a lengthy to-do list, why not factor in your previous mistakes and remind yourself what you shouldn’t do? It’s easy to fall back on bad habits, especially if new processes take longer to pay off.
• Keep it simple. Whether you’re relaunching an old product, service, community, or blog, start with the simplest version you can possibly think of. This allows your project to remain flexible when there are a lot of unpredictable and volatile factors that may affect your success.

The truth is that it takes a lot of planning, effort and passion to bring an old project back to life. If done right, the attempt is usually worth it.

Have you ever tried to revive a failed project such as a blog, online community or an app? What was your experience like?

Image by eduardtrag from sxc.hu

In the age of continuous connectivity, many a web worker may feel a sense of wry irony in the fact that often, when we need answers on something, the person we need those answers from is uncontactable.

We all diligently plan ahead, so we allow plenty of time for our colleague to pull together the necessary input to our project. We go out of our way to establish some kind of understanding and rapport. We explain the timeframes and constraints of the project so they know where we’re coming from. And we try to make our follow-up requests as polite and professional as possible.

To no avail, sadly. As the deadline approaches, we find we’re still waiting on that input they promised three weeks ago. Are they avoiding us? Do they think that because we’re not on the other side of the partition that they can ignore our project? Are they using distance as an excuse to relegate our project to the bottom of their to-do list?

It can be a frustrating scenario. Resolving these kinds of problems certainly isn’t rocket science but, in the heat of the frustrating moment, it can be easy to act in haste, rather than in your usually impeccably professional manner. Well, that’s how it is for me, anyway. Here’s a little process I use to ensure that I handle this kind of annoyance appropriately.

Step 1: Call.

Forget email, text and IM. Just call your contact. If you can’t get onto them, leave a message. Speak to their PA. And try them later the same day, or the next day.

If they don’t get back to you within what you deem to be a reasonable timeframe, you’ll have to identify some other way to obtain the input you need. I usually do this around the time I first get the sense that my contact’s not going to deliver, just in case. It’s better to have a backup than nothing.

Step 2: Follow up.

Follow up your call with an email, IM or text. Explain what you need and, if you’re getting edgy about, or are already past, the delivery deadline, identify the steps you’ll take if you don’t hear from the person.

This step — advising the person of what you’ll do if you don’t hear from them — is essential. You must give the contact fair warning about the consequences of their inaction, and allow time for them to get back to you. Even if it’s just a call to admit they can’t deliver what they promised, it’s essential that you give your colleague that opportunity. If they don’t take it, that’s their choice — but you need to do the right thing.

Obviously, you may need to discuss your contingency plans with other team members in order to arrive at a suitable outcome for the project. In some cases, you may effectively need to pull rank — speak to someone higher up in the chain of command — to ensure you can have the task delegated to another individual, or simply to have pressure applied to your colleague from above.

Step 3: Deploy Plan B.

If the contact still hasn’t produced the work, or responded to you, it’s time to deploy Plan B: unleash the consequences you described in your follow-up message.

In my experience, tasks are very rarely re-delegated to another team member. Usually, my project timelines have been extended to allow the original delegate to complete the task or — gasp! — if I’m capable, I’m asked to pick up the slack and do it myself.

Regardless of what the contingency plan is, it’s courteous and professional to let your colleague know that you’ve decided to implement it. That way, you can avoid the potential for doubling up on work, since you both know where you stand, what the next steps are, and who’s taking responsibility for producing the input.

Contingency Planning Pays Off

The key point here for those working in a team is: don’t go it alone. It’s important in such circumstances to let your team members know early if you’re having trouble obtaining inputs from one person. This ensures you can do your contingency planning ahead of time, and that you feel supported in your efforts to do your job.

If you’re working alone, not in a team, and you can’t obtain an answer that you need — such as client approval to proceed on a new project — your contingency plans may include devising strategies to shift the potential project to the backburner without upsetting the client or undermining your income for the month, and sourcing a new client or project with which to replace this one.

This is the way I usually approach the issues of avoidance that seem to crop up in the world of web work. How do you handle such situations?

Coworking is a great trend, one that is taking root in even the most unlikely of soil, including areas where it has a chance of making a big difference, like Detroit. For freelancers and small startups, a coworking space provides a great opportunity to work with others, and to have office space to show off when a client comes calling, without incurring the cost of a more permanent lease.

But coworking doesn’t come with zero cost, unless it’s done on the very small scale of inviting someone into your own home, or being invited into the home of another. You could also try meeting at somewhere that doesn’t charge beyond the price of a coffee, like a Starbucks, but how reliable is that really? In a big city, space is at a premium, so there’s no guarantee there’ll be room to meet there. So the question is, is investing in proper coworking space worth your while? How and when does it become a justifiable expense?

Step 1: Identify What You Have to Gain from Coworking

I’m not talking about the good feeling and sense of camaraderie you miss from your days working in an office setting, although you should feel free to list that, as well. It may not have a tangible monetary effect, but it will help with morale, which is always important.

Putting that aside, though, what are you intending to get out of coworking? Have you spoken to others who’ve tried it, and attempted to gauge the actual impact it’s had on their business? Maybe what you’re actually looking for is meeting space for occasional use, which is something else entirely and can be had much more cheaply.

If you are looking to build meaningful professional relationships, the kind that can’t come from email exchanges and the occasional lunch, then coworking presents a tangible benefit. If you need your company to have a public face, and one that exists in a brick-and-mortar sense, and you need that consistently, then coworking presents an attractive proposition. If your working hours are interrupted in consistent and unpredictable ways at your home office, damaging your productivity, then coworking could help.

Step 2: Assess the Risks and Costs Associated with Coworking

Once you know what you want to get out of the deal, carefully examine what it will cost you to get it. Depending on how long you’ve been working remotely, you may be in for a surprise at what a return to the commuting lifestyle will actually run to, all told.

For example, where is the nearest coworking venture in your city? Does your city even have one? (We won’t address the costs of starting your own at the moment.) Will you have to take transit, or do you have your own transportation? Just getting to or from your new office could represent a significant additional cost that your usual budget doesn’t include.

Workspace rental fees is another cost associated with coworking. For example, one near my home in downtown Toronto charges $350 a month for office space that’s accessible 24 hrs, with some meeting room time included. It’s $75 per work day if you don’t need the freedom of 24/7 accessibility. For many of us, those aren’t costs that our working budget can easily absorb.

Step 3: Make an Informed Decision

Once you have all the variables on the table, you still probably won’t have a very cut-and-dry choice. At least you’ll be informed, though. The more you focus on the hard benefits and costs associated with coworking, and the less you focus on your desire to socialize or try something new, the better. If all else fails, work out a set term for an initial trial, and then do a rigorous follow-up analysis to see if it’s economically tenable in the long run, and, more importantly, if you got some tangible benefit, enjoyed it and remained productive.

Photo credit: hyku on flickr

One of the reasons that I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard was the new ability to sync the Mac OS X Address Book with Gmail’s or Google Apps’ Contacts. This function has been around for a while, but for some reason, it was previously available only to iPhone users.

I really appreciate well-produced synchronization, because I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it is to get right. It seems that software developers can never quite agree on how to organize contact information, so everyone’s databases are different. For a long time, for instance, one of the major makers of financial management software didn’t even create city, state and ZIP/postal code fields, opting instead for an address field where all of that information was run together, making the data very difficult to parse.

So I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Snow Leopard’s “sync with Google” function, especially because I have a fairly large address book, and most of its entries have photos associated with them, something that very few sync solutions even try to support.

With a little planning, you can easily sync your address book with Google. Here are some tips — some of which are also applicable to other synchronization systems, such as the one available for synchronizing data between Google and Thunderbird’s Address Book on a PC.

1. Clean up your contacts. It’s easy to get sloppy about how we enter information, so it’s worth looking through your Address Book to make sure that your data is accurate and well-formatted. Putting first names and middle initials together in the first name field can produce amusing results, as can forgetting to check the “company” box for such entries — I had one card titled “Daily, Web Worker”! I also discovered a bunch of messed-up entries that had apparently been caused by previous experiments with sync software and services. One such service must have been European, because I found lots of entries where the postal code preceded the city, as is standard in France, but which isn’t correct in North America or the UK. Be careful with international phone numbers, too. If you don’t precede country codes with the plus (+) sign, some programs will try to format the numbers in North American format.
2. Back up your data! At the least, use Address Book’s Export function, and save a backup in Address Book Archive format. If you want added safety, use a program like Address Book to CSV Exporter to save your data in CSV format, which can be read by lots of other programs.
3. If possible, don’t try to sync two sources with different data, at least for an initial synchronization. You’ll get best results if you can clean up your data in the Mac Address Book, and completely erase all your contacts in Google. However, if that’s not possible, the charmingly named Conflict Resolver will spring into action during the sync, and give you the choice of which records to keep.

Once you’re ready, enter your account information into Address Book’s Preferences. Go to Accounts, check the “Synchronize with Google” option, click “Configure,” and enter your Gmail or Google Apps email address and password. That’s really all there is to it. I’ve found that you need to be logged out of the Google web interface for the sync to start. You might also need to make a change to your Mac Address Book in order for the sync program to become active, but once it begins, the process is surprisingly fast.

The Mac-to-Google sync system does have limitations. It can sync with one Gmail or Google Apps account at a time, and although it offers sync with Yahoo Mail’s contact lists, I’ve never been able to get Yahoo sync to work. Sync is also available with Apple’s MobileMe service, but I haven’t tried that.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with the results, and am happy that I can have immediate access to my contact information in several different places. As far as I’m concerned, one can never have too many backups of this vital data.

How do you keep your contact data synchronized?

I just finished reading Twyla Tharp’s book “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.” Although it focuses more on creative types, much of the advice can be applied to solo entrepreneurs and small business owners.

One helpful tip was her organizational system: a box.

“Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box. I start every [project] with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as [it] progresses, I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the [project].”

This resonated with me since I like to think of all of my work in terms of projects, and at any given point, I usually have several of them going on. I’ve modified the idea a bit for my purposes.

The box concept provides a way to become better organized so that capturing, processing, and actually taking action on information becomes seamless.

Step 1: Capturing Information

The first step in any organizational system has to be capturing information. I’ve tried almost every possibility, but the one that works best for me is simple pen and paper. I like to use a small binder (the kind that holds 8 1/2″ by 5 1/2″ pages) as my capture device.

Step 2: Purging and Organizing

Once I accumulate twenty pages or so (usually a couple of times per week), I purge my notes and put everything online into my favorite organizational tool Backpack.

• Article/Podcast Ideas. I use Backpack’s writeboard feature to file beginnings of article/podcast ideas. I put one idea per writeboard and title each writeboard by topic or idea. Then I write out any initial thoughts about the article or podcast within the writeboard. Once I’m ready to flesh out the idea further, it goes into a Zoho Writer document.
• Other Notes and To-Dos. Other notes and to-dos generally go into one of my Backpack “boxes” (see image below).

Within Backpack, my box pages are all tagged as “Boxes” and then removed from my sidebar so that I can just click on the “Boxes” tag and see all of them at once (plus, this keeps my sidebar clean).

I currently have eight boxes, and they’re based on my open projects. All other ideas go into my “Someday/Maybe” page. My open projects at this point are kind of context-based and fall into one of the three moving parts (or income buckets) for my business — coaching for solo entrepreneurs, web site design, and writing. I sub-divide the writing boxes so that I keep them separated by medium (blog, newsletter, podcast, writing gigs, etc.).

Within each “box” (or Backpack page), I have notes and to-dos related to each project. I generally create separate to-do lists for each sub-project within those boxes. In my radio page/box, for instance, I have each episode broken down into a separate to-do list, and I can then drag and drop the episodes so that I know which one is up next.

Step 3: Taking Action

Of course, all the organizing in the world won’t help, if I never take action on the information collected, so I use a couple of other tools to help me with this step.

• My Calendar. I have to take action on each of the boxes at some point each week, so I have time blocks to accommodate them within my Google Calendar (see image to right). When I get to a time block, I set an alarm for the time allotted, open the corresponding “box,” and get to work. I stop when the alarm goes off and move on to the next thing on my calendar. I’ve been leaving my calendar open all the time so that I check in frequently, which helps me stay on task.
• Gmail Folders. I also use Gmail folders (also known as labels) to organize action-related information (see image below).

For instance, I have an “Interviews” label, and when I line up a guest to be interviewed for an article or podcast, I mark that conversation with the “Interviews” label and archive it. Then I can go to my “Interviews” folder each day to prepare for upcoming interviews (without clogging up my Inbox). As I conduct interviews, I remove the labels and, thus, the conversations from that folder. I’ve been using red exclamation points to mark those that I must take action on before the interview, but I’ve started sending out standard guest packets, so I really take action on all interviews now and will eventually stop using stars within the folder.

Step 4: Polish and Refine

Naturally, it’s not completely flawless. It still needs some polishing, but it’s definitely working better than my previous organizational system. For now, I’m just trying to faithfully stick to the system, knowing that, in turn, it will faithfully keep me on track. As I see areas that can be improved upon, I know I’ll modify them, but so far, it’s working pretty well.

How do you “box” your information? What systems, tools, and techniques help you stay organized and productive?

Box image from Flickr by John-Morgan

Facebook gives users many tools for controlling what personal information is displayed to friends and others. But if you have lots of Facebook friends, you probably don’t want to create privacy settings for each person you know. However, Facebook allows you to create groups of friends, and you can specify privacy settings for these groups.

As an example, suppose you want to make your cell phone number available to personal friends, but you don’t want business contacts to see it. Here’s how.

Step 1. Assign Your Contacts to Friend Groups

From Facebook’s Friends menu, select the “All Friends” dropdown. To the right of each friend’s name, you’ll see an “Add to List” option. Click the down arrow and select a list, or if you’ve never created any lists, type a new list name in the text box. For the purposes of this example, I’m creating two lists — “Business” and “Personal.”

Once you’ve assigned a friend to a list, the name of the list will appear below their name. You can add people to more than one list if you wish. Repeat for each contact in your “All Friends” screen. This process goes very quickly, and you don’t need to save your changes.

Step 2. Create Privacy Settings for Your Friend Groups

Go to Facebook’s Settings menu and select the Privacy Settings dropdown option. Click Profile, then click the Contact Information tab. Next to the Mobile Phone listing, click the dropdown and select “Customize.” In the popup window that appears, select the “Some Friends” button, then type the name of the list of those who should see this data in the text box marked “Type the name of a friend or friend list.”

While you’re in this screen, you’ll probably want to select “None of My Networks,” since if you select a network, anyone in that network, even if they aren’t a friend, can see your information. And note that you can block specific people or lists from seeing this specific item by typing their names into the “Except These People” box. When you’re done, you’ll need to click “Save,” then “Save Changes” on the Profile Information screen.

Step 3. Edit Your Profile

From the main Facebook menu, click Profile. Underneath your picture at the upper left of the page, click “Edit My Profile.” Click the Info tab, then scroll down and click the gray “Contact Information” bar. Next to “Mobile Phone,” add your phone number in the format shown. Click “Save Changes,” then scroll back to the top of the contact data and click the Done Editing button.

It’s sort of annoying that one has to go through so many steps to make such a simple change, but Facebook does provide a useful tool to make sure you’ve done everything correctly. Near the top of the Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Profile page, enter a friend’s name in the box marked “See how a friend sees your profile” and your profile will be displayed as that person sees it. You’ll see what groups and networks the person belongs to, and you’ll be offered a link to re-edit your privacy settings if necessary.

Share your Facebook privacy tips below.