The Article Writer Mailbag, Take 7

This week is “Mailbag Week” where I answer some of the questions recently asked by my beloved readers, customers, and colleagues.

Q. I am writing a series of articles for a client who wants me to use Wikipedia as a source, referencing specific material on this wiki. I have heard that Wikipedia has some credibility issues; what should I do?

A. Yes, Wikipedia has not been without controversy since launching in 2001. Its sheer size brings the site plenty of attention with some comparing Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica, another popular reference source.

For the past month, I have been a contributing editor on Wikipedia so I know first hand what sometimes takes place when an article is posted, edited, changed, etc. Volunteer human editors, most of whom work anonymously, are the people driving Wikipedia. Naturally, this opens the site up to abuse as anyone with an agenda can get on and make changes or tamper with the material. On the other hand, I have seen where a problem article was pulled or updated quickly when it came to the attention of the community. FYI: avoid articles with no citations or with a posted note disputing its neutrality.

As far as quoting Wikipedia, I am not sure why anyone would want to do that. Sometimes I use Wikipedia as a launching point when I start a writing project: I’ll read what has been written on a topic and then I’ll check out the links to see what references have been cited. It is with these links where I am much more apt to find accurate and relevant sources, but not always. From there, I’ll delve deeper and look around the internet for more information — the higher the quality of the writing project, the more time I’ll spend on scoping out sources, talking to people, and doing what needs to be done to make sure that my article is as accurate and complete as possible.

Oh, by the way, a 2005 study comparing Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica had an interesting conclusion — the study determined that the two reference sources had the same level of accuracy. Go figure.

The Article Writer Mailbag, Take 6

This week is “Mailbag Week” where I answer some of the questions recently asked by my beloved readers, customers, and colleagues.

Q. Our business has been considering developing a blog as one way of reaching our customers. What is the best course of action for us to take?

A. Congratulations on your decision to incorporate a blog with your website! A weblog can offer many advantages to most any business including:

• Blogging promotes brand awareness and brand building. By blogging, you can interact directly with your customers or if you do not want to monitor comments you can still use your blog for sharing company news, product information, offer advice, and more.

• Blogging can also help your site excel with the search engines. Most articles posted (try to make them 300 words or longer) will be picked up and indexed by Google giving your business wider exposure and deeper search engine penetration. Using a platform such as WordPress with the appropriate SEO plug-ins activated can help your blog maximize its effectiveness.

• Blogging can also enhance your internal team building effort. By carefully selecting a team of writers, you can have different members of your company share their knowledge and expertise. Appoint a lead blogger to oversee the process to make sure that a variety of articles are developed and that each blogger stays on message. A side benefit of team blogging is that we now know Google favors blogs with multiple bloggers (authors) for possible inclusion on their Google News site. Therefore, if you manage a well written and professional blog you could find Google is your chief ally.

Feel free to drop me a note to discuss your personal needs. Although your webmaster should be able to upload the blog for you, he/she may need assistance with the theme, plug-ins, categories, and more.