Is Your Brand Real? (Wikipedia or Bust...)
Wikipedia vs Encyclopedia
Wikipedia is often compared to encyclopedias while people debate which is better, more reliable, and more accurate. In response to one such study by the sience journal Nature, Britannica refuted the study in a PDF published on their corporate website.
Wikipedia's Rapid Ascent
Wikpedia has many errors, but lots of great content as well. Due to their open nature and remarkable originality, they have built a dominant web position from an idea in less than 5 years.
- Google seems to rank Wikipedia for just about everything. RankPulse, a historical study of 1,000 high value keywords, shows Wikipedia ranking on the first page of Google's search results for well over 90% of them.
- Ask.com has a special section on their search results just for Wikipedia.
- Alexa Internet lists Wikipedia as a top 10 property.
The Marketers Move In
Wikipedia aims to stay clear of commercial bias and advertisements. That goal has driven marketers to view inclusion in Wikipedia as a measuring stick for the effectiveness of their ad campaign.
In a blog post on conversational marketing, John Battelle wrote about a Cisco ad campaign that became part of the Wikipedia.
Of course, you go to Google, and you type in "the human network" or somesuch. And up pops Cisco's conversational media site. At least, that was what happened in the first month or so. But after a while, something else happened. Someone entered the term as a Wikipedia entry, and it was accepted for publication. In short, the term now means something, because Cisco engaged both authors and audiences in a dialog about its marketing's meaning
More recently, the University of Californi, Irvine used their Wikipedia listing to advertise their Informatics course on Google AdSense ads.
How much credibility would a Wikipedia listing add to your company? What could your company do or advertise to become worthy of your own Wikipedia page?
