Know what?  Not everybody’s a web genius.  Not everyone has a family member who codes for a living.  And many small business and individuals have no idea how to get up on the web, and unfortunately have come to believe that it’s incredibly difficult and expensive.

Which is not to say that a custom, professional site created by people who really know what’s important on the web (search-engine visibility, relevant content written for web readers, design that puts function over “pretty”) aren’t worth their weight in gold — they are.

But spare gold is hard to come by for many of us just now.

I work with a lot of small businesses and individuals just trying to get the word out about what they offer and start to develop relationships with potential customers.  And the web needs to work for them, too.

My go-to recommendation is WordPress.

WordPress is a fast, easy, way to be up and running on the web.  Often thought of as solely a blogging platform, WordPress is actually my favorite startup website platform — even for companies (or individuals) without a blog.  It’s become my favorite content management system.

Why?

1)  It’s easy to manage yourself.

There’s nothing more frustrating to a small business operator than having to get in touch (and pay) a contractor or consultant every time they want to change a few words, add a new page, or update a price on their website.  Those things add up.  With a little training, anyone can learn to make additions and changes to their own WordPress website.

WordPress also has tons and tons of great “plugins” that add functionality to your website so you don’t have to learn how to code yourself.  You can link to your social media activity, add video, do your own search engine optimization, even add a shopping cart — all by yourself.

2)  It’s pretty

There are literally thousands of great themes for WordPress, and many of them are free.  They’re easy to choose and even easier to switch out if you want a different look.  Use one of the templates “as is” (here’s my husband’s personal job-search site we made together in about 2 hours), or build on a template with the help of a talented designer (here’s a client site developed with a little help from some creative friends).

3)  It’s inexpensive.

You can host your site on WordPress.org or WordPress.com, or use a full-service hosting service like Page.ly which charges a few bucks a month and offers domain name registration, training and support (read this post from Social Media DIY Workshops about which might be best for you).  Either way you’ve got a very economical approach to getting up on the web.

4)  It’s a great learning tool.

I didn’t even know what WordPress was when I was laid off in January 2009.  I needed a way to get a site up for my new business quickly and inexpensively, and a friend suggested WordPress.  Since I’ve never developed a website, it took a few rounds of working with people to do it for me before I started to get comfortable with managing it all by myself.  And trust me, if I can do it, ANYONE CAN.  I have friends I can tap when I need advice, and there’s lots of support on the web if you’re stuck or trying to figure out how to do something.  I’m even starting to pick up a little HTML on the side (and keep in mind that my only computer class in college was FORTRAN — on punch cards).

So if you’re a small business, and need a website, check out WordPress.  If you’re looking for a job and don’t have a personal site, get one — quick.  If you need help with it, there’s lots out there.  And even if you hire someone to help you build and maintain it, you’re going to find it’s a lot cheaper that trying to start from scratch with a customer site — and will be up and running much more quickly, too.

I use mind-mapping software like crazy.  But in addition to its obvious assistance with brainstorming, I’ve found it very useful in a variety of planning activities I do for clients every day.  I use a Mac-only program called MindNode Pro, developed by Markus Müller, an independent software developer in Vienna.  (Markus also has an outstanding free version, MindNode, that is chock-full of functions and has also developed a version for the iPhone/iPod Touch.)  There are lots of different options out there, but I’ve found MindNode to be the easiest to use and most flexible for what I do.

1)  Survey Development

I design a lot of surveys for my segmentation work.  Typically, they’re big, hairy things designed to accommodate multiple groups (current customers, prospects) and ask lots of kinds of questions (competitive set, purchase behavior, motivations, demographics, message relevance, etc.).  They always involve a lot of skip logic (“if answer is A, skip to Question 23″) and inevitably blocks of questions I want everybody to answer, no matter which group they’re in.

As with any survey, my goal is always to make responding as smooth, fast and easy for participants as possible, while limiting the amount of data consolidation I have to do on the back end.  I have found mapping software to be extraordinarily valuable in developing the flow of a survey and ensuring all questions are asked at the appropriate stage, and in helping me to figure out where skips need to happen so I can redirect respondents appropriately through the survey.

The other great thing about this approach is that it’s much more client-friendly than simply showing them a typical text-based survey document for approval.  It’s much easier for them to follow the flow of the survey, to see how a respondent will move through it, and to ensure that all necessary information is covered (and that unnecessary information is excluded).  Once the map is complete it’s a cinch to code the survey accurately.

Here’s a map of a recent survey I conducted for Spring Arbor University in Michigan (more on Spring Arbor’s segmentation project, shared with their permission, in an upcoming series of posts).  Once the survey’s coded I always return to the map and place the question numbers on each node so I can easily find them later.  Believe it or not, this complex survey took the average respondent only 18 minutes to complete and had a very high completion rate.

2)  Marketing Plans

Let’s face it — figuring out what your marketing efforts should look like for the next year can be overwhelming – especially when that fat written document starts to get really long.  However, marketing planning should really be a logical series of decisions based on what you want to accomplish, and what you need to do to accomplish it.  I have found mapping to be a great way to think through the logical requirements of a marketing plan, which can then be used as the basis for a written document (if necessary).  As this partial example shows, a mind map can make the logical extensions of objectives and strategies easier to work with.

3)  Website Content

I also find maps useful for laying out content for websites.  It can help me try different options for topline navigation, and identify the probable number of pages. Here’s an example of a preliminary site map I did for a client — I find they can more easily understand the relationships of pages to each other when I can show them links visually like this.

I’m sure there are many other uses for this kind of tool, and I’ll continue to share the ones I find.  Are you using mapping tools in your workflow?  Please share!