Since 2006 I’ve tried to get a Wikipedia page. But not for the reasons you think. I don’t care about SEO or the smugness that comes with saying you have a page. I want one for two reasons:
1. My name is already in an entry (Humans Vs. Zombies). So why not have it link to something people can read?
2. When I went out to Los Angeles for the first time, my Mom reminded me that “You’re not famous unless Jay Leno has you on his show”. And, I think she’s right. Internet fame, if you can call it that, is a strange beast, and I don’t consider myself Internet famous by any stretch.
BUT
A Wikipedia page, which is the cornerstone for anyone making the claim that they’re “Internet Famous” can help in reaching an important threshold: You need at least 1,000,000 unique visitors in a year to your blog to have a publisher look at it (from what I can gather).
This is important because SBI’s focus until A Million High Fives gets rolling is going to be on taking your material and getting it book ready and published.
Being able to point people to Dracula And Kittens from Wikipedia would be extremely helpful. Especially because, for some stupid reason, you can’t Digg Posterous pages, which is a critical step in promoting a comedy website.
Remember: You get a bunch of your Facebook friends, submit a comedy website to Digg, have them vote for it because you can log into Digg with Facebook, and hopefully the aggregators will pick up the website from there. If they do, usually bigger sites will link to it, causing the content to spread. The “viral” part doesn’t really happen until the end.
In this arena, it’s not so much going “viral” as it is tipping the dominoes and hoping they fall the right way for you.
Without a Wikipedia page, it’s a tad more difficult than I’d like to help pump up Dracula And Kittens.
So How Do You Get A Wikipedia Page?
From experience in trying to set up a page for a few other people, any sort of affiliation with the person you’re doing the edits for is bad news. You need to find someone who already edits Wikipedia pages to make any additions for you.
You also have to meet a certain threshold, which you can find here on the Wikipedia Notability guidelines. Pretty much, from what I’ve read among editor discussions on the pages I submitted, if you have not been mentioned on a national media outlet, you’re not able to meet the threshold.
I think, thanks in large part to CNN today, I can meet that threshold. Here are all the press links, including today’s article.
By the way, although some of the press relates to my Twitter account (@BJMendelson) and Amanda and I’s cross country trip to promote the early detection of breast cancer, a lot of it came from using Help A Reporter Out as a source. It’s a free service, and I recommend everyone use it to help generate some initial press for themselves. That’s how we started out.
The press goes a long way into helping you meet the notability guidelines.
Why Does This Matter To You?
1. If you’re going for the whole “Internet Fame” thing, you need a Wikipedia page to serve as a cornerstone.
2) If my theory, and what I have read, is true, then this will demystify the process of getting a Wikipedia page for those who are interested in having one for business or other purposes. Now you will know what to do and how to do it without spending any money.
That’s important to me. There’s a ton of bad information out there that people are selling these days to make a quick buck on the “social media” craze. I think it’s wrong because all of these tools are free, and so is the information on how to use them. That’s a rant for another time though.
If you or someone you know edits Wikipedia, feel free to get in touch and lets test this theory.
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