How to brush up your Wikipedia page

Most people turn to Wikipedia when they want to learn about companies. Although it is not a corporate channel that you can own and manage as you like, you can still improve the contents of your Wikipedia company page and get it accepted by the Wiki community. This is how you do it.

Three out of four capital market stakeholders use Wikipedia to get general information about companies, according to the 2015 Comprend Capital Market Report. You can improve the Wikipedia page about your company by making sure that the information is accurate, up to date and relevant for your readers. Just make sure to follow all the guidelines. For example, support all your edits with external references, such as newspaper articles.

Otto Giesenfeld, Senior Consultant and Wikipedia Expert at Comprend, shares his key recommendations for achieving a successful Wikipedia presence:

1) Get accepted by the Wiki community

The Wiki community often pays extra attention to articles related to companies, in order to make sure that Wikipedia is not used for advertising. So always be neutral, correct and humble. Be sure to follow the rule that requires you to disclose your relationship to the company. And remember: everything you do on Wikipedia is logged on your profile, so be professional at all times.

2) Be neutral

One of the main mistakes that companies make is to edit articles by adding slogans, strategies and ‘sell talk’. This is one of the things that Wikipedia editors look for the most, since Wikipedia encourages editors to “be bold in editing pages that are biased”.

3) Back everything up with references

Citing sources is very important on Wikipedia. It’s necessary to have proper references for as much information as possible. Information unsupported by references can put the page at risk for deletion.

Another rule is to avoid presenting original research directly on Wikipedia. The information needs to be found elsewhere and only be referenced to on Wikipedia.

4) Do not copy word-by-word from other sources

Information on Wikipedia is the most copied in the world, but this does not work both ways. You may not copy word-for-word from other sources and publish the information in a Wikipedia article.

“I’ve seen several cases where companies edited their Wikipedia article on a trial and error basis. This is not a good way of working – it may upset the Wiki community and lead to the cancellation of the whole article,” says Otto Giesenfeld, who has extensive experience helping companies manage their relationship with the Wikipedia community and ensuring balanced coverage in articles.

Get in touch with Otto

Otto Giesenfeld, Senior Consultant and Wikipedia Expert