Marketers should all think about innovation the same way R&D does and the same way Silicon Valley thinks about it. Accepting failure, demonstrating patience, tolerance for risk and unrivaled persistence.
Wikipedia is like a wonderful piece of furniture that comes with a big piece of paper “some assembly required.” You know, the one. It comes with instructions 20 pages long that are written in some strange form of English. To many, Wikipedia is a hostile place. Your Wikis were rejected, the community accused you of things you don’t understand, you don’t appreciate what they’re saying about you.
It’s because you didn’t follow the instructions. Really? Aren’t we lucky the Wikipedia community has created so many instructions. Mountains and mountains and mountains of instructions. What? You haven’t read them?
Wikipedia has been rated as the most influential website on the planet, beating out Twitter. Yup, Wikipedia is more important than Twitter. Wikis on Wikipedia show up in the top ten of 95% of all searches. Have you read Twitter’s instructions? You probably didn’t need to. I guess that’s why you’re on it – no assembly required.
Some of the largest PR agencies in the world don’t know how to work with Wikipedia. They have hands-off policies, have to explain to their clients it’s not what they do, or get embarrassed when they do it only to get pulled aside to Wikipedia’s COI noticeboard where they’re publicly lambasted.
Every single time someone tells me Wikipedia isn’t important, within five minutes I can pull up the username or IP address they used to make edits unsuccessfully. In some cases, their story of public humiliation on Wikipedia, where every edit is transparent, is astounding. It’s ok, I was there too about three years ago.
When did it become ok to give up? To forgo learning new things because they are too hard? To not tackle a problem because the instructions are too long? When did it become ok to put our heads in the sand on the world’s most important website?
The answer is because it’s too hard.
When did dubious and seedy shortcuts become commonplace? Why does the unethical behavior of organizations like Bell Pottinger drive fear into the hearts of honest organizations? And why does the news of their atrocious behavior not surprise me? I suppose I might as well ask why human nature isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
I shouldn’t have a beef. The utter lack of expertise is why I get to do work that I love. Every client I have, I have because they went to their PR agency first and didn’t get the answer or result they wanted. It’s good for me they haven’t figured it out. That I can partner instead of compete with them.
I’m frustrated because we gave up. We gave up so damn easily.
-End Rant
About The Author David King @David44357
David is a seasoned communications professional, a social media marketer, and an expert in Wikipedia marketing. He consults with legal, governance and risk professionals on Wikipedia, writes corporate Wikis, codes in Wikipedia’s HTML-style language, collaborates with the community and follows Wikipedia’s complex community policies for verification, neutrality, encyclopedic tone and conflict of interest. Also, he regularly speaks, blogs, trains and educates others to raise awareness on the importance of Wikipedia and how corporations can make safe, welcomed contributions. You can download his Wikipedia for Marketing Whitepaper. To contact him call (919) 605-2115.
paulrobertspar
December 14, 2011
Steve, thanks for giving David this venue for this post. It is a good topic for discussion.
David, I enjoyed the read. Honestly, I hadn’t given this too much thought recently which is why it took me so long to comment.
The one place where I take some exception with you is in your comment that we as an industry have given up because – as you say – it is too hard. I think this is where you need to address the industry in a couple of different segments – in-house communicators and agency folks.
You are right that communications and marketing professionals as a whole shouldn’t ignore Wiki, but I think agency folks should indeed have a hands-off approach for a couple of reasons.
It’s all about risk reward and demand. Doing it wrong presents risk for an agency. Being slammed for anything bordering on unethical behavior in the service industry is a death nail. A company that may get called out for not following every one of the 20 pages of Wiki laws will not be harmed as much as a communications agency. Hands off.
For a moment, let’s put aside (for now) any ethical or risk issues and look simply at demand. Unless you are the largest of agencies, it just doesn’t scale to specialize in this singular tactic. Yes, tactic. Working with Wiki doesn’t simply fit into other specialties. You can call it media, social media, or reputation management, or even crisis management, but that don’t make it true. Wiki changing rules and regulations has made this very clear. It’s a different animal because it wants to be.
In the long run, agencies would do well to be able to provide clients with some guidance or refer them to a specialist. This is good news for you.
People like to talk about Wiki because of the love/hate relationship it has with marketing and PR folks, but in thinking about this some more, from a demand perspective, working with Wiki isn’t that dissimilar from core PR offerings like media training.
This is a specialty that some agencies offer, while many simply provide a lightweight training offering and partner with specialist for the real heavy lifting. The reason they do this is that most clients don’t need real media training with video, dry runs, days of practice sessions, voice and attire tips etc. (just as most clients don’t need Wiki counsel). And for those that do need counsel, probably require a dedicated specialist that isn’t cost effective to keep on staff.
Next time I get a client asking for this specialty, I’ll look you up. Do you do media training too?
Thanks.
david443572David King
December 14, 2011
It’s a great point – agencies put large budgets at risk by taking on a tiny Wikipedia budget they don’t have the expertise to deliver on. A hands-off policy without offering a solution is infuriating to the client, but developing real expertise in-house doesn’t make sense. Many agencies think they have the expertise in-house, but are unknowingly violating ethical, legal and Wikipedia rules – putting themselves and their clients at risk.
However, even partnering with a Wikipedia expert is different than giving up. I would call that finding a solution.
Wikipedia is pretty much all I do. That’s kind of the beauty of it – I don’t compete with agencies for anything. But most my business comes directly from companies, after their PR agency doesn’t give them what they were looking for.
Chris Owen
October 9, 2012
Hi there,
I must say, once you get past the offensive headline, there’s nothing else here which backs up your claim that PRs are too stupid to use Wikipedia.
You cite Bell Pottinger’s misuse which wasn’t an example of them being too stupid to use it, but rather too arrogant to think they could manipulate facts and get away with it.
Beyond that, it’s universally accepted that PR agencies don’t handle their clients Wiki pages; as you mention, it’s in the site’s COI and is just seen as too much of a conflict of interest and not a role an agency should perform.
It’s not that we shy away from it because it’s too hard, it’s that we’re told it’s not for us to manage, and we should get on with what we do best; engagement, dialogue, conversations, essentially: relations with the public – not writing one-way company information pages on Wikipedia.
Suggesting PR agencies don’t handle it because ‘it’s too difficult’ is patronising, naive, ignorant, offensive, and bull-headed in the extreme.
Chris
Steve Farnsworth A.K.A. @Steveology
October 9, 2012
Chris, thank you for your comments. This issue still creates hot debates.
To be fair to the author, David King, he did not write the headline. I did. However, I find your characterization of the question format headline as offensive very odd. The headline is provocative for sure, but I think it cuts to the heart of the controversy. Why do agencies give up editing Wikipedia?
While David and I don’t agree fully on this issue, I do appreciate his point of view, as I do yours. Also, I feel you have mischaracterized David’s article. You say that David used Bell Pottinger as an example of being stupid. He in fact cites it as unethical, and goes on to say honest PR agencies should NOT fear working on Wikipedia.
Unordinary Customer
December 1, 2012
May be that’s a hint to create a new form of Wikipedia that would be clearer and easier to comprehend. How about Easypedia? :-)
brandonorr
December 11, 2012
Reblogged this on brandonorr.
bwhalley
December 21, 2012
Wikipedia is like blogging. Don’t write about what’s important to you. Write about what’s important to your customers. It’s 2012 and most PR people still don’t understand that the way to get people excited about your content, and sharing it is to write about what matters to them.
People posting feature lists without sources will continue to waste time on Wikipedia. People who post encyclopedia-style content with citations and useful information will succeed in their place.