It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community.
Wikipedia does not allow promotion, advertising, marketing, or public relations. This gets explained to a lot of new users. Some of those new users then react with "ok but how do I (spread awareness, make sure people know about it, etc)?" If you have been linked to this essay, you are probably one of them.
Promotion is promotion no matter what you call it
Spreading awareness of something is promoting it. If your reaction to "Wikipedia is not for promotion" is to argue you were:
"ensuring awareness" for your service, cause, website, or project
"making sure people know about" your product, service, website, or project
"get a history of this on Wikipedia like our competitors have"
"matching competitor coverage" of your product, service, website, or project
"making necessary updates" that do not come from what Wikipedia considers reliable sources
... then you are using Wikipedia for promotional or publicity purposes.
If you plan to write about you or something you have ties with
If you're here because you want to make or work on an article that's about you or someone or something you have close ties with, here's what you need to know:
WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY - Do not write a page about yourself. It's theoretically possible to, but it's very hard for someone to do so neutrally. It also connects to the other problems in this list.
WP:COI - If you have any close ties to a subject (whether it's financial, familial, friendly, unfriendly, competitive, whatever), you must not edit any article relating to that topic. You can however request edits on the article's talk page. Requests must align with Wikipedia's policies, particularly the Neutral point of view policy; otherwise they will be declined.
WP:PAID - If you are being compensated or are expecting any kind of compensation for your work on this site, you must disclose your employer, client, or affiliation per our terms of use. Failing to do so can result in your account being blocked.
WP:OWN - You do not own any article about you, your company or your product. Nobody owns any articles here. We may have an article about you, but it is not yours.
WP:BLP - We will remove pretty much any information about living people that is not reliably sourced, positive or negative. Need us to remove something an angry ex-employee posted about you? No problem. Want to brag about yourself? We are going to remove that, too. Ideally, if something stays in our articles, it's because that information is present elsewhere as per any notable reliable sources.
WP:OTHERSTUFF - If you find an older Wikipedia article on another subject that seems no less promotional than your own contributions, it can't be used to support them. You should also point that article out to us so we can delete that one too.
WP:WIKILAWYER - We care less about technicalities than the spirit of policy.
WP:FREESPEECH - Wikipedia is not a governmental entity. You do not have free speech here; this is our website and we can tell you to leave it alone at any time if we feel you are using it for promotional purposes. That is our right to free speech, which you have no right to take away from us.
WP:NOLEGALTHREATS - If you threaten anyone with a lawsuit, or even just imply that there might be "consequences" (of any kind), you will be blocked.
That doesn't work for you?
If you do not or can not agree to any of that, or are still looking for loopholes, you need to find a different site. If you are still asking "so how do I get an article about myself (or my business)?" then here's the answer:
Focus on your career or calling, or whatever it is that people are going to write about. Please remain off this site for now.
Be so good at what you do that newspapers and magazines write articles about you. Please keep remaining off this site.
Be so good that someone with no connection to you sees those magazine and newspaper articles and decides to summarize those, creating a Wikipedia article about you or what you do. Please do not get on the site just yet.
Please stay away from that article. You really do not need to get involved in any article about you or your work.
You may go to work on other articles, as long as they're not about competing or related subjects.
