Q. What’s the biggest fear of every link builder (and heartsick lover)?
A. Silence. Or, even worse than silence, indifference.
This is when you’re publishing your best stuff, but the next day the only reply is silence. No comments, no links, no tweets. Nobody is paying any attention. That’s the fear that haunts every web developer or SEO professional.
But what about challenges? You can master the fear and destroy the silence. So this article is a first-hand experience of creating and promoting four infographics. I will reveal exactly which techniques worked, which were an exercise in futility and which were utter disasters.
We had seven months of work ahead, twenty-five people involved, a cup-board full of high-quality cookies, a salt shaker for some reason full of sugar, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored candies, sweets and lollipops… and also a quart of maple syrup, a quart of chocolate syrup, a case of cola, twenty five pounds of coffee and twelve pounds of almonds.
Not that we needed all that for one task trip, but once you get locked into a serious work, the tendency is to push it as hard as you can.
Infographics, again? Duh…
Infographics as a link building strategy can work perfectly fine if you meet two important conditions: First, the content needs to be appropriate for the audience. Second, the design process needs to be effective. Though everyone but the extremely lazy creates infographics today, this also means that content consumers are starting to get bored with them. To break up the infographic monotony and improve our content’s link-building potential, our team decided that these infographics would include some interactivity.
Each infographic was developed by a core team that included a content person, a designer, an animator and a front-end developer. This design team was followed by a marketing team of one social media ninja and three link-builders. Altogether we make a small part of TemplateMonster – a web design company that’s building website templates for over 11 years.
…and the last thought for my prologue before I bore you with stats. One of Rand’s tweet stuck in my memory: “In fact, those 9 times you’ll fail are the only reason and the only way that 10th time will work.” With this in mind, we decided to give it a first shot.
A shot #1: Responsive Web Design Interactive Guide.
Choosing Our Topic.
The first infographic was about Responsive Web Design. If you peep into Google Trends you’ll find that the topic’s curve continues to raise:
The topic is hot, in fact, we are observing a fundamental shift in website development, which has already changed the web landscape. So we actually didn’t hesitate about the topic, as the choice was obvious. We decided to gather all the material in one place and create a kind of a guide, which would include theory – statistics, articles, books – along with practical tools and plugins for developers as well as tutorials for beginners.
But how in the world can all that mass of material be presented in an effective and, most importantly, interesting way? The visual concept was the fruit of long meditation of Lilian Rigo, the author of the first infographic. She decided to make the infographic in the form of a board game, complete with figures and fly-out boxes. Users would be able to move up or down the squares in order to reveal all the useful info about responsive web design.
Our Design Timeline.
The pre-production stage, including content research and defining technical requirements, took one month. The coding and development stage took us another month. Although our team already had some experience in designing infographics, all our previous efforts had been static. Lilian’s concept would be our first interactive infographic. It launched on July 26, 2012.
Our Promotional Timeline.
In total, the promo lasted two months. We did pretty usual things, according to the following plan:
- Newsletter.
- Posts on corporate blogs.
- Social media posts.
- Infographics galleries.
- Guest blogging.
- Web design blogs accepting community news.
Here’s a closer look at each of the items listed above.
First, the event was highlighted in our company newsletter. Then we added the news on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and StumbleUpon, using both our official and personal accounts. When posting to these sources, craft your messages and images carefully and do hashtag research to get the most out of Twitter. We also ran sponsored tweets via BuySellAds. We picked over 10 well-known blogs in our niche. Our CTR numbers for these were pretty good. However, we couldn’t repeat that effect with the subsequent infographics.
By the time of launching we’d prepared posts about the infographic, which were published on several company and partner blogs. We submitted our Infographic to Data Visualization galleries and showcases. You can find nice lists of resources that accept both free and paid submissions. We only submitted to the free places and from 20 websites only four were successes. Is this worth it? I think there are better ways to spend the resources. For subsequent infographics, we only submitted to those four successful galleries and spent the rest of our time focused on guest posts.
Guest blogging takes time, so the work should be started at least two weeks prior to your launch date. We made a list of relevant web design and web development blogs and got in touch with the blog owners. After two months of this work, 15 blogs agreed to publish our articles for free. We wrote unique articles for each of them and included a static .jpg version of our infographic with a link to the full animated version on our site.
What else? We also looked for general questions like “What is responsive design?” on Quora.com, giving answers with the link to our infographic. It turned out, though, that there were very few questions like that on the topic. While this tactic might work for some infographics, it didn’t work for us.
Finally, we went through the list of web design blogs that accept free news submissions. That tactic is a relatively quick and simple way of getting links and news coverage from relevant sources. We worked out 63 web blogs and only 17 submissions were successful. Later on, we worked only with these 17 domains.
And now let’s get to the fun part.
Our Results.
Traffic Results.
We’ve got 3,296 pageviews on the day of launching. And 25,720 pageviews for the first month, 19,091 of which were Unique. Page Authority via Open Site Explorer: 78.
The infographic page still ranks within top 20 landing pages of our site in terms of visits. In other words, the strongest pages of our website, namely our home and product pages, including WordPress Themes, Joomla Templates, Website Templates, etc. are above it.
Social Media Results.
The response we got from social networks was quite inspiring:
- Facebook: 1.1k
- Twitter: 1,142
- Google Plus: 505
- Pinterest: 213
- StumbleUpon: 176
It’s also inspiring that people continue to tweet about our infographic even now. Here are some tweets we were so happy to discover:
“This is really fantastic! – MT @EstelaRueda: Here’s an interactive infographic about responsive web design” (via @Hot_Web_Design)
“I know everyone’s already seen this, but its just so cool” (via @crgeary)
“Our tech editor Di found this great responsive web design interactive infographic” (via @sitepointdotcom)
“An Incredible Interesting Responsive Web Design Interactive Infographic by Template Monster” (via @ResponsiveSites)
“Creative Way to Learn Responsive Web Design” (via @HackerYolk)
“informative & interactive all at once! Infographic about responsive web design http://t.co/CZ1Gaoly #responsive #lovethis #nerdalert” (via @jeannine_marie)
“Must-see interactive #infographic on Responsive Web Design” (via @glowingrec)
Link Results.
Positive people’s feedback was the icing on the cake for us. However, what about the cake itself? After all, the whole point of our infographic experiment was to increase the number of inbound links to our site.
We finished with a total of 606 links and 176 linking root domains. An additional, pleasant “side effect” we received were links from bookmark sites, such as scoop.it or SocialMediaExaminer.com. Even when you subtract the links we built ourselves, we ended up with more than 500 links and 160 linking domains. In most cases, sites wrote original articles about our infographic themselves. Our infographic was also included in a weekly round-up at ResponsiveDesignWeekly.com, a site solely devoted to Responsive Web Design with a bunch of useful articles, tools, tips and inspirational links. Whoa!
Our second bite of the cherry was an interactive infographic about Blue Color in Web Design.
Did you know the color blue symbolizes immortality in China? This is probably why such giants as Intel and Twitter use blue in the design of their logos and websites. Those were the types of facts we collected and represented in our small, second interactive infographic.
Along with the individual brainstorming done by our writers, we also had a small group get together for a brainstorming meeting. Katarina, the author of the second infographic, suggested several visual concepts, and then each of us added points to the list of ideas. A few of the ideas I remember include the blue sky with white fluffy clouds and zeppelins, an aquarium with scuba diver, a designer’s table cluttered with the usual stuff and so forth. At the end of that crazy day we agreed on a simple idea involving pencils.
We got it off the ground after a month of development – on October 2, 2012.
As with the previous infographic, the promo phase took us two months. This time, however, it was easier since we’d already learned what worked and didn’t work from our prior experience.
Our Results.
Traffic Results.
On the launch day we had 2,344 pageviews, for the first month – 14,876. Unique pageviews for the first month – 12,224.
Link Results.
Linking root domains: 93.
Total links: 225.
Page Authority: 73.
In other words, this infographic resulted in about 200 links and 70 linking domains without our participation. I’ve even found somebody referring to our infographic from the blog comments.
Social Media Results.
It seems that the infographic visually suited people’s taste, as our Pinterest results demonstrate:
- Facebook: 542
- Twitter: 254
- Google Plus: 90
- Pinterest: 465
- StumbleUpon: 89
The third interactive infographic was launched less than a month later, on October 30, 2012. For this one, we focused on the second most popular color in web design – black. The author of this infographic is Helga Moreno, you can find her articles on a number of web design blogs.
The development process was about the same – an endless search for the concept, poor sleep, headaches and one twitchy eye. However, this time the author found it a bit easier; Helga has a teenage son and her house is filled with superhero comics and game reviews. Under such conditions, the concept arose rather organically in her mind. The infographic was designed comic book-style, with mystical night city scenes filled with slightly creepy residents wearing black.
This time, our promotion of the infographic was rather minimal. We released it in our newsletter, had five guest posts, put it on all the usual social networks and paid for a few sponsored tweets.
Our Results.
Traffic Results.
We had 1,303 pageviews for the first day and 5,754 for the first month. Unique pageviews for the first month: 4,920.
Link Results.
We received fewer links than we did with the previous infographics:
Linking root domains: 19
Total links: 41
Page Authority: 63
Social Media Results.
Social interaction was also weaker:
- Facebook: 125
- Twitter: 102
- Google Plus: 31
- Pinterest: 12
- StumbleUpon: 147
Despite these disappointing numbers, people’s reactions were still quite positive. To boast a little, take a look at these tweets:
“This infographic is one of the coolest designs I’ve seen. Plus it’s informative about the use of BLACK in web design” (by @hypnotic1)
“Colour Theory for the comic generation, Black Edition: http://t.co/HgagpwVg #design #webdesign #color #graphicdesign” (by @jaspio)
“Web HostingBlack in Web Design | An Interactive Infographic | http://t.co/BIyiveZW | Inforgraphics + Superheroes = Holy #000000 Batman!!” (by @ilisysia)
“See all the advantages and correct ways for using the color black (or is it a color?) in this Marvel-ous display: http://t.co/DIJE7nP3” (by @pmlester)
The fourth infographic was launched on February 5, 2013 and is about Bootstrap, a framework that is rapidly gaining popularity nowadays. This infographic is not quite infographic, it’s rather a small developer’s toolbox full of all those useful gismos: plugins, tutorials, tools, etc.
The author of the infographic is Alex Bulat, a copywriting jedi with supernatural powers, who blogs a lot on various design and development topics.
After much thought, Alex decided upon sleek, metro-style visual concept with the focus on the content.
The promo plan included the same items: newsletter, posts on the company blogs, 10 guest posts, news on web design blogs and social media. One thing we didn’t do that time were paid tweets.
Traffic Results.
This infographic has a curious graph. On the launch day, 5th February, we had 1,623 pageviews. A month later, on the 2nd March, the traffic reached almost the same point – 1,436 pageviews. It appeared that one German blog wrote about the infographic and sent us a nice amount of referral traffic:
Links Results.
Linking root domains: 34
Total links: 427
Page Authority: 71
Social Media Results.
- Facebook: 347
- Twitter: 233
- Google Plus: 56
- Pinterest: 30
- StumbleUpon: 32
Each of our infographics included a simple feedback form, allowing people to leave comments or suggestions. With the Bootstrap Infographic, we were attacked by numerous requests to share the scripts and templates behind it. We interpreted this response to mean that it was a hit with other developers.
Conclusion:
It’s not always easy to understand why certain content makes a hit while another fails. Helga’s black design, for instance, didn’t garner as many links as Alex’s Bootstrap concept, but that doesn’t mean that there was anything particularly “wrong” with Helga’s concept. You can’t predict if things go viral, you can’t count on it. But even the fact that most linkbait fails, doesn’t make it less magnetic.
In truth, all content has the potential to be used for linkbait if you approach it in the right way. Even your Terms of Service could be linkbait. Though the term “linkbait” doesn’t completely correspond to the notion, as we want not only links, but also visitors, social media interaction, and ideally, conversions.
Despite using the same basic template for promoting our content for each infographic, the results varied greatly. What explains these differences? One important point to note is topic choice. We were lucky with our Responsive Web Design topic; this wave had risen right beneath our eyes. The next two topics, colors in web design, are important but appeal to quite a small niche; it’s easy to understand why these two topics didn’t generate the same amount of attention or have the same impact that the first one did.
The Bootstrap infographic’s case study is more enigmatic. Take a look at the Google Trends graph:
The blue curve is for the Bootstrap trend. The red one is for Responsive Web Design. At face value we should have even better results than with the Responsive Infographic. That’s just not what happened. Perhaps the visual realization didn’t catch people’s fancy, perhaps we should have changed our marketing strategy; we can only speculate the reasons why this infographic didn’t take off in the same way that the first one did.
One of our team’s takeaways from this experience was that our approach in choosing a topic should appeal to a broader audience. Our research process for topic choices, therefore, could have been better. For example, except guest blogging we almost didn’t do any outreach. It would have made sense to contact people who are related with the topic early on during the research phase.
On that same point, it helps to remember Paddy Moogan’s words: “You are not getting links from websites; you’re getting links from people.” Rather than ignoring this crucial point, build relationships and make the right people feel involved in the creation process. This outreach will help to create content that truly appeals to people and will also make things smooth when you get to the promotion phase.
Speaking of promotion, we think it would be interesting to create a screencast video version of the infographic and promote it through YouTube and other video hosting services. Additionally, creating a PowerPoint or PDF document and submitting it on Slideshare, Scribd, Docstoc and other document hosting services is another tactic we will try in the future.
As a final note, we are also planning to release the “updated versions” of the most successful infographics. A new version will hopefully attract new attention to the existing content and harvest a second linkbait crop.
Bonus.
I’ve gathered useful tools and resources to make things easier as you get started with Infographics:
1. Articles to start with:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/3-core-link-baiting-strategies-for-2013/57231/
https://moz.com/blog/why-link-building-strategies-fail
https://moz.com/blog/10-extraordinary-examples-of-effective-link-bait
http://alistapart.com/article/a-checklist-for-content-work
http://www.sparringmind.com/viral-content/
2. Research: find topic and collect data.
http://www.zotero.org/ – easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.
http://www.paddymoogan.com/link-building-tools/infographic-search-engine/ – Infographic Search Engine made by Paddy Moogan that helps to find if the infographics on your topic already exist.
3. Outreach: get in touch with experts in your niche.
http://www.buzzstream.com/ – a great place for building and managing relationships with influencers
http://raventools.com/ – tools that make it easy to track all of your outreach work
4. Development and quality assurance:
http://blog.templatemonster.com/2012/03/09/javascript-debugging-tools/
5. Helpful tools for promo:
http://www.hashtags.org – hashtag research
http://www.followup.cc – allows you to create email reminders for yourself to make sure that you follow up on your outreach
http://www.paddymoogan.com/2012/01/14/list-of-infographic-sites-for-link-building/ – list of infographic sites for link building
6. Infographics Galleries we recommend:
http://www.infographicsarchive.com
http://www.loveinfographics.com
http://www.best-infographics.com
7. Finding guest post opportunities:
8. Analyze the results:
http://www.seotakeaways.com/geek-guide-measuring-content-marketing-efforts/ – how to measure content marketing efforts
http://www.topsy.com – real-time social search engine
http://followerwonk.com – Twitter Analytics Tool
http://hootsuite.com/ – multiple social networks monitoring in one place
http://www.facebook.com/insights/ – Facebook Analytics
https://socialcrawlytics.com/ – a free social media tool to find out who shared your competitors’ content.
I’d love to hear your own recommendations in the comments on how to generate links, traffic and good vibes on social media with infographics.
P.S.
At the time of writing this post, we’ve released the fifth infographic. It’s on Skeuomorphism in Web Design. Haven’t heard about it yet? Take a look!
