How to Get Your Infographic Noticed

Everyone loves infographics. Even if you think you don’t like infographics, your brain loves them.

Your brain actually discards 99% of all sensory information just to help store unique information presented in a novel way (which is exactly what well designed infographics do so well).

Infographics have had a huge explosion in popularity, such that in the past two years alone the search volume for infographics on Google has increased over 800%.

Plus, the handy little visual pieces of content have caught the attention of practically everyone in the marketing world. Today’s infographic production is estimated to be increasing at a rate of 1% every day. Whoa.

With their volume increasing exponentially, how do you ensure that your new infographic doesn’t get overlooked in the overly-saturated social platforms like visua.ly, pinterest and infogr.am?

Today we’ll list the steps to successfully market your infographic (i.e. turning a new-kid-on-the-block infographic into the next Gangnam Style hit). Let’s get started:

1) Give it a Home

Your infographic needs a home, just like kids starting out in the world. As our parents did for us, you need to make sure the home you give your infographic is nurturing for the health and growth of your new creation.

You'll want to ensure that readers can quickly and effectively identify your infographic’s purpose, so make sure your keywords are in all the right places. This will not only help with readers identifying the main topics covered by your infographic--it'll also help the content piece's SEO (search engine optimization).

For the latter, you'll not only to rank for you own preferred keywords and search phrases, but also to rank for the ever increasingly popular “infographic” keyword. We’re talking about including the right keywords in the page titles, URLs, alt tags for images and Header (H1 and H2) elements.

An embed code will encourage others to embed the infographic on their site, whilst linking back to you website and a thumbnail helps to make the home URL more attractive for social media shares. Next, you need to go outside your home and start marketing your infographic.

2) Share at Full Throttle

Infographic fame is not achieved with a single round of social sharing.  If you don’t share your infographic effectively, you’ll fail to get your viral snowball forming, and no avalanche is possible.

Start by making sure you’re placing your infographic on as many social media platforms as possible, not just Facebook and Twitter.  Pinterest, Flickr and Instagram are all popular places for infographics, with Pinterest being one of THE most popular places. In addition, pull all the favors you can.  Ask friends and colleagues to share and post about your infographic to help plant early signs of it’s existence.  Share on Viral.ly as well as infographic specific boards, groups, and sites (especially if the topic of your infographic is related to marketing or social media).

When you first publish your infographic, reserve a day or two for sharing and promotion.  Don’t rely on the possibility that the first wave of people who see your infographic will automatically share it.  You need to build the early momentum yourself.  

Early results will be directly proportional to the energy you spend spreading your infographic in a targeted way (which we’re about to show you).  As momentum builds over time and the avalanche starts to take shape, you can redirect your own efforts to your next campaign.

However, because the initial snowball effect starts entirely with you, we suggest investing at least as much time and energy marketing your infographic as you invested to create it. Next, let’s next look at some targeted marketing ideas.

3) Target Influencers

If you want your infographic to set trends, then you’re going to need the help of trendsetters. It’s important to target influential people who you would ideally share your infographic with their audiences. It’s critical to think about who would like to, or have relevance for, sharing the infographic’s topic.

If they have a connection to graphics professionals, the more likely they will be to share it, and share it passionately. In addition, you will be very surprised how accepting some big name influencers will be to sharing content from others. @hubspot, @guykawasaki, and @virally all LOVE infographics, so maybe they'll share yours. You’ll never know unless you ask!

We have had success targeting influencers in infographic curation by:

1. Searching Twitter and Linkedin groups for individuals who are passionate about infographics. 
2. Connecting to these influencers with tweets, comments, questions, and direct communication describing your infographics concept. Offer them an engaging sneak peak if you can, but don’t give the whole thing away just yet - the suspense is what spurs this two way communication!
3. Once you have a ready to publish infographic, go back to the influencers and ask them for feedback. You’ll be surprised at how many infographic addicts will write back with great suggestions.
4. When you feel you’ve built a little rapport, ask them to share the infographic if they find it of value to their audience. Each request is planting a viral seed. Most will not sprout, so plant a lot of seeds.
5. Whether they share it or not, keep up relations by occasionally sharing the results of your marketing, such as total views, referring blog posts, etc. Sometimes they need to see others sharing your infographic before they’ll do it too.

4) Pitch Bloggers

Bloggers love to share, connect and expand their blogging network, so every new connection is a chance to open a new door to opportunities. Why not go out and find blogs which have previously shared infographics that have the same niche as yours?   

Here’s how we find blogs to contact about sharing our infographics:

1. Identify 5-10 stellar infographics on a similar topic. If our infographic is on social media, we simply identify other infographics on the same topic on viral.ly, pinterest, or twitter. 
2. Save those infographics to your computer and load them to google image search by clicking the “camera” icon here. Google will now produce a number of similar infographics across the web. 
3. By clicking “visit page” of each website showing this infographic, you’ll easily identify blogs that shared this infographic. Now, following the steps of “targeting influencers” above, connect to these bloggers and invite them to post about your infographic.

Bloggers often appreciate someone coming to them with content ideas for their next blog post, even more so if the infographic you are sharing with them fits their niche. They would love an opportunity to get in the door early on the next big infographic.

If they do publish a blog post about your infographic, it will expose your infographic to a whole new world of traffic and potential viewers. Be realistic and understand that you can’t expect your infographic to go viral after sharing it with five bloggers. It’s a numbers game.

Your results in getting bloggers to write about your infographic is going to be directly proportional to the number of people you ask. If you don’t ask, there’s almost a 100% chance they won’t blog about it. So go make some friends!

5) Repurpose & Retweet

One great way to promote your infographic is to splice up the points you make and share them socially. A great way to do this is to add “tweetables” to your landing page. Tweetables help your visitors share stats and facts from your infographic, driving interest as well as traffic back to your infographic.  

Tweetables exist because most people will not type a stat from your infographic word for word in order to share it.  However, tons of people will click a single button to tweet engaging facts, and since you set up the tweet, you get to make sure you’re given the credit. Tweetables are easy to setup and very effective.

Example tweetables that we’d just LOVE you to share:

1. 65% of the world’s population are visual marketers.  No wonder Infographics are so effective. [tweet this]
2. Google Trends shows how Infographics have exploded in the past 2 years, growing over 800%. [tweet this]
3. Marketers who use infographics increase their traffic 12% more (on average) than those who don’t. [tweet this]

Remember to always provide a link to your infographic so the tweetables drive traffic!

6) Measure and Learn

Just because your infographic is now shared well on the web doesn’t mean your job is done. Measuring the success of your infographic and the sources of that success are paramount to gaining full ROI and also streamlines improving in the future.

Here are some analytics tips to help improve your infographic marketing:

1. You’re probably already using URL shorteners like Bitly to measure and track the sources of your clicks, but are you sending each referring site a thank you? Take time to connect with people who like your infographics enough to share it - that way next time you publish you can share it with your warm market.
2. Use the social media quick share buttons from places like sharethis to display how well your infographic is being shared across social media platforms.
3. Marketing cannot live on views alone. Your infographic should be promoting an offer that will help you generate leads. Whether you’re trying to grow subscribers or generate leads by offering free toolkit, downloading an ebook, or grabbing a “how to” blueprint, make sure you’re measuring your lead conversion rate. Conversion rates and test results help improve future marketing.

Making your Infographic the Big Hit

Infographics are best to be treated as living things. They will need your love, attention and care if they are ever to repay you with mass exposure online. Don’t expect to just upload the graphic to your site and for the internet to take care of the rest.

Ensure you are giving the online community every possibility to find and share your infographic, and make sure you are exposing everyone to the infographic at every possible opportunity. If you’re infographic reaches fame, it will live for a very long time.

Walking the Walk

Our advice wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written if we didn’t practice what we preach, so we have created an exclusive “how to market infographics” infographic that specifically demonstrates how to execute the points made in this article.  When you stop by to grab our free infographic, we’ll include a few bonus tips on marketing your infographic, plus we’ll be sharing our own marketing metrics as well as an insider look at our Infotraffic app.

PS - When you create a unique and engaging infographic about inbound marketing or responsive web design, share them with us (@lean_labs) - maybe we can help you promote it!