How to Enable a Wikipedia Entry about your Event - Northern Voice
As Wikipedia inches its way toward being one of the top search results for every entry it contains, the temptation to write or edit an entry about yourself or your company is pretty hard to resist.
Resist!
Darren Barefoot, a founding organizer of Vancouver’s Northern Voice conference, posted the question of whether there should be a Wikipedia entry on the conference’s website, and provided some links to background information. Then he sat on his hands.
"I figured it was appropriate to ask the community whether we needed one," Darren said by e-mail. "Presumably if nobody created an entry, then we don’t merit one. I wouldn’t have gone much further than that–it wouldn’t be kosher to ask an individual friend or colleague to create an entry."
The result: a short, but factual entry about the "annual blogging, social software and online communities conference." Northern Voice attendee D’Arcy Norman wrote the piece, and, after it was posted, Barefoot fact-checked it, clarifying that the conference is spelled as two words.
A case study example of how to spark an idea, provide the essential information, and provide help if someone takes the initiative to follow through. That’s classic public relations, and in keeping with Wikipedia’s policies.
Barefoot experienced Wikipedia firsthand recently, when someone created a Wikipedia entry about him. In that instance, he didn’t do any prompting to get the entry, but checked it for accuracy, and made some corrections.
I’ll be at Northern Voice Friday and Saturday, looking for more examples of how people and organizations promote themselves and communicate with customers, media and others.
Tags: nothernvoice, nv2007, promotion, communications, business, technology, blogging, wikipedia, case study, darren barefoot, pr
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POSTED IN: Advocacy, Communication Tactics, Conferences and Webinars, Event Management, New Media, Promotions, Social Media
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