Build it and they will come

Build it and they will come? Maybe so, but maybe not. One of the challenges in managing an active wiki is getting people involved – and not in just reading, but in contributing to its content. Here's a link to Ross Mayfield's blogpost about an adoption strategy for social software in the enterprise.

Here are some suggestions to getting like-minded people involved on a wiki with you:

• Post a message on a relevant forum
  
• Link to your wiki from relevant newsgroups and message boards
  
• Find those who are blogging about your topic and post a comment referencing your wiki
  
• Place a campaign for assistance on a relevant Talk Page on other related wikis
  
• Work with your wiki host to ensure the code it’s generating is search engine friendly so that it will be found easily
  
• Submit your URL to search engines
  
• Create relevant tags for the wiki content
  
• Volunteer to speak at a local meeting of a club or association related to your topic
  
• Put your wiki’s URL in your e-mail signature
  
• Ask others who are hosting websites related to your topic to consider posting a link to your site and you, in turn, add a link to theirs on yours
  
• In your organization, select a wiki champion, who is knowledgeable about wikis, will be an advocate of wikis as a best practice in collaboration, and will coach employees

Do you have other suggestions? Post a comment to tell us what you think.

Here's a video by Stewart Mader on how to grow wiki adoption:

As posted on YouTube by slmader

You don't want to miss his video series 21 Days of Wiki Adoption



Image credit: Original photo CC by license in Flickr User Start Cooking