It’s All About Infographics
Link Building can be creative, and when we say creative, we mean there should be no limitations and barriers to it. If you are or “wanna be” the kind of link builder who considers his job to be an inbound marketer instead of just an article submitter, then this post is surely for you. Information graphics a.k.a infographics is a graphical representation of data, usually shared by website owners and webmasters for FREE in order to acquire links and social value. Infographics is one of the best ways to build links and generate traffic to your website.
However, during the 2 years I experimented with infographics, I have noticed a tremendous amount of successes as well as a few failures. So, if infographics is one of the best ways to generate links to your website, why are many people actually failing with this technique?
This question allows me to compose a detailed post about the topic of infographics. Here are a few basic and necessary steps that lead to successful infographics:
- Industry Research
- Providing something valuable that people can relate to it
- Data
- Never Compromise on Design
- Promote
Industry Research: Industry Research is one of the very first issues when dealing with infographics. Research the industry and discover the issues that people have with the industry. Industry research will allow you to understand what is potentially available and what people are looking for. The best way to do this is to research the industry bloggers and magazines and scrutinise the data that has been published. Blogs and forums will allow you to evaluate the public response and balance this with any data or information. This will also help you to work out what people will relate to and what they are potentially looking for.
Provide Something Valuable:
Once you have fully researched your chosen industry, you should have a clearer idea as to what people are looking for. Providing something valuable does not necessarily mean providing heaps of data or information. In fact there are two major criteria that should be considered when considering the structure of an infographic:
- Information with visual effects
There are many infographics out there that don’t fit in with the visual information format. Remember, infographics should always be visual. Without the visual aspect, any infographic is rendered useless.
- Useful and Shareable information
This is another important factor. It is good to use information that can be easily grasped and easily shared by the general public; whether it’s on blogs, on social media such as Facebook or Twitter or just general posts. DATA: This is the general definition of Data, as per Wikipedia:
“Data are qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which information and then knowledge are derived.”
Throughout my extensive research and analysis on infographics, I have noticed that numerical data combines nicely with infographics. If you have any data in form of numbers and variables, then this will work well.
Data can also be easily shared and people generally have no qualms in sharing data on their own blogs, websites and research papers.
Design:
This is one of the major reasons why infographics fail to generate links. Good links and relationships are based on reputation and everyone is trying to obtain those good links.
If you have great information but a lousy design, I am afraid you are not going to generate a great number of links. Infographics naturally generate some links and shares but having a great design can multiply the amount of links substantially. It is important not to compromise on design as the design quality of the infographics is directly proportional to the number of links generated. The lower the quality of the infographics; the lower the number of links. Promote: You can create the highest quality informational content but without correct marketing and promotion, it may be lost in the depths of cyberspace – unseen and unappreciated. This is a vital aspect; how can you make your infographic go viral?
- Follow Influencers
Use Follower wonk or We Follow to list down influencers and start following them. It’s great if influencers can share your work on different social platforms like Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
- Personalised Email
Template emails are a bad idea. You will achieve much better results with personalised emails talking to each influential person individually. They are also more likely to respond if they feel you are contacting them personally rather than sending one mass email.
- Share it
This is kind of obvious but still warrants a mention! Share your piece of content and request other people to share it too. This will help you spread your message, far and wide.
- Bookmark it!
Bookmarking is a service we all know of. Note down all the major bookmarking and news websites that include Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon and others.
- Use in your future content
This is another way to create awareness with regards to your infographics. Write guest posts and use your infographics within the post. The other way to share infographics to the wider audience is to share it on forums and Q&A sections where relevant. Final Words! Infographics is a proven way to get links and generate traffic. However, it is absolutely necessary to follow some of the key tips mentioned above. Failure to do so can lead to wasted time and money. If you have any comments on how to refine the process, we would like to hear from you!
