How to Promote Infographics

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Can Infographics Improve Your Traffic and SEO?

Infographics have become quite popular among SEO agencies with top graphic design talent. And why shouldn’t they be? Images are twice as likely to be shared compared to text posts, and they’re far more engaging for readers than simple text updates and articles.

Still, many SEOs are stumped as to how to generate the most traffic for their infographic. Almost always, the purpose of the infographic is two-fold: generate organic traffic and encourage backlinks from other websites. But what are the most effective steps for accomplishing those goals?

4 Steps to Promote Your Infographic

This article will introduce a four-step process for getting your infographic to go “viral.” It won’t be as easy as Justin Bieber posting a Tweet that instantly reaches millions of screaming fans, but it’s simple enough and requires only a basic understanding of social media, press releases, and search engine optimization.

Step 1: Submit a Press Release

Publishing a press release is one of the most effective strategies for improving keyword ranks, inbound links to your website, traffic, and visibility. As an added bonus, a press release gives you the opportunity to explain the story behind the infographic. What were the takeaways from your research? Who will benefit from the infographic?

It helps to have a talented copywriter develop an effective press release—one that hooks the reader and keeps their interest. Perhaps even more important is optimizing the PR so people can find it. With hundreds of press releases publishing daily, it’s important to keep in mind these three tips for optimizing and writing yours:

Develop a lead that persuades readers. This is the opening sentence that should compel readers to continue. Consider publishing a few experimental leads on Facebook to gauge reader response (i.e. how many shares, comments and likes the lead receives).
Be unique. You can learn a lot from looking at other press releases, but originality is the key to writing a PR that generates traffic. Use an original hook and a captivating template.
Write for the audience. This might sound like a no-brainer, but many SEOs don’t know how to write for the audience. It comes down to understanding their problems and addressing them. Why are they reading your infographic? What problems does it solve? Your press release should clearly answer those questions.

If you’re new to creating infographics and writing press releases, this article on Search Engine Journal provides detailed tips for gathering data and presenting the right points. Or, check out this article on CrazyEgg.com about creating a shareable infographic.

Step 2: Publish a Social-Network Press Release

Because of budgetary restrictions, many Internet-marketing agencies shy away from social-network press releases. But that’s all the more reason to use this tactic: Unlike over-done strategies, like article directory marketing, social-network PRs can help your content stand out from the rest.

Here are a few tips for writing and optimizing an effective press release for social media:

Keep the lead headline keyword-rich and brief.
A sub-headline can help if the message is too long for the lead headline. For instance, “Infographics Can Double Your Website Traffic” could be the lead, and “Study Shows 200-Percent Increase in Traffic Due to Infographics” could be the sub-headline.
The hook should appear in the overview. Keywords are important here, but engaging the reader is most vital.
The body should include the who, what, where, when, how, and why of the infographic. How is this solving the readers’ problems? Use bullet points to separate content.
Keep the “About the Company” section short and sweet. Backlink to your Twitter, Facebook, and website. Link to other websites, such as LinkedIn, in the “Multimedia Links” section.

Step 3: Publish on Directories

Now that the hard part’s over, it’s time to really make sure that people can find your content. Because infographics have grown so popular over the last year, sites are popping up that help companies get some traction for their infographic. These sites include:

Consider browsing these sites to get some ideas for developing your infographic. Visual.ly, in particular, features an extensive portfolio of infographic designs, and Flickr is an image-sharing site that also showcases creative infographics.

For more info about marketing infographics, visit Infographic Journal.

Step 4: Manual Promotions

Manual outreach is vital for promoting your infographic. Like social-media PRs, manual promotion is a technique that many SEOs will overlook because it seems too time-consuming.

Fortunately, the process becomes much easier with infographics. Email outreach, for example, is simply because the infographic comprises the bulk of the email content. But if you are looking for an even simpler route, you can stick to blogging and submitting your post to popular Twitter users.

Blogging: Visit the Technorati site and search for blog pages that publish content related to the infographic. Develop a list of these sites, and email the webmasters.

Give them permission to share the content by tweeting it or embedding it into the blog. Don’t forget to post the embed code and an appropriate tweet to the outreach email.

Twitter: Blogging takes time, a commodity that many people just don’t have. That’s why Twitter has become so popular, and when it comes to promoting infographics—or just about any other webpage—this social network can help your content go viral.

In the “search” option on Twitter, enter keywords that relate to the infographic. Like the blog outreach email, send a message to accounts that show up for those searches. Invite those people to share the infographic.

Conclusion

Adding an infographic to a website is a simple way to post useful, engaging content. So, you might be surprised about how many people are willing to help.

Remember to follow graphic design best practices and write an effective call to action.

Remember to reference credible sources within the infographic. These sources might be willing to share it, which generates even more backlinks. While there are plenty of tips out there for promoting web content, make sure you integrate these four steps into your infographic promotions.