Web Worker Daily

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, I’ve gotten a lot of my clients contacting me through Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites. I got a direct message from one of my clients, saying that she has a new project she wants to start on. I received a LinkedIn message from a prospective client interested in working with me. It isn’t just clients, either. I sent a direct message to a designer I’m working with in order to get a quote for a project myself.

But are there any problems that can arise from conducting business conversations through social media? Read the rest of this entry »

A friend of mine who is new to teleworking was complaining that her overseas prospects wanted to speak with her on the phone. Since she didn’t want to have to pay for international calls, she turned down these lucrative offers. “I don’t want my fees to be consumed by phone bills,” she said.

“You don’t need to use the phone, you can always use voice chat or VoIP,” I suggested.

“What’s that?”

It seems that not everyone who sets out to do web work knows how to establish their communication methods. There are many tools that allow us to sidestep more traditional — and usually more expensive — means of communicating with our clients, such as client visits and phone calls. For those who are just starting out, here are your options: Read the rest of this entry »

Sitting here scanning my email, I shake my head at the worthless information I see in many “From” and “Subject” lines. Not only do the poor choices I see make it harder to figure out what’s in the emails without opening them, but also the senders are risking recipients skipping their messages altogether.

The following are examples of what not to do. Read the rest of this entry »

Around 94 percent of all email is classified as spam. In 2005, Americans threw away around 5.8 million tons of junk mail. Fortunately, we can take steps to avoid both junk mail and spam email.

But what about the gray area? I’m referring to low-quality messages: those emails, tweets and messages that aren’t exactly spam, but aren’t ham either. If you spend too long dealing with unsolicited press releases, “Please Digg this!” emails, forwarded jokes and the like,  you will know what I mean.

There may not be an automatic filter you can apply to these types of low-quality messages, but there are ways you can reduce the time and effort you spend on them. Read the rest of this entry »

Project and Communication Manager Staction, which I reviewed back in September, dropped its beta tag today and has officially launched to the general public.

You may recall that I was very smitten with Staction, particularly how the sparse interface (one page – two boxes) makes it dead simple to communicate with your team about all of your project-related items. The familiar ubiquitous messaging-style status update box makes for quick collaboration and updates, as well as to-do assignment and time tracking.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve noticed that web workers tend to be particular about their communication tools. Twitter is usually for mass sharing, wikis or collab apps are for project discussions, while email is for almost everything else.

We all have our own preferences when it comes to communicating with others. I prefer email for general communication, instant messaging for answering quick questions, and my land line for long, personal conversations.

But not all people understand this – especially if they aren’t web workers. In fact, before I had a system in place, I felt like a doctor who was on call 24 hours a day. The good news is that there are some things we can do to get people to reach us through the channels we prefer.

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems there are a lot of people bringing back the familiar cry that “Email is dead” … mostly pointing to the rise of social networks and IM among the younger generation (see also: is email dead?). Many of those who are joyfully proclaiming the death of email (and again, this is not a new proclamation) are those whose email inboxes are full of thousands of messages. I can see why some would prefer the death of email and the rise of other modes of communication such as IM, social networks, texting, etc. — in many cases email is extraneous and overburdening.

The useful emails are great, but how do you deal with all the rest?

Read the rest of this entry »