Case Study or, How I'm Awesome

My latest assignment in Duct Tape Marketing was to write up a case study, showing how a client with a problem gets it solved with my writing. It's more in-depth than a testimonial, and since I'm writing it I know it will cover the key points (that is, bring out all the wonderfulness that I have to offer). I also link to my client in it, both to show that it's real (or I might want to avoid making it easy for people to verify it) and to promote my client as a thank-you. This is my first draft, here for your consideration:

Kirk White is a minister and spiritual teacher who has been mentoring in his faith for twenty-five years. He began writing books collecting his knowledge, and I asked him about book publishing one day.

“I'm doing everything they tell me to do,”he told me. “I got a MySpace when they said I should, set up a Facebook profile when I was asked to . . . only thing I can't do is get on Wikipedia. They say it would be good if I was on Wikipedia, but I don't know how to do that.”

I thought about Kirk and what I knew of his accomplishments. “I think I can do that,” I told him, “but I'm going to need your help.”

I've been editing Wikipedia for many years, and I've sent many new articles to the gallows deletion – for not every bit of information is notable, and thus worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. I believed that Kirk was notable, but I was going to have to follow Wikipedia's rules and prove it.

I started by talking to Kirk about the most interesting things that he'd accomplished. We came up with a list:

• He founded the first seminary in his denomination
• He's published two books
• He served on the board of a major organization within his religion
• He has been a featured speaker in a number of venues
  

Now the challenge was to find sources for this information that would be suitable for Wikipedia. I asked Kirk, “Who's been writing about you? Where has your name been in print?” We came up with another list:

• He's interviewed in the disseminal scholarly book on his faith.
• A prominent blogger named him one of the 25 most influential members of his faith.
• He'd been profiled in other books.
• He has been frequently interviewed by newspaper and television reporters.
  

Sources on Wikipedia can't be too close to the subject (so I couldn't use Kirk's books as sources about him) and can't be self-published (such as with a blog or an on-demand book publishing company). The best sources are secondary – books and journals that take an academic look at the subject – and can be considered both reliable and verifiable (with the best possible sources being peer-reviewed academic journals, since they clearly meet all three criteria). Being in a scholarly book was a big plus, with the newspapers and other books giving Kirk, as he called it, “WikiCred.” Being mentioned in a blog, no matter how prominent, didn't help him at all.

I wrote and posted the page with all the citations in place, adding a link to Kirk's web site as a finishing touch. Only one link is needed, and it won't improve the search engine rankings of Kirk's site whatsoever, but it's permitted for the convenience of the readers. Kirk White made the cut and had himself a Wikipedia page, a powerful credibility tool for a published writer.