In many ways developing a wiki culture is a lot like building a community garden where knowledge and knowledge sharing are the main products.
Wikis grow best through community, and there are many ways to reach current and potential community members. Most of the techniques discussed so far revolve around peer influence within a physical environment, an office, company, etc. But there are other techniques that can be used to promote wiki use and growth.
Due to their collaborative nature, wikis are often called a Web 2.0 technology. However, this is not strictly accurate, since they predate what we think of as Web 2.0 by a few years. Web 2.0 is generally used to describe the movement away from static webpages to dynamic, shareable content and the rise of social networking applications. The term Web 2.0 was first coined in 2004, ten years after the development of the first wiki.
Yet Web 2.0 tools, and social networks in particular, can be valuable assets in helping to promote and grow a wiki. The easiest and most effective technique is to build awareness of the wiki in other places that potential community members go.
This can be as simple as answering questions on an email group or making comments on blog posts that include links back to relevant articles in the wiki. Several software companies have used this technique, posting answers to questions asked on email lists with links to the relevant sections of their documentation wikis. Within a short period of time members of the email lists started both contributing to the wiki and posting wiki links themselves when answering other users questions.