I am an old-school Internet nerd. I have been online for fifteen years now. I used to haunt the alt.net boards, Majordomo-based mailing lists and IRC, and actually remember “gopher”. What used to be called “netiquette” was a big deal to me. Had a marketing person started abusing those communities to promote a product, I would have jumped, immediately, on the Hissyfit Bandwagon.
Which is why, today, I try to have a modicom of sensibility when posting about my clients on Wikipedia. A lot of companies view Wikipedia as the organic search goldmine. That’s true. But it’s not a community that you can go posting your press releases in. Wikipedia is the product of thousands of people’s intelligence, work and dedication to the act of sharing knowledge. And, while it can be manipulated temporarily (as Stephen Colbert proved), it also reaches equilibrium again very quickly.
When sharing on Wikipedia, I have to ask clients – why is your company significant? It’s not enough just to want a post because it’s there. I have to craft and write the entry to show that company’s relationship to the rest of the world. I’ve added “Popular Culture” sections for some clients, where their companies are synonymous with pieces of the zeitgeist. (It’s a side fascination of mine, the way that brand names are now cultural reference points, metaphors, in American society). If a company has become part of commercial culture, if they have groundbreaking products, if they have somehow achieved some significance, then I can find a way to justify the post.
I thought, originally, that learning the Wiki markup language was the hurdle to Wikipedia. It isn’t. Being truly part of the community is the hard part. I do contribute as an individual – I added an article on the MV Kirkland last week, a boat which I logged a lot of hours on back in 2002. (It’s haunted!) But when I’m writing an article on a client from scratch, I first strip it of marketing speak, re-write it, and then take it to the editors and the admins to make sure it’s appropriate.
Social media is a conversation – not just between the brand & its consumers, but also between the brand and the community it wants to be part of. When you post a company’s information on Wikipedia, you’re not just taking advantage of its SEO traffic. Thinking like that gets the post deleted. You’re contributing knowledge to a community dedicated to sharing and learning. When you think about it like that, promoting products seems a little petty…and that’s exactly the mentality that anyone should have before trying to use the world’s largest encyclopedia for PR purposes.
