Infographic has been around for a while and does wonders with social media platforms. The idea behind the infographic is to create an image, a visual representation of a blog post. For example something like a diagram or flowchart. This conveys complex information in an easy-to-consume format. An infographic is a collection of imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.
The big change in the use of infographics came when marketers started using them in their blog posts. They started by adding code so that the image could be shared by other bloggers, as long as it was linked back.
This was nothing but a link-building strategy. People would let you publish their content, as long as you gave them credit through the backlink. Soon enough, the infographic trend was all over the marketplace, thanks to marketers launching infographic campaigns.
As a result, its effectiveness weakened and led to the finding of guestographics. Basically, the idea to combine infographics with guest posting.
What does a Guestographic Campaign look like?
This is the exact process as laid out by Brian Dean; the guy who started the trend with Guestographics
Step 1: Publish a great Infographic
Step 2: Simple but effective Link Prospecting
Step 3: Highlight your Infographic
Step 4: Entice Your Prospects With Free Content
Step 5: Get Your Contextual Links
You write a short, mini paragraph intro to accompany the infographic, where you insert the link. If the blogger wants to expand the content, he can easily just add a sentence or two, and publish the content.
This means that you get the link and the blogger gets the content. Additionally, you can list the references of your information on the infographic, since people are more likely to share it that way.
Create an infographic outline using these 4 steps:
- Determine the key takeaways for your targeted audience
- Determine the title, headers, sub headers and facts
- Consider the length of paragraphs and pointers
- Include notes for the designer
My Infographic Campaign: Trying out new things and learning
I decided to try an infographic campaign strategy. And although it worked out fine, it wasn’t great. It however turned out to be a great learning experience for me.
Because of the infographic saturation, it’s very unlikely that bloggers will be interested in promoting you. The less it’s used in your niche, the better. I myself get pitches all the time and I’m just not interested.
For example, in my infographic campaign, my content would get shared on Twitter or Pinterest, but then nothing happened. I didn’t get much traffic at all, so it really depends on who is doing the sharing. Success with guestographics is also not a sure shot though it may work well for some people.
What did I learn?
- If I had taken the time to figure out which influencer had mainly active followers, I think I would have gotten better results.
- Another reason for not succeeding at this strategy is that I only tried it once. If I had stuck with the strategy and refined the process, I would have done a much better job at it.
In contrast, on another project, I used this long infographic that looked terrible and took 30 minutes to put together. This one took off on Pinterest and about a year ago it had around 21,000 pins. We didn’t promote it at all! With improvement, the results would have been even better.
So the moral of the story is – just pick a strategy, implement it, refine and continue trying until you get satisfying results. You’ll never know if something will work unless you do it.
Personally, I’m not into guestographics that much, but there are plenty of people that are getting positive results using this method.
How to Get Backlinks With Guestographics
I have sent thousands of link request emails and I can tell you that there’s a simple link building formula that works every time:
Great Content + Targeted Outreach + Added Value = Links
The first two parts of my formula are pretty straightforward: publish great stuff and get it across to the right people. And that’s actually what most people do. They email hundreds of people, hoping that someone might link to them. Surely, one can get a few backlinks that way. But you can easily double or triple your conversion rate by adding value to this method.
Link Building With Guestographics: A Mini-Case Study
Adding value is what the Guestographic Method is all about. It’s a link building technique that uses infographics in a new way. Instead of publishing an infographic and expecting other people to share it, you’re enticing them to publish it on their site.
How to Get Backlinks Using Guestographics: 5 Simple Steps
Step 1: Post an infographic on your site
Step 2: Find sites that write about your infographic’s topic
Step 3: Show them your infographic
Step 4: Offer them unique content
Step 5: Get your contextual backlinks
Step 1: Post an infographic on your site
Fortunately, you don’t need a 6-figure marketing budget. An on-page SEO infographic might only cost me $250 or lesser. This is a necessary investment as the design is a really important component of an infographic.
1. A “Trending or Relevant” Topic.
You need to pick a topic that’s “Freshly Relevant”. For example, I noticed that people were publishing articles about the same topic every week. But they were rehashing the same advice from as long back as 2010. This implied that there were lots of demand for the topic, but no up-to-date content to meet that demand.
The authors of this infographic took a topic that gets a ton of attention. For Ex., something trending on the internet. But they added a fresh twist (a new social media network). And bingo! you land yourself a bunch of referring domains.
2. Great Information You can look at an infographic like a visual blog post: the better the visual, the better the content performs.
Blogger Neil Patel, who has published over 75 infographics, recommends that infographics should have no more than 7-10 data points. A very comprehensive infographic that covers the most important information is really easy to remember.
3. Logical Layout.
There’s a big difference between design and layout. We see a lot of great infographics fail because they focus too much on design.
The difference?
Layout: How you organize and present the information or “the wireframe”
Design: How the information looks.
Make sure that your layout:
- Has the best content at the top most
- Has a good/aesthetic visual (easier to read)
- Organizes the information or data as a “story” (top=Instagram is trendy!, bottom=How to get traffic from it)
Step 2: Simple but Efficient Linking
Once you have published your infographic on the site, it’s time to find the link. With my infographic ready, I was looking for sites that had already published content about on-page SEO.
To find them, I just searched Google for things like “on page SEO”, “on page SEO tips” and other auto-suggests. That’s it, you got the pages you got to link to.
Step 3: Show Them Your Infographic
When I found a site in the results that looked promising, I sent them this email.
Here’s why this script worked really well for me and might do so for you:
- Personalized: includes their name and site name
- Short: less than 90 words
Soft sell: only asks if they want to see the infographic
Step 4: Entice Your Prospects With Free Content
That way you’re providing value three times:
- Showing them a cool infographic on a topic that they’re interested in
- Letting them share that content with their audience, who is also interested in that topic
- Giving them free content to complement the infographic
When they got back to me saying “sure”, I wrote a top-notch 250-300 word introduction tailored to their site.
Step 5: Get Your Relevant Links
The moment your infographic is embedded in another site, you can naturally get the link of that site on your website. The most important thing about guestographic is that you get backlinks with relevant content. Therefore, the purpose of using backlinks is fulfilled. You satisfy Google ranking factors and reach the top position.
Bonus Technique :
You can also spread your infographic + Placement using press releases around the world.
Many Brands are using Infographics to spread awareness and Press releases can play an important for more valuable backlinks for your website. Make sure you mix colors that match branding infographic color.
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