Linkbuilding Consultant

You have spent the last week creating your awesome infographic but now your scared that no one will see your “baby.” Don’t despair help is at hand with my ultimate guide to promoting your infographic across the internet.

1. Content

 Death and Taxes Infographic

I know this is a guide to promotion but content is key. If you are not seeing results from your communication and your style is right.. then you need to look at improving the quality of your infographics.

This does not mean that you need to go out and blow $1000 on a top designer.. but your graphic needs to at least have a “linkable” hook even if it looks like a dogs breakfast.

Like “linkbait”  the hook is the most important aspect of how well an infographic perform when attracting links and attention. Throwing together a design using random data is just not going to cut it. You need to put aside some quality time for research if you’re going to come up with some awesome ideas..

2. Communication and Style

It’s unlikely that you hired Banksy to create your infographic so your email with just a link is going to get sent straight to the trash.

Treat all communication like you do with link building prospects.. (unless your link request emails involve a carpet bombing strategy using multiple mass emailing clients!)

Remember that first impressions are key when pushing infographics so don’t mess it up. Think about bloggers has human beings.. so be honest and respectful with all contacts.

3. Who to Target?

When creating an infographic you should always have your target audience in mind.  Usually this target will be relevant to you or your clients niche.

It’s always a good idea to try and understand the blogs and sites within your niche to see the type of content they link to. This makes your job a helluva lot easier when you start pushing your infographics as you already know the type of content they love.

One of the great benefits of infographics is that competitors are far more likely to link to it then they would an article.. especially if its awesome! Although in more mature niches.. it will be still be a struggle to get a link from your competitor regardless of how great your infographic is.

Often an infographic will cover subjects that are outside your direct niche, so make sure you look at sites in these “subject” niches for opening up the lines of communication.

4. Strategies for Big Media – Long Term

One of the best opportunities for building links from your infographic is to get a mention from a large media site such as Mashable, Techrunch, The Atlantic, AOL..etc

You might be lucky and get featured on one of these properties early on but my advice is to see these “high value” relationships as a long term investment. Make sure that you spend time crafting your communications and bear in mind the following tips:

• Include a press release with extra information to make their life easier when they blog about it.
• Provide them an exclusive to have the graphic 3 days before anyone else.
• Create a unique infographic just for them to be hosted on their property – ‘I scratch your back you scratch mine’
• Pick up the phone…
• Utilize existing relationships to arrange an introduction…
• Target lower level employees rather than the CEO
• Start first with their lower level properties.. such as the smaller community blogs on usatoday.com
• Build social media rapport.. once you know the individual your are speaking with.

5. Blogger Outreach – Short to Medium Term

Often relationships with “Big Media” can take time so utilizing blogger outreach with smaller blogs is a great way of getting eyeballs in front of your content quickly. It’s also a great way of getting the attention of the bigger fish as they trust their RSS reader more than a random email from you.

Bloggers are just normal people so you can be a little more conversational than you would be with the media. Try and keep a track of the top blogs in your industry so you can help them out when you can. Tweeting their great content and even publishing their infographics is a great way of starting a long term relationship.

Let bloggers know who you are.. so they can understand that your a “real” person so include your location or maybe what your plans are for the weekend.. but don’t go overboard. No one wants to know why you spending another lonely night at the office!

Thanks for reading part one of my ultimate guide to promoting infographics.. check back on Tuesday (25th October) for part 2 which includes:

1. Social Media.. how to use correctly and the mistakes i have made.
2. Seeding content through the bottom of the internet.. a dark and murky world but can improve your chances of going viral.
3. How to utilize industry press to get your infographic in front of “influencers”
4. Social Media Specialists – How to get the attention of these high value gurus.
5. Most Important – Keeping Track of Results for future campaigns.

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