The Five Most Common Mistakes Companies Make with Wikipedia
Most companies approach Wikipedia the wrong way. Avoid these five common mistakes that can damage your credibility and waste your time.
Working successfully on Wikipedia is very difficult from a brand perspective. Many companies, perhaps even most, start out trying to approach it the same way they might approach a social media platform—or, if they're a little more sophisticated, like a traditional publication. But Wikipedia is neither, and these approaches usually fail.
To be successful, it helps to understand what Wikipedia is all about, and also what it definitely isn't. Here are five common mistakes I have seen brand representatives make on Wikipedia too many times to count.
Mistake 1: Editing Their Own Page Directly Without Disclosure
This is the oldest one in the book, and by far the most common. Perhaps a bit less so today than in Wikipedia's earlier years, but we are by no means past it.
Wikipedia's conflict of interest rule says if you're financially or otherwise closely connected to a real-world entity, like a company or person on Wikipedia, you are respectfully asked not to edit the page directly. But this COI rule is not featured prominently on the website, so companies that haven't done their research may have heard it's the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" and jump in and try doing it themselves.
Big mistake. Doing so can result in an editor giving you the business about it, and it can even result in a warning tag being added that can be difficult to get removed. You're better off using the Talk page or other behind-the-scenes discussion areas to make the case for the changes you think should be made, and asking them to consider making changes for you.
Mistake 2: Over-Reliance on Press Releases or Owned Media as "Sources"
The second most common mistake is trying to use company-generated sources to verify key facts in a new or existing Wikipedia entry. It's not hard to see why this happens so often: if a fact is straightforward and uncontested, why not simply go straight to the source? After all, who knows more about the company than the company itself?
But the problem here is that Wikipedia editors are skeptical that companies will tell the truth and the whole truth—your company resources are ultimately created with the purpose of promoting the company, not simply informing the public. Wikipedia's aims are the latter, and they trust independent sources and especially those of an academic or journalistic nature over marketing copy.
Beyond the credibility of the source, verifiability alone is not sufficient to add information. Editors also want verification that an independent evaluator agreed the topic was a matter of public interest and worth including.
Mistake 3: Confusing Notoriety with Notability
The word "Notability" is a challenging one. It might have been better if Wikipedia editors chose something else, like "Eligibility", that carries less of a value judgment. After all, notability is a common word that means significance or importance, yet Wikipedia means something specific and more narrow by it.
Not just is this entity important by whatever standard of judgment one wants to use—and there is no shortage of possibilities—but instead they are seeking to judge it by one vector or criteria, and that is the independent news media.
Worse, the word is often easily confused or conflated with the idea of "notoriety" which has a little more sizzle, but not always for good reasons. The truth is, because Wikipedia relies on the news media, it also shares its defects. News publications often lean toward the sensational because that gets clicks and eyeballs, so in general it is probably easier to get on Wikipedia for the wrong reasons.
Mistake 4: Thinking Notability Is a Function of How Many Press Hits You've Received
How many news stories do you need to get a Wikipedia article? There is no specific number, which can be a point of frustration. While certainly more than one is needed, and the more sources you have, the better, ultimately it's not about their quantity but their quality.
It is both about the breadth of coverage—meaning have multiple outlets considered your brand newsworthy—and also the depth of coverage, meaning the articles contain details which can be used to write about you.
PR pros will often build spreadsheets with links to press coverage, oftentimes passing mentions, or syndicated versions of the same stories across different websites. It may well be worth having these for their own sake, but these will not help you on Wikipedia.
And let's say your CEO is quoted often about your industry, but the articles don't go into any detail about your company. That article isn't going to help your case. It's great to be quoted, but if you aren't the subject of the article, they don't count toward establishing Notability—even if there are a lot of them.
Mistake 5: Treating Wikipedia as a PR Channel Rather Than an Encyclopedia
Although Wikipedia shares many things in common with social media platforms—it's free to sign up, pages are editable right away, it's free to access and read worldwide by millions—there is even more they don't have in common.
Social media sites want brands to come do marketing on their site, and of course pay for the privilege. But Wikipedia is not like that. It is first and foremost an educational resource, compiling information of an academic nature on matters of science and technology, arts and architecture, sports and literature—and yes, also business topics.
The fact that Wikipedia includes within its remit covering major companies and public figures does not mean it exists to market these organizations. In fact Wikipedia will also write about the controversies these brands would prefer to omit. And just because a fact is no longer true about a company—like a product discontinued or a business unit spun off—doesn't mean Wikipedia wants to cut it; instead it should be preserved and made past tense. So long as there's an independent source verifying it, of course.
Wikipedia does have overlap in some ways with PR and marketing channels, but it operates according to different rules and should be understood before getting involved.
The Takeaway
The key thing uniting all of these is that Wikipedia has its own specialized rules around how it views the subjects it covers and the sources it accepts as verification. These rules must be respected if you want to be effective on Wikipedia, otherwise you're likely to find it incredibly frustrating.
Let's Talk
If you need more sources to tell your story on Wikipedia, The Notability Company can help you prepare the right foundation for making it happen. Get in touch with us and let's see how we can work together to get your brand ready for Wikipedia.