In today’s fast-moving business environment, internal wikis are powerful support for organizing company knowledge and smoothing business processes. However, most companies commit common mistakes while getting down to implementation, and those drawbacks prevent them from gaining full potential from their wiki platform. Whether one has never used a wiki or is looking to improve an existing setup, being aware of these pitfalls can ensure success. With MyWikis, businesses get tailored Wiki solutions that avoid such challenges at the very outset.
1. Mistake: Lack of Clear Ownership
Without ownership, the company’s wiki becomes chaotic: without someone in charge to oversee quality or updating of the content, information in a wiki quickly gets filled with outdated, irrelevant pieces, or is just poorly organized.
How to Avoid It: Assign a particular team or person to become a “wiki owner” and be responsible for the content, updating it from time to time and ensuring accuracy of information. This is supported on MyWikis through permission settings, allowing you to distribute ownership with other members so that this practice stays consistent.
2. Lack of Definition on the Structure of the Wiki
It is one of the most common mistakes-wikis that are created without thought to what will go into them. In such a case, when nobody has any idea where any information may be found, that leads to confusion and duplicated content.
How to Avoid This: Before you launch your wiki, put some thought into what a clear structure and hierarchy of categories and pages your wiki will have. MyWikis provides businesses with customizable templates to help organizations create intuitive, organized wikis that grow with your company.
3. Too Much Information Overload on the Users
A wiki is devised to be an easy way of sharing knowledge, but on the other hand, if a user has too much to access from one single platform, then that might get overwhelming. Companies just tend to dump data without considering how far that goes with the end user.
How to avoid it: Chop the information down into small, bite-sized pieces. Create separate pages or sections for subjects that require more detail. Through the custom solutions with MyWikis, companies will be able to create simple systems of navigation through which information will become more accessible.
4. Mistake to Avoid: Not Updating It Regularly
One would think that once the wiki has been set up, it can maintain itself. On the other hand, knowing that one has ceased updating the platform and maintaining it regularly, obsolete information and disengaged users will then result.
How to avoid it: Set up a routine review process whereby content is audited for updating or removal if no longer relevant. MyWikis helps you schedule reminders for updates so your wiki will be a current, fresh resource for your team.
5. Mistake: Employees are not engaging enough.
Even when the wiki is correctly set up, some organizations cannot get their employees to participate in it. Without employee buy-in with the wiki, it will not be used as intended, and any potential benefits from knowledge sharing are lost.
How to Avoid It: Encourage employee participation by training them in using the wiki for their benefit and incentivize contributions. MyWikis offers integrations and collaboration features that will make this seamless, simple, and easy for employees to be a part of it.
6. Mistake: Not Customizing
Most out-of-the-box solutions of Wikis lack flexibility to mould according to specific needs of an enterprise. Enterprises go the wrong way: Their own flavor or ‘special sauce’ is not replicated on the wiki-at least, that would be their ideal result.
How to Avoid It: Instead consider a customized wiki solution like MyWikis, where you can completely customize the look and feel as well as the functionality of the wiki so it can precisely meet your company’s needs. Custom wikis meet your needs today and grow with your business.
7. Error: Not Taking User Feedback
Sometimes a company would roll out a wiki and then move along without any feedback about its usability from the users. This often leads to features that employees don’t find useful or problems that never get fixed.
How to Avoid It: Regularly ask your team for feedback on using the wiki, what’s missing, and what needs improvement. Fortunately, MyWikis has made it very easy to shape and mold the adjustments needed within your wiki from user input to keep the platform useful.
Conclusion
In fact, these common mistakes represent the ways companies can avoid impeding their internal wiki’s fullest potential in productivity and collaboration. At MyWikis, we specialize in creating customized wikis that will guarantee your company will not fall into these traps. That means our intuitive, extensible solution will be tailored to fit the needs of your business and ensure long-term success with your internal wiki.
Upgrade the way your business manages knowledge? Build a custom wiki solution with MyWikis today!
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