Reputation X developed a new Wikipedia article for a financial services company.
Situation
Our client was a New York-based financial services firm. The financial services sector can often be challenging for Wikipedia development, as many editors are business-averse, and recently incorporated firms are especially difficult to develop for.
Our approach
Our approach can be summarized as follows:
- Utilize the firm's PR experts to generate additional reference content
- Develop mentions of our client on existing relevant Wikipedia articles
- Encourage Wikipedia editors to prepare by improving certain existing articles
- Develop a stub (short) article
- Add to the article organically over time
Closing the reference gap
The PR component of most companies tends to focus on promotional communications. But promotional content does not qualify as notable references for Wikipedia. Reputation X developed a strategy that leveraged relationships the PR team within the company already had. We provided target publication examples, content structure recommendations, and best practices. Within 90 days, the internal PR team had facilitated five articles to be published in trusted industry publications that fit the criteria needed for Wikipedia references.
Mentions on relevant articles
While the client's internal team was working on references, Reputation X developed a content improvement plan targeting related Wikipedia articles with the objective of adding mentions of the client and their executives in relevant existing articles. This gave us the opportunity to link those mentions to the eventual article.
Improve similar Wikipedia articles
While the content plan was being developed and executed, we encouraged a small group of existing Wikipedia contributors to improve the articles of companies similar to the planned article for our client. A handful of existing articles that had content issues were improved. This exercise not only improved Wikipedia but gave the editors experience editing articles for financial services firms.
Development of the stub
With references to our client-developed on existing articles, new reference articles developed, and a handful of Wikipedia editors up to speed, we directed one of the editors to create a stub (starter article). Every important statement in the article was backed up by new or existing strong references. Then we waited to see how the article would be received.
Organic expansion
The article was accepted by the community and even drew a few edits from other editors. Once we knew the article was relatively safe, we directed editors to make additions to the article roughly following the prescribed format. Since the Wikipedia editors Reputation X works with are fully independent, they can make any edits they feel necessary. Most of the time, the edits are within 85% of the original format; this was the case for our client.
Outcome
Within six months, the article was live and had been developed with neutral (non-negative) sentiment per Wikipedia guidelines. It has been nearly one year since the development of the article, with slow, organic improvements taking place over time. The Wikipedia article ranks number two under the client's own site in Google search results in every major market the company serves.