What You Need to Know Before Distributing Your Infographic

Transcription

1 What You Need to Know Before Distributing Your Infographic Improve your audience outreach efforts by learning why and how to use the best social, owned and earned platforms available. Targeting specific platforms allows you to refine your marketing efforts and get your infographic into the hands of your intended readers. CREATIVE BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS EXPERTS

2 SOCIAL 1. LinkedIn This is an ideal outlet for sharing your infographic to a targeted audience since members have already segmented themselves into groups based on their industry, interests and needs. Use the publishing platform to promote your infographic publicly through statuses on your company s page or within segmented areas in LinkedIn groups that you re active in. When posting, use a link back to your website or blog hosting the infographic. Discover targeted online subject matter groups, take advantage of LinkedIn forums, participate in online community discussions and refer back to your infographic when it is relevant. Avoid spamming groups to keep users engaged. 2. Twitter Twitter specializes in real-time immediacy promotion. When information is time sensitive, this distribution technique is often best. Select the key points from your infographic and create multiple tweets with a link back to your website or blog hosting the infographic. The 140-character rule does not restrict sharing capability because infographics can be uploaded as images. To save time and energy, take advantage of social media management tools like Hootsuite or BufferApp. 2. Facebook It s the world s largest photo sharing site and notorious for driving user engagement through interesting photos. In fact, according to Kissmetrics, visual posts get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-through links than text based ones on the site. Schedule posts focused on specific data points or statistics mentioned in the infographic over time with links back to your website or blog for the full infographic. Include self-explanatory images in the posts since they outperform images that need a detailed description for understanding. 2

3 SOCIAL 4. SlideShare Converting your infographic into slides for SlideShare will help gain exposure in search results and increase the likelihood of your content being read and shared by a wider audience. SlideShare maintains an integrated feature called infographic player, which detects an infographic upon upload, includes it in the infographic directory and displays it best for viewing. Cut and crop your infographic into smaller pieces to create slides for a PowerPoint presentation that can be published onto SlideShare. SlideShare s infographic player allows youto track how many views, downloads and embeds your infographics have garnered. Distribute your infographic to the masses by sharing the embed code that SlideShare provides on other social media platforms. 5. YouTube/Vimeo YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world after Google, and thus is a great opportunity for people to discover your infographic. Distributing your infographic through YouTube or Vimeo generates more visibility, engagement and social activity. Recycle your slides and turn them into a video using Camtasia, Screencast-Omatic or another screen recording tool and post it to YouTube or Vimeo. Add music or narration to the slides and use backlinks in the video s description to redirect users to the infographic s home. 6. Google+ Google+ facilitates targeted distribution based on communities formed around users industries, interests and needs. Publishing your infographic will positively influence your search results, particularly if people share or 1+ your content - resulting in a better ranking. Simply publish it via the Share What s New box, then decide whether to share it with particular individuals, circles or the public. Search Google+ Communities to find vibrant discussions around specific topics, or begin your own conversations with users through its Hangouts feature. Incorporate the link back to the main page that hosts the full infographic by typing, pasting or using the link icon to insert it. 3

4 SOCIAL 7. Pinterest Pinterest s recognizable Pin-It button makes it easy for followers to pin your infographic on their boards, gaining you more visibility amongst the public and targeted audiences. Within the platform, businesses can register their business accounts and examine insights that will help improve distribution strategies. Enable users to post your infographic to their boards by segmenting your infographic into screenshots then posting them to Pinterest. Pinterest boosted its pixel count from 600 to 735. The additional pixels means better visuals and space for your infographics. 8. Instagram By enabling you to tag key industry leaders and influential bloggers, Instagram helps to increase interest in your infographic. Introduce your infographic to the mobile community by posting it on Instagram. Acquire valuable information on how to use Instagram for your business by viewing blog articles from Instagram s HQ blog. Snap smaller screen shots of your infographic and add appropriate tags and hashtags. Post the mobile version of your infographic to your account and allow for users to access the full infographic by providing the link back to the main page. Be careful not to dump ads on followers. Keep in mind social media is for people to engage with one another, not for forcing ads upon an audience. 9. Flickr Flickr s valuable Fit for SEO feature links an assortment of keywords to your image, which allows you to share an infographic with quality search-ability. Break into the world of photography by splitting your infographic into screenshots then posting them to Flickr. Publishing content on Flickr closely mirrors that of Pinterest. Make it possible for users to access the full infographic by providing the link back to the main page. It s a photo sharing platform, so treat it like one. Since you want exposure, don t be hyper-protective with your content on Flickr. Allow sharing, and don t limit what folks can do with your content. 4

5 SOCIAL 10. Bookmarking Sites 11. Quora 12. Digital Libraries Bookmarking sites provide a broader reach to build your brand and engage in conversations with prospects, customers and the public. Sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit and Digg are frequently populated with search engines, which makes it feasible for customers to index your infographic faster. Many of these sites are referral sources and great at sending quality traffic to your infographic. Post your infographic to these popular bookmarking sites for your niche audiences. Bookmark your infographic only to sites that pertain to your industry, audience and topic. Excessive bookmarking on low quality sites could create a negative effect. Quora allows you to build authority and relationships with people who share similar ideas and interests. Gain recognition and strengthen your online reputation by posting your infographic as a possible answer to a Quora question. Discovering new ideas for your next project or portraying yourself as a leader in your industry is made easy through Quora s Q&A community platform. Take your original infographic and republish it in its entirety or in snippets using the Write Post functionality. Stay ahead with your content marketing and keep tabs on your competitors by utilizing Quora s Search & Research feature, which enables you to run your own competitive and industry research using the Q&A approach. Digital libraries are ideal for tracking reads and downloads of your posted infographics. Publishing your infographic via digital libraries, such as Scibd or DocStoc, allows you to gain exposure to search engines and build relationships with business professionals who are not on traditional social media sites. Take the visual teasers that you have already created for other social media accounts and write a few, short paragraphs explaining them. Next, convert the visuals and text into a PDF document and submit it to a digital library. Once your infographic is published in a digital library, you have the power to edit, change titles and keywords, delete them or even embed them on other sites. 5

6 OWNED 1. Website A company website establishes their online footprint, which helps to create credibility, support search, answer customer questions and convert sales. Publish your infographic to your website and use analytics and marketing automation to track visits and interaction. If your goal is lead generation, prompt people to fill out a contact form in exchange for the infographic. This method works best when you have developed brand credibility and a loyal following. 2. Landing Page By creating a landing page with keywords, visuals and alternative tags, you will be able to generate organic traffic from search engines. The landing page should include an optimized title, meta description, header, on-page text that explains the infographic and an opt-in to increase your subscriber base. Landing pages are often referred to as an infographic s home, and is the link that will be allocated to potential customers, industry leaders, bloggers and social media platforms. 6

7 OWNED 3. s generate a higher ROI than all the other marketing channels. For every one dollar, $44.25 is the average return on the marketing investment 1. It s also ideal for broadcasting your infographic s message to a wider audience, building strong relationships, and measuring campaign results more easily. Send your infographic to your leads, in-house prospects and/ or customer lists. Utilize marketing automation and analytics to set up lead nurture and scoring systems. Tease a prospect by including a graphic of the infographic in the and a link for him or her to see the full image on your website or blog. 4. Press Release Press releases tell the story behind the research of your infographic. They also get news syndicated across a number of popular news sites where it can be picked up by publications designated for your target readers. Write a release that contains a persuasive lead, unique template and meaningful information, then send it to targeted newswires that cater specifically to your industry or the audience you re trying to reach. Explore newswires like PRWeb, PR Newswire, PR Leap and PR Free for a range of choices in creating and submitting press releases. 7

8 EARNED 1. Aggregators and Directories Aggregators and directories attract infographic fanatics who will promote your infographic via their own social media accounts. Submit you infographic to aggregators and directories, such as DailyInfographic. com and Visual.ly that specialize in the business of distributing infographics. Browsing aggregators and directories will provide you with inspiration and creativity during your own design process. 2. Influential Industry Leaders Industry leaders often have large followings because they ve established themselves as credible sources within their specific trade. Persuading industry leaders to share your infographic increases exposure among groups that may not have seen it otherwise. Seek out industry thought leaders, actively follow them on social platforms and ask them to share your content with their networks. Provide a convincing argument why industry leaders should share your infographic with their followers. 8

9 EARNED 3. Relevant Bloggers (Guest Posting) Partnering with popular bloggers will help gain more coverage in your industry. Conduct a search through Google blog search or Technorati to find blogs pertaining to topics related to your infographic. Create a list of all relevant bloggers, and send them an asking them to republish your infographic in their blogs. Include the embedding code as well as a short post they can just copy and paste into their own LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter accounts. 4. Source Links Entering into a partnership with your source links, or the owners of the content, generates recognition and traffic for your infographic while saving them time, energy and effort. Send an to your sources thanking them for their valuable data while nicely asking them to share your infographic to their audiences as well. If a source decides to share your infographic, send him/her a thank-you tweet. He/she will greatly appreciate the repeated acknowledgement and might be more likely to republish more of your content in the near future. 9

10 Quicksilver Associates is a full service creative business communications company. For over 38 years we have been helping corporations, associations and not-for-profits with their communication initiatives. Many of our clients have inquired about ways to distribute and share their infographic. This report is solely to provide information on the platforms to consider. Quicksilver does not endorse any of the platforms presented in this guide. Sources: 1. bid/279353/23-tweetable-stats-on- -marketing-tactics-and-trends