What are infographics?
If utilized properly, infographics can be a very powerful option for small businesses to expand their reach, drive more traffic and inbound links, receive hundreds of social shares, engage readers, and even increase ROI. With visual learners dominating the online market, infographics can make the difference between a potential client and mere visitor for a small business. As a small business you can apply infographics with two primary methods:
Create an infographic for a much larger website with an embeddable link going back to your site
Create an infographic on your site and promote it to your readers, relevant industry websites, and infographic directories
There are several ways that infographics can positively impact a small business:
Reduce bounce rates
The science of bounce rates (the percentage of users who visit only one page on a site before exiting) has been hotly debated. As a small business, your website has the obvious goals:
Inform visitors
Sell a product
Many small businesses have yet to incorporate a blog and set up social media profiles. For those that have, infographics cause new visitors to follow this pattern:
Discover infographic via referral and land on your site
(Hopefully) enjoy the infographic
Click through your site to learn more (thus reducing bounce rates)
Viral potential
The ongoing proliferation of social media platforms, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, allows infographics to skyrocket. As many of these services rely on the sharing of attractive, concise yet effective content, infographics feel right at home on social networks.
Think of it like this…
When your blog content is shared, the actual piece of content itself is like the hood of a car (the first thing you see). You can have a completely bland, monotone color (think plain text) or have jazzy and appealing stripe styles (think mustang hood stripes).
Infographics attract and generate interest because:
We can instantly see the content
We can expand it in just one click
We can digest all of the information in 30 seconds or less
“Going viral” is a very suspect declaration. Especially for small businesses, if a marketer is guaranteeing you “viral media” you need to immediately fire them. First of all, you must understand what viral marketing really is:
The keyword I previously mentioned is potential. Infographics are one of the dozens of media options businesses utilize for a chance to “go viral.”
Infographics are one of the popular media choices because they are:
Cheap (compared to professional, HD video)
Time effective (can be churned out in 1-2 days)
Completely virtual – no equipment required (free infographic creation tools, here are just a few: Easi.ly, Piktochart, Visualize.me, Infogr.am )
So, back to the viral potentiality thing.
It’s like playing the lottery. Creating an awesome infographic and promoting it as best as you can is pretty much the general strategy – where promotion is like hoping you’ll win the jackpot.
Even if only a handful of your readers share the infographic, you can still build upon that readership by sticking to an infographic schedule.
Here’s a great example: 12 Palms Rehab creates infographics and video-graphics frequently and they are a recovery center – not some super-high-tech-savvy-SF-startup you’d expect. Navigate to their blog and you’ll see all of their media content, which has gone viral – over time.
Observe how their page view stats started very small and have dramatically increased. This proves there is viral potential for any business, regardless of your industry and size.
Reputation increases
Many times, the most profitable clientele base is the one that is unaware that they need your small business’ services. Infographics make it easy to share why your product or service is essential or highly desirable for a specific niche, without the overly textual and technical lingo that text-driven blog posts inspire.
If new eyes catch wind of your infographic campaign, they may:
Feel more comfortable with your business (as opposed to a competitor)
Affirm the validity of your business (because poor quality sites will never create beautiful media)
SHARE IT! (social signals are literally free, digital word-of-mouth marketing)
Infographics can also show dedication and passion; trademarks of a loyal and trusted business. The popular strategy is to turn your industry research into an infographic, thus enforcing your role as an authority and resource.
Infographics continue to spread like wildfire
10 years ago it was uncommon for infographics to populate the web as dramatically as they currently do. Fortunately, infographic familiarity has increased exponentially the past several years.
This is best demonstrated through social network aggregator Digg, which has had infographics increase by 250 times since 2007. In addition, Google search queries on ‘infographics’ have increased by over 700% from 2010 to 2012.
Clearly, infographics are no longer a foreign entity, so incorporating them on your business’ website presents the favorable low-risk, high-reward scenario.
Overall, infographics make a small business blog and its content more attractive and easy to read, which makes it more likely for visitors to return or even become a client.
Thanks for reading!
Have you tried an infographic campaign yet?
Written by Jesse Aaron. Jesse is a professional blogger with a passion for homebrewing. He writes on a variety of topics on his blog Mashbout. Follow Jesse on Google Plus.