New Podcast Episode: Online Reputation and Wikipedia for Authors with Josh Greene

The All Things Book Marketing podcast is a popular biweekly show featuring book marketing and publicity tips from the top voices in the publishing industry. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode!

Josh Greene, CEO of The Mather Group, a digital agency that solves online reputation management challenges for companies of all sizes, speaks on Wikipedia, Google, and online author branding in this episode of All Things Book Marketing. Let’s dive in to learn about how to navigate your digital presence and build up your reputation and credibility virtually…

How does today’s digital world affect reputations?

It’s much easier than it ever was to find out the reputation of someone, a person, a company… really anything. We have this “reviews culture” going on where people are always curious what people are saying about things. I think one of the other big changes is that it just moves so much quicker than it ever has; a cycle that might have taken weeks or months can happen in days now. So being aware of all of the different things that go into your online reputation is more important than it’s ever been.

How is an online reputation typically formed?

Usually what I say to people as the shortcut is that in many ways, the front page of Google results for your name or your company is essentially your business card. Whatever people see pop up there, they’re just going to assume is sort of an accurate representation of who you are and what your book is about. So, if you have nine positive results and one negative result fairly far down, people are probably going to assume pretty good things about you. And if your Google results are immediately terrible, they’ll assume the other direction. And there’s a whole lot of nuance in the middle.

How does publicity play into forming one’s online reputation?

A lot of this is based around the principles of search engine optimization that I think everyone has heard about lots over the years in terms of how you optimize in Google. And frankly, a lot of times when I give webinars, my final piece of advice tends to be good press is the ultimate SEO hack just because it’s given so much weight. And in a world where truth is increasingly uncertain online, having a trusted authority like a magazine or a newspaper or a trade publication that has a solid reputation, having content about you is very important.

Aside from good publicity, how can an author influence their most visible Google results?

One of the things people often forget about is how many of the things that are on Google on your front page are things that you control. So for example, usually if you have a relatively distinctive name, you’ll have on that first page of results, you’ll have maybe your own website, you’ll have LinkedIn, you’ll have Twitter, maybe you’ll have Instagram and Facebook. One thing that people often have forgotten about is that whatever that little squib or byline is like what it says about you on LinkedIn, which is something you totally control, is showing up in Google as well. And oftentimes people did that a decade ago. They may have been on a previous career.

So if you can tell a consistent story, that’s one thing that’s really important and usually can be done in maybe an hour. Just going through and looking at the sites that you sort of own that you probably haven’t thought about, and making sure that whatever you’re doing or whoever you want to be is the focus of, at the very least, the sites and properties that you own or control.

What should an author do to increase their discoverability if they have a common name?

Oftentimes if you’re looking at your analytics for your website, you can see or if you’re in Google search console, you can see what the third word tends to be. Is it, “author” or is it something completely unrelated to what you do (because it’s picking up on someone else with your name), like “volleyball.” And that’s what I generally suggest optimizing on.

I think most browser users sort of go, oh, Josh Greene, I got a bunch of Josh Greenes. Let me think of the most common word I can think of to go with that name. And then that sort of is the proxy for things. If it’s a real concern over time, one of the things you can do is usually just run a paid ad on Google AdWords for your name that goes at the top of that front page. There probably aren’t going to be a ton of people bothering to run paid ads on what are mostly vanity searches. So that can be pretty inexpensive and just a way to sort of say, hi, I’m here, even if there are people with a lot more publicity than you on that page.

If an author is starting from the beginning, how can they build a reputation online?

Probably the most common sites to start with are the ones that they’re, for the most part, already going to be on. It’s going to be if you have a personal website or an about me type of page that’s on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, anything that’s on the front page of Google that’s indexing that you own. So if there are other social networks over time that make it onto the front page, great. Make sure your bio on those is the same as well.

People often overlook that YouTube tends to index really well. So if you do have a YouTube channel, most people have never looked at what it says about them in that unless they’ve really made an effort lately.

So I would start there and then depending on whether you’re in the process of putting together your first book or you’ve already had a book out, when you publish a book, there are a lot of things that sort of know you’re in Google Books. You’re in a variety of index places, and a number of those are things that you can go in and sort of claim, like your Amazon profile. If you claim that and you’re the expert on this, you can then update your bio there. And that tends to index very well as long as you’ve published something or have a page within Amazon because that’s considered a definitive source in the Google world as well.

Let’s talk Wikipedia: What is it and can anyone get their own page?

The idea behind Wikipedia was it was designed to be a compendium of all the world’s knowledge, the ultimate encyclopedia, crowdsourced and transparent. So people could see the evolution of knowledge over time, see the debates that occurred over various controversial topics, which is a noble ambition, and it’s worked well. And it’s also ran into all the problems of every other social network that’s ever happened when concept ran into the reality of the internet. So there’s some downsides to that as well.

The idea is that there are supposed to be Wikipedia pages for notable people. Wikipedia did a real disservice by picking the word notable because it means something in sort of computer programmer ease versus everyone’s colloquial version of it. So the idea with Wikipedia is that you need to have five to ten news articles published about you. But the trick is you can’t be a source in them. You’re not allowed to be a source for your own information. So you may very well know that you’re 35 years old. If I go in for myself and type in my age, that’s against the rules because first party information is not considered credible. It hasn’t been vetted.

So basically what happens in general is that someone decides, hey, there’s not an article on blue jays. And then they write an article, they code it, they put in all the resources, and then they submit it for publishing. And there are about 2000 administrators who can say, yes, it’s now a live article. No it’s not. Or most likely, hey, here’s a bunch of stuff that you need to change if you want this to stick.

Is there a benefit to having a Wikipedia page?

The benefit of Wikipedia is it gets syndicated a bunch of places. People sort of view it as an objective source of truth. It’s going to be on the front page of your Google results if you have one, two or three times. It’s also a source for some content on YouTube, and it’s getting used to train a decent amount of AI models that are out there. So there are definite benefits to having one.

In terms of authors, I don’t know that you could put a significant dollar amount or anything on top of it because people who want to find out information about you or your book are going to be able to find out a lot of information in Google. So I don’t think you’re selling more books because you have a Wikipedia page. It’s definitely an ego boost. So if you’re a rich author, that oftentimes is something that comes into play. And oftentimes books that don’t have their own page will show up on other things in Wikipedia. Wikipedia loves lists, bestseller lists, things like that. But in terms of a publicity plan or launch plan, Wikipedia probably isn’t moving the needle too much in that area. In terms of if you’re thinking about legacy or immortality or things like that, you could make a more compelling case that you want to do something there. But it does tend to be a much longer, heavier lift.

 

Josh Greene is the CEO for The Mather Group, a digital agency that solves online reputation management challenges for companies of all sizes. With over twenty years of experience creating and implementing digital strategies, he empowers top brands and individuals to shape their online presence to support their bottom line. The Mather Group has worked with some of the largest Fortune 1000 companies, five of the largest nonprofits in the U.S., popular media channels, the third largest network provider in the U.S., two of the largest manufacturing companies in the U.S., and many software companies. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and industry events, including the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the AAF, ad:tech, SES, and the PR Summit. Before The Mather Group, Greene managed online marketing for industry leaders such as Discovery Channel, Time Warner Cable, 1-800-PACK-RAT, and Zippy Shell.

Learn more about Josh and The Mather Group at themathergroupllc.com and follow them on Facebook and LinkedIn.