[Marketing Rental Reports] How Not To Use Wikipedia
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Sunday, January 29, 2012, 10:12 PM
2 Comments
One of the nice things about Wikipedia is the tremendous freedom and a lot of entries. One of the annoying things about Wikipedia is the tremendous freedom and a lot of entries.
A reader passed along a wiki entry today called Manhattan Rental Market Report probably since I produce a quarterly market report in Manhattan for a large real estate firm in the region.
I assume this wiki entry was the result of an energetic social media consultant hired by the company that produces the report to help get the word out. I could even take it as a dig toward our work by suggesting that a quarterly report is something less than a monthly (hint: the devil is very much in the details). I also assume all concerned over there are nice people and are good at what they do.
That’s not the point I am making.
What caught my eye was the error in the second sentence:
It is currently the only report that compares fluctuations in Manhattan rents on a monthly basis.
Of course another firm, a competitor in the quarterly rental market report arena has been producing monthly rental reports almost as long and still does – but also produced other reports at least 5 years earlier – so the claim is inaccurate, but yet it’s out there as a talking point.
Why should I care that the wiki entry is inaccurate when Wikipedia is full of this stuff – politicians are notorious for puffing up entries while wrecking opponents entries? Admittedly I don’t have an axe to grind here other than that I do find it a annoying when free public resources get gummed up with excessive marketing promo material.
[Idea!!] I’ll make a wiki entry called Manhattan Rental Market Report [Quarterly]. And since I’ve been producing market reports for PDE since 1994 and because I found market reports that go back to 1927 (I swear I didn’t author them), I could provide some fodder for a wiki entry with some super hot SEO content.
Oh wait, I don’t care about that stuff. Nevermind.
Hi Jonathan,
That’s a good point. I wanted to mention that at the time of the entry, which was years ago, our report was in fact the only rental market report produced on a monthly basis. Since then, the competitor you referenced has also started producing a monthly report as well. The wikipedia page has not been updated, however. One great thing about wikipedia though is that anyone can make edits – so if you see a mistake I encourage you, or anyone else to go ahead and correct it. That’s the beauty of the site.
As a side note, I can say with certainty that the monthly reference was no dig on you. We have a tremendous amount of respect for the work you do. At the time, I don’t believe Miller Samuel published a rental market report for Manhattan. We felt as a company, with the rental market changing so quickly, that there was a need for monthly reporting to fill gaps the quarterly reports could not.
Anyway, thanks for pointing out the mistake. We’ll make sure to take care of it!
Very well articulated and thanks so much for dropping in and sharing your insights.