Utilizing Infographics To Get
Published on Authority Sites - Why You
Should Create Infographics with
Authority Sites in Mind and Not Your
Audience
More likely than not, getting an authority site
to include an infographic you make is much, MUCH
easier than them posting a guest article you
write. And getting published on an authority
site will bring you direct targeted traffic, add
to your brand, and give you a quality link.
And since authority sites are often visited by
other webmasters in your niche, you have a good
chance that your infographic will be syndicated
by others that found it on the authority site.
When thinking about creating an infographic,
consider what authority sites in your niche
would like to post, and don't necessarily design
for your audience. Your goal is to get your
infographic on authority sites that will not
only send you traffic, but also give you a
quality link.
Go to authority sites and see if you can find
their most popular articles and brainstorm if
you can come up with an infographic that would
be related.
Also, try to use a statistic from an authority
site and cite that site in your infographic. By
including the URL of the authority site in your
infographic, you greatly the chances they will
publish your graphic.
Make "Award" Infographics
Another way to increase the odds your
infographic will be published on authority sites
is to create an "award-type" infographic. Folks
like to brag about awards and if you can create
a great-looking infographic that mentions
authority sites, they will be more likely to
publish your infographic.
For example, if you are in the "pet" niche, can
you come up with an infographic that is a
compilation of:
Best dog training site
Grumpiest cat video
Funniest pet page
...etc.
Be creative with the categories. Contact the
winners and let them know about your
infographic. Be sure to tell them how much you
love their site and wanted to show your
appreciation for the work they do. Flattery will
get you much better results.
Using Powerpoint for Multi-Media
Marketing
Infographics can really be marketing powerhouses
as they can be included in a variety of media,
each with its own marketing resources.
And using PowerPoint to create infographics
gives you lots of flexibility, as Powerpoint
allows you to export your slideshows into a
variety of different formats, including video,
PDF, ppx, doc, jpg and more. And there are
powerful marketing opportunities for each media
type.
Using Powerpoint to create an infographic. You
can:
Create a an animated infographic and convert
to video for video marketing. Submit to:
Infographics are great to use on Pinterest. Not
only can they go viral and be "repinned", by
creating your own infographics you are in good
shape concerning copyright laws. (Assuming you
don't use any copyright protected material in
your infographics)
Pinterest Suggestion: Recipes
are "fair use" and can't be copyright protected,
only the presentation can. Be creative and make
a list of ingredients, then use a "mind map" to
turn recipes into infographics. Maybe add a
photo or clip art to dress it up. You can do the
same thing with many step by step "how to's". Be
sure to put them in your own words and create an
entirely new graphic presentation using mind map
software.
Twitter Images
- When 140 characters isn't enough.
Twitter Images allows you to post images and
infographics are a great way to publish more
info that you can post in a normal tweet.
A Quick, Easy, Effective and Free
Marketing Strategy For Infographics, (and
All Images And Pictures You Own)
The image sharing site Flickr can send you tons
of traffic. So can Pinterest.
So let's combine the two. Post your images on
Flickr. Remember basic SEO principles
and use your most popular keywords in your
titles, image file names, tags, descriptions,
etc. Focus on major keywords and don't worry
about the competition.
Add a free Wordpress plugin that hooks up to
your Flickr account and automatically posts your
images on your WP blog.
Next, install a free WP plugin that adds a
Pinterest "pin it" button to your images.
Now, take relevant pictures and create relevant
infographics.
You should be able to see the potential in this
set up. Add an email list optin form to your
blog and you have the foundation of an effective
marketing system.
This system was born from a couple of
WarriorForum threads. Be sure to check them out
for a free WP Pinterest plugin and info about
Flickr traffic.
Google Image
Search - Image searches can deliver
some serious Google traffic and give you another
weapon in your marketing arsenal. Images
included in your web pages not only make them
look better and add a multi-media element (which
likely aids SEO), the images themselves can be
optimized to help with Google ranking.
Make
It Easy for Webmasters to Use Your
Infographic: When you post an infographic
on your site or blog, make sure you include the
HTML code in a way that makes it easy for
webmasters to copy and paste on their own sites.
Keep in mind basic SEO principles and be sure to
include the basic "optimized" HTML in your code.
List
of Sites to Submit Infographics
Visual.ly- Visual.ly not only is a great
free site for creating infographics, it's also
probably the best place to submit your
infographic in the hope it will be syndicated
by other sites. Not only does Visually give
you a chance to get your infographic picked up
by others, your infographic page can get
decent Page Rank and is a dofollow links.
Visually is also a great place to look for
inspiration. While you can't copy an
infographic design, you can "borrow" ideas to
create your own original work. Also, check out
a category that's closest to your niche and
check out the most popular infographics for
that niche.
This list includes PageRank of the homepage
and includes sites that have dofollow links.
The list is kind of old, so some sites may be
dead or have changed how they link.
Here's a service that submits infographics to
25 directories "by hand" for $10. It's worth
checking out just to see the list they use: http://infographicsubmit.com/
There's also a number of people on Fiverr that
will submit your infographics to various
relevant directories: Fiverr
for "Submit Infographics"
Free Infographics and Visualization Tools
You Need to Know
Visual.ly
- Again, Visually is probably the #1 site for
any infographic marketer. Create, share, publish
infographics and visuals. Connect your account
to Facebook and Twitter and much more. Visual.ly
is a "must checkout"!
ManyEyes
- Probably my favorite infographic resource. A
great site by IBM that allows you to create
"visualizations" using either your own data or
data stored on the site. You can choose
different styles, fonts, colors and more to
display your infographics.
How to Use Many
Eyes
Google Data Sets - Similar
to ManyEyes, but not quite as good, IMO. Still,
a good resource to check out.
Intro to Google
Public Data Sets
Wordly
- Another favorite. Just add some text and
Wordly creates a visualization. Uses a "word
cloud" so the more times a word is used in the
text, the bigger it will appear. It can also
import RSS feeds. Note: Wordly uses Java to
create the images. This means you can't save the
image directly to your computer. However, it the
Wordly license it says it's OK to take a screen
shot and save it that way.
To make a screen shot, after you've created your
Wordly:
press the "prt scrn" button on your
keyboard.
Open Paint (Start => All Programs =>
Accessories => Paint)
Tip: Once you get your Wordly visual into Paint
(or your favorite graphics editor), add a simple
picture, avatar or clipart to give it some more
"oooomph".
Tagxedo
- A very good text visualization tool similar to
Wordly, but with many more features and
controls. The problem with Tagxedo is the usage
license, which is for non-commercial use only.
The TOS also states they own the copyright to
the images created and add a copyright notice to
the bottom of each graphic. If you are OK with
this, Tagxedo produces some very cool results.
StatSilk - (Formally
called "Stat Planet") Has a number of free
downloads to help creating infographics focusing
on world maps and countries of the World. Download
page
StatSilk
(StatPlanet) Interactive Map Maker
Hohli -
Fast and simple way to create pie charts, line
graphs, bar charts, scatter plots, radar charts
and Venn diagrams.
Hohli Tutorial
Video on Youtube:
yED - A good, free flow
chart creator and will run on Windows,
Unix/Linux, and Mac OS. See yED in action in the
short video below:
Make
Sweet - Easy and fun way to make 3D Venn
diagrams consisting of two over-lapping circles.
MakeSweet Basics
Gapminder
- Adobe Air based program so it will run on
Windows, Mac and Linux. Creates impressive
visualizations and includes a self-updating data
base of World facts and statistics.
Creately.com - An online flowchart creator
with some good looking templates. Free version
is limited to 5 diagrams a month. Can upgrade
your account to unlimited diagrams for $5 a
month.
Creately
Tutorial (Note: Collaborations aren't
available in the free version)
Data, Statistics and Content Resources and
Suggestions
Copyrights - Statistics and facts can't be
protected by copyrights, only the presentation
of those facts can be protected. By creating
your own infographics and visuals using facts
and statistics, you are creating a new and
unique presentation for them.
Here's a quick
and easy tip to help you create infographics
and visualizations: I like creating
infographics from lists. And a great way to
find lists is to use the Google "site" command
and enter Wikipedia.org for the site.
The following will give you general results
for lists:
"list of" site:wikipedia.org
(just paste into Google)
Another option is to include a keyword to give
you more precise results, such as:
"list of guitarists" site:wikipedia.org
(paste into Google)
It's easy to come up with a list of people,
places and things that are great for
infographics.
A good way to exploit the possibility of your
infographic going viral is to plan ahead for
the anniversary of historical events. Here's a
Wikipedia page that links to historical events
so you can plan ahead: List of
historical anniversaries - Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
Just paste the URL and change April_18 to any
date you want to research.
You can make an infographic about the day or
pick a topic from that page.
Advanced:
If you can combine an infographic and a good
article, you have a great opportunity for
marketing. Use the infographic to go viral on
social sites like Twitter and Pinterest.
Combine these with a timely press release
about the event and you have the makings of a
very good campaign.
Be creative, do some research and plan ahead a
couple of days and you may be surprised at the
results you can achieve.
Suggested
"average" search queries:
The average (man/woman/business/webiste/etc) has
The average _____ weighs
The average _____ lives
The average _____ eats
The average _____ makes
The average _____ owns
The average american male
The average girl's guide
The average elevation
The average length of a _____
The average height of a _____
The average value of _____ is
The average cost of a _____ is
The average size of a _____ is
The average temperature of _____ is
The average hourly wage for _____ is
The average salary _____ is
The average price in 2012 for _____ is
The average price of _____ is
The average cost of a ton/pound/oz of
_____ is
Tip: For
tons of ideas to make text-based infographics,
do google searches for:
"list of ______"
"big list of ______"
"_______ word cloud"
...etc.
Collect your lists and make text-based
infographics you can use on Pinterest, Facebook,
forums, YouTube videos, sites and blogs.
Do a Google for Ideas - Search Google for
infographics in your niche:
"my keywords" + infographic
Use the regular search, video search and the
image search to expand your results.
Quotes and
Jokes/Humor - There's many good sites
with collections of jokes and quotes, and I
won't list them here. However, they make great
content for infographics and often can go viral
on social sites like Pinterest and Twitter.
Images Morguefile.com
- While the images on MorgueFile aren't in the
public domain, they do offer the most liberal
usage license of any of the only picture sharing
sites. You can use them for just about anything
and you don't even need to give attribution. Be
sure to read the Morguefile license
here.
PublicDomainPictures.net -
Has a great selection of free quality pictures,
backgrounds, lighting effects and more for
personal and commercial use.
Ratings
- Create info graphics for Amazon products and
be sure to include an appealing graphic.
However, be careful about using product pictures
themselves, as they may be copyright protected.
Instead, create a chart or graph of the average
ratings for two or more products, for example.
Trends -
Trends are great to convert to infographics.
Here's a few ideas to find and exploit popular
trends:
Google Trends - Enter
multiple related keywords to compare trends,
then convert to your own infographic
Youtube Trends - Find
trending topics as well as create videos
from infographics.
Trendsmap Twitter Trends
- Create infographics based on Twitter
trends, then upload as Twitter Images to
exploit hot Twitter subjects to drive lots
of traffic.
GraphicRiver.net- Graphic
River sells infographics mostly intended for
print. IMO, their license is a little expensive
and restrictive to use for Pinterest and other
web project, unless you need something of very
high quality. However, it's free to browse and a
great resource to help stimulate your creative
design juices. Check it out if you need some
design inspiration. Here's a search I did on GraphicsRiver for Infographics
123rf.com infographic templates - Also
sells vector-based templates for infographics.
Another good source of inspiration.
YouTube is
always a great place to learn and
discover...Here's a couple of "infographics"
related YouTube searches:
12 options for creating
cartoon characters - Cartoon-ize:
Want to include a pic of a celebrity or famous
person in your infographic, and still respect
copyright laws? Maybe "cartoon-izing" that
person is the answer. Or create cartoon
look-alikes...Here's a web page that
reviews to use in your infographics.
Jashaka.com - Jashaka is a
free program similar to Adobe After Effects,
which creates animations and special effects for
videos. If you want to animate your infographics
and create videos for them for Youtube, etc,
without paying for After Effects, give Jashaka a
look. The program hasn't been updated in a few
years, but a new version is expected to be
released in the summer of 2012. Also be sure to
visit Youtube for Jashaka tutorials.
Free Infographic Vector
Design Kit - I had problems getting the
download link when I gave my email address.
But give it a shot, it looks pretty cool. From
the site: "Included
in this set is a world map, gender elements,
as well as multiple pie and bar charts. You
can easily combine and modify all the
elements to create a distinctive
infographic. The elements in the kit can be
used for personal and commercial purposes."
Free Infographic Building Resources
- A good collection of PSD and vector images
designed for making infographics. Includes
charts, maps, "pins", icons and more.
5 Free Vector Image Programs -
This site reviews the 5 best vector image
programs. You are probably more familiar with
paint programs, such as Photoshop, Gimp and
Windows Paint. But when creating infographics,
you may have a need to be able to work with
vector images. I won't get into detail, but
there's two ways to create images on a computer
The most common is called paint/raster. The
other method is called draw/vector. Simply,
"paint" uses pixels and you can control it on a
pixel by pixel basis. "Draw" or vector uses math
to draw lines and curves.
After you choose a program (I suggest Inkscape),
you can find all sorts of tutorials on Youtube.
Color Palette Generator -
Enter the URL of an
image to get a color palette
that matches the image.
Final Tips:
Unless you're very talented with graphics, keep
it simple. From a marketing point of view, a
simple infographic can go a long way. Your goal
is to be productive, not Picasso.
Use the color schemers above. Just getting your
colors to match can have a big impact on how
good your infographics look.
Add your URL to each infographic. Not only do
you want credit for making it, you can brand
your site at the same time.
Cite authority sites for any info or data you
use in your infographic. Then contact them and
let them know about it. They may post it on
their site.
