Wikipedia and LinkedIn can serve your PR campaign


Part of the internet revolution has been the proliferation of online information services. Individuals research nearly anything online: students use the internet to research for assignments, buyers use it to source suppliers, and authors use it to produce situation studies.

One very widely used site is Wikipedia. It is an online encyclopedia (for anybody who doesn't know this already) that is created by its contributors. People who know something about something can write an article for Wikipedia, but must demonstrate that they've researched the topic well and the article is factual.

Obviously this is challenging to police effectively, and no doubt an excellent deal of stuff appears on Wikipedia without being especially accurate, but it is nonetheless a very frequently visited site.

Wikipedia has a policy of allowing anyone to enter genuine information onto its pages. This does not mean you can insert an advertisement, however it does mean you can put your business history on the site. Note, nevertheless, that any other Wikipedia user can edit the article, and even though the Wikipedia administrators are fine about individuals altering articles they will not tolerate malicious editing, vandalism, or outright commercialism.

Wikipedia lends itself to PR, and many firms have written their personal entries. This puts the business on the map, and often results in further publicity as the company is cited in articles elsewhere.

Social networking sites have turn out to be extremely large business indeed, with sites like Facebook and MySpace linking individuals all more than the world. Apart from linking up old buddies, sites like Facebook enable individuals to meet new friends through mutual friends. For businesspeople, the choices are fewer, but one site does exist to provide businesspeople with a way of networking.

LinkedIn is a networking site for business professionals. It enables people to contact former colleagues, find people who may be of mutual benefit, and provide opportunities to extend one's reputation.

LinkedIn is a way to extend your reputation by using the contacts your colleagues and business associates have. It also enables you to do your friends a favor by putting them in touch with each other- only great things can come of this. You will need to be generous with your time, of course-you should be prepared to offer help to other individuals on the network, because that is what networking is all about.

There is, needless to say, nothing to stop you using Facebook or MySpace in a similar way-in each case you can upload pictures of yourself and your business, even though you do need to be careful not to be too overtly commercial when using normal social networking sites, since their guidelines specifically prohibit commercial exploitation of the website. Nevertheless, no such restrictions apply on LinkedIn: the objective of the website would be to foster business networking.

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This article was sent to us by: Ashley Risle at 01242011

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