The Wiki-Wizards presents

How to Make your Organization Wikipedia Official: Insider Tips, Tricks,

and Strategies

Kasey R. Baker Frank C. Jones@TheWikiWizards

Why Should you Care about Wikipedia?

1. 6th most viewed website in the world2. Legitimacy for your organization3. Featured in Google Knowledge Graph4. Competitive advantage over your competition5. Staying power of information on Wikipedia

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521,872,733 Wikipedia April 2015 home page hits

What do Readers do when they get to Wikipedia:Search for an articleRead the introductionBrowse the outlineSkim for important sectionsClick through the sources for additional information

- These sources can be your articles!

Drive Traffic to your Site

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● Your company must have things that are noteworthy○ Having a news organization publish about your

accomplishments

● It’s not easy to get an article to stick on Wikipedia○ But once it's on Wikipedia, it's hard to remove

● This exclusivity community builds legitimacy because so few companies can get on Wikipedia

Legitimacy and Noteworthy

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Competitive Advantage

http://www.google.com/search?q=robert+a+clifford

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Why is it so hard to get into Wikipedia?

● It’s an encyclopedia, not a marketing channel● The content is published under an open license

○ You don’t own the content○ You can’t control what others publish○ Sometimes negative things can be published

● Avoid marketing jargon, bias, and sales pitch of any type

● It’s difficult to define what’s “notable”○ Every line of text must be published by a news

source and cited

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Revenue for your Business

All this boils down to income, publishing on Wikipedia can boost your revenue when done correctly.● Website Traffic● Search results● Competitive advantage● While links on Wikipedia are no-follow, you can still

boost SEO with increased traffic and social sharing

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Nobody likes Spam

● When marketing departments work on articles for Wikipedia, the content sounds like an infomercial.

● Forget about keywords, persuasive arguments, and colorful languages.

● Every statement needs to be backed up with a quality source from a news outlet

● Be anonymous with your user name, i.e. NOT “JoeThePlumberMarketer”

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How to become “Notable”

1. Do something worthy of press coverage (events, service projects, major accomplishments, ...)

2. Publish a press release3. Use social networks, or hire a PR firm, to get

media coverage4. Add this coverage to an ongoing file for future

citation5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 until “notable”

This helps your business even if you don't build a Wikipedia article

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Tricks for Writing your first Article

1. Start small. A few lines or even a short article. 5,000 - 10,000 characters of wiki-code max.

2. Backup every statement with a quality citation3. Don’t worry about keywords and other content

marketing requirements. Anyone should understand what you have written.

4. Before you write a new article, find places in Wikipedia to add dead links to the future article○ Someone may find these dead links and write

the article for you, then you can expand it with edits

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Tips for Handling Conflicts with Wikipedian

● Always remain anonymous○ Don’t give them any ammunition to claim you

have a bias toward the subject of your article● Focus on the facts of the article● Avoid opinions and ground your arguments with

citations● Get to know other Wikipedians that can help

○ Participate in edit-a-thons○ Join the local user group○ Contribute to projects outside of work

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How to Drive Traffic to your Site with Wikipedia Links

1. Find a dead link - wikigrabber.com2. Create a great resource to replace that dead link3. Publish your source4. Post an update to replace the dead link on

Wikipedia

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The Wiki Wizards Checklist

Go to

TheWikiWizards.com/DMFB

to download The Wiki Wizards Checklist

and get a copy of these slides

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Thank You

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Frank C Jones - Frank@TheWikiWizards.com

Kasey R Baker - Kasey@TheWikiWizards.com

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