Why Isn’t My Own Company Listed On Wikipedia

In order to promote your organization and build your brand, it is vital that you use every marketing tactic at your disposal. Businesses today are using Wikipedia as one of the marketing platforms to achieve success and recognition from Wikipedia, but it is not necessary that every business may succeed in having a Wikipedia page for their business. Perhaps, most importantly, should your business even have a Wikipedia page?

It has not been that long ago that Wikipedia was accused of having some problems regarding authenticity and containing factual errors. However, the reliability and trustworthiness of the website have significantly improved since then, and Wikipedia is now used as an effective marketing platform for converting customers and making a brand identity.

Wikipedia, in its core, is an encyclopedic website containing facts and information on a diverse range of topics and it’s not an easy job to write a Wikipedia page. However, with the help of Wikipedia writing service or a quality PR firm, you can learn how to benefit your company with a Wikipedia page.

Why do businesses want to be a part of Wikipedia?

Wikipedia ranks in the list of top five most visited websites around the globe. If you search anything on the search engines, it has a 99% chance to have a Wikipedia page listing on the first page of the search engine research page provided; it already has an entry on the subject.

Having more than five million articles on varying subject and more to come, companies and businesses can add to their reputation and get more conversions than having a website on LinkedIn or Twitter. While educational institute may not recommend relying on Wikipedia, it has a good starting point to get an insight into various subjects. To put it in simple words, it can become a place where people can find your business and can consider your brand.

What factors can help you to get your Wikipedia page?

It is not a lie that Wikipedia has a user-edit nature and any user having a Wikipedia account can edit the information present on Wikipedia. However, as said above, it is not an easy task. Wikipedia has numerous requirements you must meet to write or edit the information on Wikipedia. Among all the requirements, three of the most important are mentioned below.

Is your business wiki-worthy

As said above, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which means, it does not allow self-promotional, opinionative, or advertising content. If you attempt to do that, Wikipedia might ban you from ever writing or editing the content on Wikipedia. All the information you enter on the platform must have authentic and proven facts from notable sources. Published news article on various platforms is a good example of a notable source to enter in Wikipedia. This is something that can be a daunting task for a small or middle sized business to have a Wikipedia article.

Creation of valuable content

While your company may not be notable or have a news article published on various platforms, but your company can still have a Wikipedia entry, provided, you have authentic, well-researched blog posts on credible sites to provide in the “citation needed” entries to build links which can help your article to get deleted or flagged.

Honesty

Wikipedia insists that the writers and editors providing information or editing it are volunteers and not paid employees of a firm. So if you have any connection to the topic or a company, you must disclose the information right away. This is because paying someone to write an article can have a serious drawback in getting your article published on Wikipedia.

How can you get your business listed on Wikipedia?

Where keeping in mind the three important factors that can affect your chances of publishing a Wikipedia page, you need to remember that Wikipedia requires three elements in the content to be published on the platform: neutrality, reliability of the information and notability. The page must neither have to glorify information nor should it have negative comments on a specific topic. Most importantly the information you add on Wikipedia must be backed up with legitimate resources in order to be notable.  

You can follow these steps to get an article created for Wikipedia.

Create a stub

A stub is a brief article about the detailed facts you are going to publish on Wikipedia. It contains a few sentences that explain the main topic with credible third-party resources adding credibility to your information. According to some of the leading marketers, providing the community with a stub is all right, until and unless it contains facts about your business in a simple and unbiased language.

Compose a well-research article

Make sure that you have your approval before you begin with your article. You must remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and requires a lot of research and citations that can prove your claims. Make sure you have enough links and sites to provide them as external resources for Wikipedia. You can also have the help of external resources such as your PR firm or a Wikipedia writing agency to have an authentic article for your business.

Proof read your article to get rid of the errors

Proofreading is no brainer for a writer. It eliminates the chances of having errors in the information, making your information more worthy of being on Wikipedia. Edit any possible mistake to eliminate the chance of providing any misinformation to the readers as well as eliminating any chance of getting the information deleted or flagged on Wikipedia.

Monitoring and updating

Your job just doesn’t end at writing and publishing the content on Wikipedia, but this is where it gets more difficult. Wikipedia having a user-edit nature, can backfire at your business by getting edited by a competitive company. Monitoring the article eliminates this possibility and ends up in better results for your business. Not just that, you also need to make sure to update your information on Wikipedia always to provide your audience with updated information about your achievements.  

There could be many reasons why your business might not have a Wikipedia page, but these are some reasons which can lead to possible deletion of your article on the platform. However, if you need to have a Wikipedia page for your business, you need to make sure that your organization has enough new articles and appearances to make your article more authentic and credible.