If you plan to start gardening of a site for your organization, here are five basic best practices that you will want to keep in mind:

(1) Perhaps most important of all:  Preserve your ideas in text form somewhere (not necessarily on the site itself) so that what you know and believe about the processes of gardening does not reside only inside your head.  Even though turning the inside-your-head stuff into text that will reside in a Word document or even in html may seem threatening, you need to do this step.  If you choose to rely on keeping your ideas for process inside your head--which some people will just love to do--it is far better to take the time to transfer ideas into text.  The now-standard answer to justify why you should do transfer to text from stuff inside your head is kind of brutal and violent, but here goes:  What if you were to get hit by a bus tomorrow?  So, the first step is to write down your ideas and processes for gardening.  And, remember to look both ways before crossing streets where a bus may be heading in your direction!

(2) You should strive to balance your organization’s process requirements with an open and collaborative spirit.  That open and collaborative spirit should be genuine rather than someone’s idea of what should be happening at your organization.  Try not to lock down the processes so rigidly that you end up killing the spirit of gardening.  It is natural that people will be turned off by too many restrictions, rules and regs.

(3) Select only those individuals who will lead your organization’s gardening efforts who have proven people skills.  So much of your organization’s day-to-day gardening work may end up relying more upon interpersonal communication skills than on Web 2.0 theories and principles.  Here’s a horrible secret:  Sometimes, people who work with today’s technology are not so good at interpersonal communication.  So, go the extra distance to select individuals who will lead your organization’s gardening efforts who have a track record of being able to interact smoothly with people.  Let me be even more controversial:  Don’t put anyone who is hot-headed or frustrated or impatient into a lead role in your organization’s gardening efforts. 

(4) Just because someone went to a major university doesn’t make them an expert in gardening.  This means that in addition to looking for individuals to lead your organization’s gardening efforts who have proven people skills, you should be very careful if you hire people to get involved in gardening at your organization who are fresh out of their undergraduate degree program.  It is always preferable to hire a person who has some full-time experience working on websites and editing of online content after their undergraduate degree program than it is to hire someone immediately after their graduation.  Let other organizations have the honor of being that essential first job after graduation.

(5) You can always train someone with little or no Web 2.0 experience to be conversant in your organization’s culture and online communication (whether that be with public-facing sites or with sites that are for internal communication only).  This means that you need not seek only people who have Web 2.0 experience when you are trying to hire the best possible candidates for your organization’s gardening efforts.  The bottom line is that when you select those who will work in your organization’s gardening efforts, you really should look for individuals with demonstrate strongly effective interpersonal skills, above-average intelligence, proven adaptability and flexibility amid rapidly-changing work environments, and, an enthusiasm for doing gardening.