2 Ways to Wiki

According to Wikipedia, the expert on wikis - since it is a wiki states, "...a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser... Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative wiki websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems." Wikis can also fall into the social media category because of the community aspect of it.

Wikipedia is a massive online encyclopedia that allows anyone who signs in to edit or add to an existing article or write a new article - which others can then edit. It is really quite awesome to be able to contribute to this popular online resource that the world literally goes to for information. It bears mentioning that there have been reports of misinformation on Wikipedia and claims of people or companies "tooting their own horns." The problem with that is how objective can information be if you are writing your own narrative. But not to get away from the topic (sorry), that Wikipedia is a great online resource and the erroneous or suspect information at some point will probably be removed.

How Can Wikis Help Small Businesses?

Because of the nature of the wiki, its uses have found its way into businesses. As a business owner, you are constantly communicating - whether it is with your staff, clients or vendors. You are either on the phone, emailing, faxing or texting. Let's focus on the emailing for a moment. Say that you are a web designer and you have started working on a project for a client to design a website. Prior to officially beginning the project, the barrage of emails has already started. But once the project gets underway, email go back and forth between you, the client, the design team and other people involved with the project. Documents, spreadsheets, information (phone#s, addresses, etc) are distributed back and forth while everyone tries to stay on top of what is going on.

Depending on the type of business you have, this can potentially be one big headache. Large companies more than likely have some type of system in place to keep things more manageable (but I have worked at some companies where that was not necessarily the case...), but how can a smaller business manage this more effectively?

Wouldn't it be nice if you could create an online central location/repository or workspace for all work related to project - including documents, useful information, meeting notes, decisions that have been made, photos, project milestones. Wouldn't it also be nice if you could set up a client extranet where your client could see what project milestones are being met and where the client could upload all images and additional content for a website? You would not have to be concerned if the file went to the right person or department. It is all in that central place for easy access. You can build a knowledge database for your company and categorize it so that any information about your company and its products and services could be stored and edited/updated (version controlling would no longer be an issue).

Is this all just wishful thinking? Quite the contrary...You can actually do all of this at little to no cost. There are two companies that I learned about that offer this service and I was really impressed with what they had to offer. The websites are:

• www.pbwiki.com - The cost is only $20 / month for a business account after a 14-day free trial. No credit card is needed. I like that because there have been numerous times when I was trying out a piece of software and forgot to cancel before the trial expired and was charged...not too crazy about that...Your cost is $20 but your clients access it for free.
• www.wikispaces.com - There are three pricing plans - Free, Basic - $5 / month, Super - $20. The difference in pricing is for the total file storage capacity and the per file maximum file limit. There are additional pricing options for non-profit organizations.

I think that most businesses could benefit from these online collaborative environments - or Wikis. But for companies that are involved with creative or technical work processes, where so many different teams are often involved with a single project, this could be especially helpful.