In the past 18 months, I’ve had to take time off of work for a variety of not-so-fun reasons. There’s been emergency trips to visit sick relatives, funeral travel, surgery for my mom, and surgery of my own. Plus, although we’ve been fortunate to not have serious disruptions from tropical weather here recently, that has happened before and will certainly happen again.

Here’s the lessons I’ve learned from those experiences about how being a web worker affects you during a personal crisis.

Good: Have Laptop, Will Travel

Being able to do your work via the web means you can probably pack it up and be productive (at least somewhat) while dealing with your crisis. If you have to travel, you don’t have to wrap everything up before you can run out the door. You can arrange for your time off after you’ve already left, or even get some work done anywhere that you need to be.

Many medical facilities even have Wi-Fi now for families to use while visiting with patients. Pulling out your laptop to do some work in these situations may sound more insensitive than it really is. Often patients feel they have to entertain people who are sitting with them. Working on a laptop can provide the perfect excuse to disengage yourself so the patient can rest or have some privacy, and it can alleviate a patient’s guilt over pulling you away from your usual routine if they see you are still being productive. If you are part of a group of visitors, excusing yourself to work elsewhere can be a good way to provide someone a private visit with the patient.

Good: Routine Is Therapeutic

A crisis by its very nature is stressful. Routine is comforting to most people. The familiar activity of being able to maintain at least some of your normal work routine via the web (even if it’s just checking and answering work email) can be a very helpful coping mechanism when something stressful is happening. The distraction of work can also be very helpful to some people by giving them something else besides their crisis situation to focus on for awhile.

Good: Reducing the Post-crisis Disaster

One of the reasons that I wrote that I don’t like to take vacations is that they are too much work to prepare for and catch up from. The same is true of a crisis break, but since it often isn’t planned, the work would all be done by playing catch-up. If you can do some of that work during the crisis itself, your post-crisis work stress will be reduced.

Bad: Working Under Stress

Remember that point about how a crisis is stressful? While a web worker may have the technical ability to work during a crisis, you need to be aware that your mental ability to do so may be compromised due to extreme stress. The quality of your work may not be up to your usual standards. You may make bad decisions that you later regret. You may say (or type) things that you normally wouldn’t because you are feeling emotional. Being aware of your limitations while working under stress is important. Postpone things that you aren’t sure you can handle correctly at that time until later.

One important limitation to consider: If the crisis is your own medical situation, and there are heavy medications involved, you may want to consider whether you should limit your phone and laptop use to playing Farmville. WWI (working while impaired) could cost you your reputation, a client, or your job if you aren’t careful.

Bad: Everyone Knows Your (Personal) Business

Even if you are working during it, a crisis will still mean some change in your capacity or schedule to do your work. This will need to be explained, especially to any associates and clients who are affected. In a traditional corporate environment, someone else would probably just step in for you, explain that you are on medical or family leave, and take care of business. But especially if you are freelancer, you will have to do the explaining yourself and probably to some people who feel they know you well enough to be concerned. Explanations will need to be somewhat specific (“My grandmother is very ill”) and as a result, everyone ends up knowing your personal business. This also makes it harder to use work as an escape from stress since well-meaning concerned co-workers may ask how you are coping.

Bad: Pressure to Limit Time Off

Web workers can feel pressure from both within and without to limit time off in a crisis situation. Freelancers feel financial pressure because they aren’t getting paid, and may be incurring unusual expenses as well. There’s also concern that clients may look elsewhere if put off too long. Outside pressure can come from clients who think that since you web work (and probably from home) that you can do more during a crisis than is really practical or wise. Juggling these needs can make it tempting to limit your time away. Make sure you take what you truly need.

The flexibility of web work can be wonderful in a crisis but it has pitfalls too. Being aware of them means being able to navigate your work through a personal crisis as smoothly as possible.

Has being a web worker helped you navigate a personal crisis?

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You can be prepared. This situation is one that we should all consider in our plans.

Plan Ahead

It takes little effort to get so wrapped up in your work that you neglect your business’ big picture. You stay busy meeting your clients’ needs and handling administrative tasks. Don’t take the chance that a client suddenly goes out of business or lets go of consultants to bring all of the work in-house, leaving you with a huge drop in income. Plan ahead.

• Make marketing a regular part of your job: Whether you’re a one-person business or five, marketing remains key to averting “slow times.” It takes time to build relationships and turn those relationships into clients. This includes speaking, using social networks, sending email newsletters, and doing all the other things mentioned in the next section.
• Keep current clients happy: It costs more time and effort to convert a new client than to keep current ones. Just because you’re doing a project with an actual start and finish doesn’t mean you don’t have future opportunities with the client. Maybe the client will know someone in another department that needs you or new projects pop up.
• Review your client list: Take a look at your client list and determine how much of your income each brings. Lopsided figures can mean trouble. Address the problem now, rather than waiting until disaster occurs.
• Collect testimonials: Sometimes a client will give you feedback on the great job you did. Ask if you can publish that as a testimonial. If not, ask for a testimonial you can use.

Be Ready to React

You can find yourself in a situation where you’ve lost a big client without planning for the loss. This could even compel you to think that maybe it’s time to give up your business and return to a regular paying job that means commuting again. This happened to me when I had just begun my freelance writing career. I took a risk by sending an email to connections and received two new gigs, one of which I still have today — the decision paid off. Since we can’t always plan and anticipate the situation, we can plan how we’ll handle the situation, should it ever happen.

The key to reacting is to crank up the marketing gear. Put as much time into marketing as you can, even if you’re still not officially done with the client. Yes, you’ll need to work extra hours, but it’s a temporary sacrifice. Marketing efforts don’t lead to instant new clients. It takes time to ramp up and put your business out there. If you already make marketing a regular part of your job, you’re ahead of the game, and just need to build on it.

• Send email newsletters: If you don’t already publish email newsletters, start now. A good rule of thumb is to use 80 percent content offering value to the reader and 20 percent promoting your business.
• Offer to do guest blogging: Get your name out there in other blogs that speak to your market. Having your own blog helps, but potential clients may not have found their way there.
• Participate in social networks: If you don’t already do this daily, now’s the time to pick it up. We offer plenty of ways for businesses to take advantage of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.
• Cross-post everywhere: This simply refers to mentioning your blog and social media accounts in your email newsletter, and vice versa. If you have a blog, offer different ways for readers to receive updates. It amazes me how many blogs don’t offer email updates, and it’s usually just a matter of turning on the option.
• Look for speaking opportunities: Speakers gain almost instant credibility.
• Teach classes: You can teach an online class through a webinar or go to your community to find opportunities.

Many businesses flourish — even in rocky times — by never taking their success for granted. Never assume that one big client will always be there for you.

How do you ensure you your business keeps on keeping on?

Photo credit: rt1352

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The book begins by providing background on the importance of managing your company’s reputation online and the potential consequences if you don’t. It follows with practical instruction on using tools like social media and search engine optimization as ways to be proactive about managing your online reputation in order to achieve your business goals. The final section is about online monitoring of your reputation and managing an online reputation crisis.

The big emphasis in “Radically Transparent” is on being proactive in reputation management. The book’s practical recommendations center around creating a positive reputation through the use of tools like social media and blogs, instead of waiting to respond to critics in a crisis where you would always be playing catch-up. The philosophy is that actively building and monitoring your reputation can actually prevent a crisis from happening.

Some of the book’s sections (such as “The Power Of Blogs”) may be somewhat basic for WebWorkerDaily readers, but in total “Radically Transparent” is a very practical and comprehensive textbook on the topic of online reputation management. It won’t go over the heads of those who are inexperienced in the online marketing, but at the same time I believe even the most experienced online marketer will come away from “Radically Transparent” having picked up a few new tips and techniques.

If you work in marketing, this book would be a good recommendation for clients reluctant to implement online reputation management. For freelancers or small business owners, reading this book (and then sticking it on your bookshelf for references) will give you a great background in reputation and crisis management.

Although the book uses the stories of the online reputation problems of several large companies like Dell and JetBlue as examples, the lessons it contains aren’t limited to large companies — the authors translate the such experiences to apply them to the management of an individual’s reputation. Personal reputation management (or personal branding) is especially important to freelance web workers. Their online reputation is usually just as important as their off-line reputation.

In a way, the core message of the book is a slightly down one because it takes a somewhat fatalistic approach to the inherent negativity of the Internet. The core philosophy underlying the need for proactive reputation management is the assumption that it is “inevitable” that all of us will have our reputation attacked at some point. Unfortunately many of us can attest to the truth of that statement.

Interested in reading “Radically Transparent” for yourself? Chapter 1 is available for download as a PDF from the Radically Transparent web site.

Have you read “Radically Transparent”? Are you proactive about your reputation online?

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