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Even though hurricane season officially started on June 1, for some reason things don’t start rocking and rolling here in Virginia until September through to October. As I write this, wind and rain from Tropical Storm Hanna has already moved in and is going to make for a pretty unpleasant day.

Hopefully Hanna won’t cause us too much trouble, and thankfully Hurricane Gustav didn’t turn out to be the disaster we feared in the Gulf earlier this week. But hurricane season isn’t over until the end of November. And right behind Gustav and Hanna is Hurricane Ike and Josephine…it’s going to be a long three months.

Emergencies don’t have to be as large scale as a hurricane to cause you trouble in your life, your business, and your website…sometimes something as simple as a sudden illness, a computer crash, or problems with your web host can cut you off from your website. If you use your website to gather leads and to sell your work, long periods in which you can’t access your website or check your email means that orders can pile up, potential leads can get lost. Which is why it’s important to make every effort to stay connected in an emergency. Here are a couple tips that can help you:

Make preparations beforehand- If there is anything good about hurricanes, it’s the fact that you can see them coming and you can prepare for them. If you know that you may be disconnected from your website and your business for a period of time, prepare for it in advance. Post a notice on your website and/or blog explaining the situation. If you have an email list, notify your subscribers and customers beforehand. Then use your vacation settings on your email to automatically reply to people who are trying to contact you via email.

Keep people updated as much as possible- The thing that makes people anxious is when they don’t hear from you. If you can, create alternative ways to keep your customers updated on what’s going on. Using Twitter is a great way to do this. The Red Cross has been doing a great job of using Twitter and other web tools for disaster response. As long as you have access to a cell phone, you can send tweets via text message or through voices messages if you have a Jott account. Plus you can hook your Twitter account to your Facebook or Myspace account, your website or blog so you can post updates without having to access any of those sites.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter or Jott, you can check out my past posts on both:

Designate an “in case of emergency” person- Some emergencies like a sudden illness or accident will leave you unable to contact your customers through your website, blog, or email. To prepare for events like this, you should appoint someone you trust as a sort of “in case of emergency” person. Your emergency person can be someone you trust, such as a family member, friend, or an assistant who can send out emails and notices and post to your website and/or blog on your behalf.

When you choose your emergency person, train them on how to access your blog, your website, and your email. If part of their duties includes keeping the ecommerce side of your website going, you’ll need to train them on how to fill orders and update your web store. Write these procedures down along with instructions, usernames, and passwords down so that your emergency person will have something to refer to. Be sure to keep this information in a safe place…and tell your emergency person where to find it.

Backup, backup, and backup some more- Do you back your website and blog up regularly? How about the rest of your important files like your customer lists, product inventory, and sales records. If you don’t you need to start now and continue to do so. Why? What would happen if your computer crashed? Would you be able to access your customer list? What if something happened to your web host or the service running your blog? Would you be able to switch to a new service or host if you don’t have a copy of your files ready to go?

Make it a regular practice to backup your website, blog, and computer files. Burn your files to a rewriteable CD or DVD or to a portable hard drive and store them in a safe place, preferably away from your studio or home office. You can also use an online backup service like Mozy, Carbonite, or iDrive, but you should also keep an offline backup on DVDs or on a hard drive in case you can’t access the web. You should also tell your emergency person where your backups are and how to access them.

So now it’s your turn! How do you keep in contact with your customers during emergencies? Leave a comment and let us know!