Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. It is the most populous city in East Africa, with a current estimated population of about 3 million. Home to thousands of Kenyan businesses and over 100 major international companies and organisations.
Media always document the before and after of natural disasters, cities wasted by the fierce nature of the weather, but what about the recovery that follows? These photos capture the amazing (and sometimes long) process of rebuilding and restoring life around the world.
Dogs and cats are one thing to have as pets, but when it comes to the wilder side of the animal kingdom, it's a dangerous game. These days, we generally hear about these kinds of pets when something goes horribly wrong, but there was a time when the glamour was publicized more than the gore.
Retronaut has a collection of photos of people and their wild pets from the years 1891-1971, but, please, don't get any ideas.
Beatrix Potter with rabbit, Benjamin Bouncer, 1891
A girl has tea with her pet dog and raccoon, Massachusetts, 1930
Josephine Baker takes her pet cheetah Chiquita for a walk, 1931
Parisian woman with cheetah, 1932
Frida Kahlo with Granizo, 1939
Phyllis Gordon and her pet Cheetah, 1939
Burlesque dancer Zorita walking her snake
Man with pet Lemur, 1950
Actress June Havoc with her pet toucan, 1950
A soldier walks his pet lion Fagen on the beach, US, 1951
Rupert the Rhino, 1960
A man eats breakfast with his pet chimpanzee, US, 1971
A flash mob combined with a wedding celebration. For anyone who remembers the frigid days of the Cold War, this flashmob's performance in Moscow brings to mind just about everything you never thought you'd see happen in the streets of the former Soviet Union.
The Surface is the first tablet computer, designed by Microsoft itself. The new device, unveiled by Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer at an event for journalists here, is a sign of the new tactics the software giant has been forced to embrace as it tries to make up lost ground in the mobile market.
Microsoft said the smallest Surface tablet is 9.3 millimeters thick and weighs 1.5 pounds, which is similar to Apple's iPad, at 9.4 millimeters thick and 1.44 pounds. The Surface has a 10.6-inch, 1366 x 768 screen compared with the iPad's 9.7-inch screen.
The Surface has a built-in kickstand and magnetic cover, which also acts as a touch keyboard. Microsoft didn't say whether the device would connect to cellular data networks or would be Wi-Fi only.
Never give up if you want to lose extra weight. It is possible only if you really desire to bring changes to your life. All these girls have proved that stunning body transformations can become the reality once you make efforts to stay fit and healthy. Check out these incredible before and after pictures of girls who have successfully lost a significant amount of weight.
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Anyone who says “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” is probably not a marketer.
And yet, this is something a lot of content marketing initiatives get wrong. Sure, the target audience may be making it to your content in droves, but leading people to your content is only step one.
As a marketer, you already know getting your visitors to perform an action is crucial to the success of any marketing initiative. Content marketing is no different. Tracking measurable actions (like newsletter subscribers, social shares, leads, clicks, and sales) tied to your content is crucial to gauging its efficacy.
Here is where most people get lost: They are creating content that isn’t leading people to perform measurable actions. Every piece of content you publish should be crafted with this in the forefront of your mind. If you’re not doing this, you’re wasting your time.
Ask yourself these questions:
What action do you want people to take after reading your content?
Which piece of past content inspired the highest number of these actions?
What elements of this content do you think contributed to its success?
Below is a breakdown of eight elements that inspire action and how to add them into your content. You should be purposefully weaving these elements into your content. At the end of this post, I’ve included an evaluation rubric for you to consistently measure if your content incorporates these attributes.
The Elements of Impactful Content
So how do you create content that leads your audience to perform a desired action?
Simply slapping a call-to-action at the end isn’t enough. Chances are your past content successes contained many, if not all, of the same attributes. Including these following elements throughout your content will help move people to action.
1. Provocative
Does your content flip conventional wisdom on its head?
Easily confused with controversy, being provocative is about more than raising eyebrows. Provocative content ignites emotion by pushing boundaries and challenges the status quo.
Non-profits are masters at using provocation to incite action. To raise awareness around poor sanitation conditions, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put together a stellar content marketing campaign about, well...poop. Using a combination of infographics and kinetic typography videos, they packaged content that is shocking, frankly discusses a taboo subject, and makes the viewer think differently about something as pedestrian as a toilet. Makes you want to donate, right?
2. Visionary
Are you causing a “Eureka moment” for the reader?
Visionary content puts into words a frustration, realization, or need that the reader has, but may not have been fully aware of or seen properly verbalized previously.
This virally successful article didn’t reinvent the wheel (or the toilet), but rather, it produces a “why didn’t I think of that?” reaction. This was a simple list of things the reader probably had never connected with making them less happy in life. The title of this post is also provocative (one doesn’t associate giving things up with happiness) and no doubt greatly contributed to its viral success. Just take a look at the social shares in the screenshot below the title to see how many actions this piece spawned.
3. Differentiated
Are you rehashing what others have already said?
Differentiated content presents a completely original ideaor discusses a tired topic in a new fashion or format. This is uncommon to most content and one of the toughest attributes to master.
Instead of being yet another “ultimate guide” blog post, this comprehensive resource combined expert knowledge with a visually-compelling format. And the accompanying infographic is anything but typical; it’s meant to be printed out and used as a checklist (you can rip the “cogs” off of the wheel as you complete each task).
4. Relevant
Does your content appeal to your target audience?
Content should be related to your brand without being an overt sales pitch. If you do go off topic, you’re doing so from the perspective of your vertical.
Nature Valley understood that a map of where you could buy granola bars wouldn’t be compelling (except for someone who was really into granola bars). But what is compelling to active people (the target audience of a mobile snack) is a map where you can take virtual tours through America’s national parks. There is no mention of granola bars in this virtual map, save for the subtle branding of the Nature Valley logo. This type of content is exactly what all businesses should be doing: providing your target audience with resources of entertainment relevant to their interests and lifestyle. They also posted a blog about how they created this project, another source of content that would be of interest to their target audience.
5. Timely
Are you one of the first to cover hot topics?
Even if you aren’t trying to break news, you should be incorporating current trends and news into your content. Leverage news items your audience is naturally talking about or seeking more information about.
My company, BlueGlass Interactive, created this infographic with Forbes which covered how rising gas prices affect unemployment, elections, and the stock market. We took a topic in the forefront of many people’s minds and made it compelling through data visualizations.
6. Demonstrates Mastery
Are you positioning your brand as a thought leader?
Masterful content offers an unparalleled depth of insight. It expands on complex ideas and shows a comprehensive analysis on the topic unlikely to be found from other sources.
If you asked for a resource on local search, chances are you’d be directed to this mammoth survey of local search experts. Every year, David Mihm polls local search thought leaders about the ranking factors that drive Google’s Local Search algorithms and releases a new volume after each survey. Creating this type of resource (and continuously updating it) can position your brand as a top authority in your niche.
7. Can Be Delivered On
Do you provide the solution?
Content should intrigue the reader about your brand, and make them feel they have an unmet need only your brand can fill.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “unique selling proposition,” but have rarely seen it in true form. Dollar Shave Club built their entire campaign on the very thing that no other competitor can offer: one dollar for razors mailed to you each month. With a unique selling proposition this strong, the viewer is almost forced to take action and sign up for the club. It doesn’t hurt that the video is hilarious, only adding to the uniqueness of the brand.
8. Narrative
Are you telling a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end?
Content with a strong narrative takes the reader on an exciting journey full of surprises and leads to a call-to-action of value for the brand. It’s cohesive, easy to understand, and inspires action related to the story.
Using another example from a non-profit, this motion graphic video from Charity Water takes the viewer on a treacherous journey. It illustrates how people without access to clean drinking water collect water and the repercussions of the struggles they face. It then presents a solution to the problem at hand, explaining how a specific dollar amount can contribute to helping the issue.
Using the Content Evaluation Rubric
I’ve put together an evaluation rubric that grades content on the above eight attributes.
Periodically measuring your content against this rubric will allow you to see if your content is incorporating these elements. After reading through your content, give each attribute a score of 1-5. It will be next to impossible to get a perfect 100%, but the great thing about this rubric is it will challenge you to include these elements in all of your content.
I recommend going through both your old popular content and your content that flopped to see how they fare on this rubric. Which attributes were strong or weak? You can adjust the rubric to give more weight to the attributes that resonated most with your audience in the past.
You can also customize the rubric to match the types of content you produce. For example, if you are primarily creating evergreen content, you can remove the “timely” attribute.
Conclusion
It’s tempting to chase viral success and create content that only produces traffic spikes and social shares. If you’re only creating content with this in mind, you may find yourself producing content that is completely unrelated to your business, not reaching the right audience, and not getting your visitors to perform the actions you hope.
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This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
As the head of content creation and SEO over at Designbysoap Ltd, a significant chunk of my weekly activities is spend producing and promoting infographics for our clients. We've had infographics commissioned to be used for a variety of purposes, including public awareness campaigns, personal CV's, teaching aids, brand recognition, and everything in between. The vast majority of them, however, are produced with one key goal in mind: to increase backlinks to a target website.
So with that in mind, here's my in-depth guide to making the most out of your infographic, framed from the point of view of gaining the highest level of distribution (and therefore links) as possible.
It's worth noting that the concept, research, and design phase are extremely important in gaining links from your infographic - all the promotion in the world won't help with an infographic that people simply aren't interested in (or one that features a poor design concept). However, as this post will focus on promoting and pushing your infographic, I'll have to assume that you've got an infographic that's worth promoting. If you're still at the content creation stage, then my previous SEOmoz post might help you create something worthy of being shared.
Encouraging Sharing
You need to ensure that you make your infographic as easy to share as possible, which means ensuring that social media sharing buttons are clearly visible on the post - have a look at the social media buttons at the bottom of this post for a good example.
If you're publishing your infographic on a high profile blog then this probably won't be an issue, but if you're publishing on your own blog, make sure you're making it as easy as possible for your visitors to share the infographic via social media platforms. You should also include a clear call to action at the end of your post, something along the lines of 'if you enjoyed our infographic, please consider sharing it using the buttons below!'
Similarly, you should make reposting the infographic and linking back to you as easy as possible, and the best way to do this is to supply a HTML embed code. An embed code will not only provide people with an easy way of re-publishing your infographic, but it will ensure that they link back to you (via an image link) and allow you to control the anchor text. If you're not too hot with HTML, I'd recommend you take advantage of a simple but very clever tool from SEOGadget; their HTML embed code generator.
This tool will allow you to input your infographic URL, the title, your preferred anchor text and your link URL and then it will generate a HTML code that you can use on your own site.
Even with an embed code, some people will inevitably repost your infographic without providing a credit link back to you (they will just save the image and re-publish on their own site). We'll have a look at one way of dealing with this later on in the post, but just because someone isn't linking back to you doesn't mean you can't ensure you get credit for the content (and improve your brand recognition in the process). You should always add some kind of branding to the infographic to make sure people know where the content came from - now this doesn't mean plastering your logo all over it or relating everything in the infographic to your brand, but you can add a small, unobtrusive logo or standout URL at the footer of your infographic, like we did for the WordPress infographic for the Yoast website:
You can also add a QR code to the footer of your infographic, which is particularly useful if you're going to be using them in the real world, but we'll cover this in a bit more detail later on in the post.
International Links
As you would imagine, the vast majority of links you'll gain will be from English speaking websites, but that doesn't mean you should ignore international links. Getting your infographic translated into other languages can hugely increase the number of inbound links your infographic gains for your website, and it's not particularly difficult to do. This is particularly worthwhile if your infographic includes information that would be interesting or valuable to countries other than the UK or the US, which is probably the case with a huge number of infographics.
Here's an example taken from the Destructoid website; the Guide To The GamersUniverse infographic in English:
And in Chinese:
(Note these are just sections of the infographic, to see the whole infographic follow the link to the Destructoid website above).
If you're lucky enough to have someone on staff who speaks more than one language then great, but generally you'll need to source people who can translate the text in your infographic for you. You could use an online translation tool such as Google Translate, but these translations aren't always accurate, so you're probably better off using a platform like Elance to source a translator.
Once you have your translated infographics, you can start promoting these alongside your English version - you could have links from your original publishing site to versions in different languages (for example click here for Spanish version, click here for Chinese version, etc), as well as targeting internationally based website for further placement of your infographic.
While you're getting your infographic translated, you might also want to consider getting the translator to provide you with text you can use to Tweet out links to the foreign language version of your infographic (in the target language).
Active Link Building
Encouraging people to link to or share your infographic is one thing, but that doesn't mean you can't continue the process of active link-building after your initial infographic publication. In this section we'll have a look at some of the ways you can build links to your infographics, and increase the likelihood of it encouraging further links.
The easiest way to build links via your infographic is to submit it to the numerous infographic distribution portals available, almost all of which will allow a credit link back to the original designer or publisher. To help get you started, here's a quick list of sites that allow infographic submissions (thanks to Paddy Moogan and Doug at Pixel Design Studio for helping me out with a few extra sites for the list):
Another great way to build links to your site via the infographic is with guest blogging - many people think that they can't continue to post out an infographic once it's been published, but this simply isn't the case (after all you're relying on other people continuing to post the infographic with a credit link back to you). As the infographic is an image, it doesn't count as duplicate content, so as long as you're writing unique copy to accompany the design with each guest blog, you're still using a perfectly legitimate technique and you don't need to worry about duplicate content. Find a list of sites that are in a relevant niche to your infographic topic, and start sending out some emails requesting placement of the infographic. For each person that accepts your request, write a brand new description / post to go with the infographic and get it published - as long as you're not duplicating that copy, you can repeat this process over and over again, gaining more and more links each time you do so.
If you don't have a network of blogs you can get in touch with, or you simply don't have the time for manual blogger outreach, you could consider using a service like MyBlogGuest, which has a specialised infographic guest blog section (we actually suggested this to them some time ago, so it's nice to see a service that really listens to their market). The MBG infographic section allows you to supply numerous different descriptions for one infographic, each of which will be available for bloggers to publish - if you're unfamiliar with MyBlogGuest and you're interested in link building via guest blogging, infographics, or both, I suggest you check it out via the link above.
It's also worth submitting your site to relevant content aggregation networks - there's not much point including a list here as it depends on your niche, but as an example, an infographic on SEO, link-building, or social media would be well suited to inbound.org.
You can also create a detailed press release around the infographic and submit it to platforms such as PRWeb, which will allow you to link back to the original publication.
Reformatting Your Infographic For Other Channels
Static infographics are phenomenal for building natural links to your website, but by going one step further and reformatting your infographic, you're ensuring you can get the most out of it in terms of inbound links and referred traffic.
One of the best ways to reformat your infographic is to animate it, which allows you to target video distribution platforms in addition to infographic submission sites. If you're lucky enough to have someone on staff who can use Adobe After Effects (or a similar program), then you can do this in-house, or you can hire an agency or freelancer to do this on your behalf (you'll need to supply them with the working file, which will most likely be in Illustrator or Photoshop format). You might even find that your infographic design agency can complete this for you (at Designbysoap Ltd we now offer this as an additional service), in which case it's always best to allow the original designer to animate it.
To show you the sort of thing you can do with the already finished artwork, here's a short animated infographic taken from the piece we designed for BusinessEnergy.com, entitled 'UK Business Energy Costs'.
Original infographic:
Animated Infographic:
Having the infographic as a video will not only increase the likelihood of people linking to you (as you can offer them two different ways of sharing your content), but it allows you to utilise high authority video distribution channels such as YouTube and Vimeo.
Another excellent way of reformatting your infographic to encourage natural links is to make your infographic interactive, although admittedly this is again an additional step forward in terms of the skillset required. An interactive infographic not only helps set your design apart from the scores of other infographics out there, but can dramatically increase engagement and social media sharing.
You should obviously host the infographic on your own website, and utilise either Flash or HTML5 to achieve the desired effect. An excellent example of an interactive infographic is the Future Of Car Sharing, which does a phenomenal job of portraying the information whilst keeping the user engaged and entertained.
Another idea for reformatting your infographics is through a smartphone application - admittedly this could be potentially expensive, but there are companies out there who will turn your content into an app for free, in return for a cut of future profits. Infographics can make a good app too, particularly if you can come at it from the right angle - a good example is the Great War 100 app, which portrays genuinely interesting information about the first World War through infographics, and given we're approaching the 100 year anniversary of the conflict, it stands a good chance of making lots of sales. We actually supplied the infographics for this app, which you can see the advertisement for below:
Another good idea, particularly if you have a long infographic with lots of different stats, is to chop it up into slides and turn it into a slideshow (in either PowerPoint or PDF format) which can then be uploaded to platforms such as SlideShare or Scribd.
If you have released infographics previously (particularly if they're all in a similar industry), then you could also consider turning the infographics into an e-book, which can be sold on platforms such as Amazon, or distributed free of charge via your website. If you are considering placing it on your website as a free download, then consider using a service such as Pay With A Tweet, which will allow you to provide your e-book to visitors in return for a Tweet promoting the content.
Social Media
As well as doing your best to encourage sharing around your infographic, you should also make the effort to promote the content yourself via social media and bookmarking platforms. Obviously you should promote the infographic via your own (and your staff's) Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, and StumbledUpon accounts - particularly if you have fairly strong profiles on those platforms.
When you're promoting your infographic via Twitter or Facebook, rather than simply saying 'check out our brand new infographic,' consider taking individual statistics from the infographic (preferably the most attention-grabbing or surprising stats) and posting them out individually. We've found this tactic to be much more effective at encouraging click through rates (particularly from Twitter). In addition, don't forget to include relevant hashtags with your Tweets, as this can help widen your reach beyond your normal friends and followers, giving you a better chance of reTweets and referred traffic.
If you don't have a strong social media presence, then you could consider utilising a social media promotion agency, although this will of course increase your budget for project. With that said, however, the harder the content is pushed via social media the more likely you are to gain links from a varied selection of sources. If you do decide to take on a social media agency to help with promotion, make sure you check their previous campaigns, clients and results, as you'd be surprised at the number of 'agencies' who simply use paid services like Fiverr in order to push social media metrics.
It's also well worth completing some manual outreach in order to try and gain traction via 'influencers' in your industry, as if successful, this can have a dramatic impact on the number of social shares and links. Let's say for example you've produced a high quality and well researched infographic on how social media links affect search engine optimisation - why not try and Tweet people like Rand (SEOMoz), Joost (Yoast), or Richard (SEOGadget) and see if you can get them to share your content. Employing this kind of outreach might not result in any responses (depending on your content and how you get in touch), but it takes very little time or effort and can yield phenomenal results if an influencer does decide to help promote your infographic.
You can also further increase social media engagement by incentivising sharing - let's say you've produced a beautiful infographic that you know will be particularly popular amongst a certain market (gamers, just for example). Print out ten copies of your infographic and say you'll give them away as a competition prize - all people have to do to enter is share the infographic via Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ and the winners will be picked at random from those who've shared the content. We've used this kind of competition-entry format for clients in the past to great effect and it's certainly worth considering for promoting your content or increasing your social media brand traction.
Email Promotion
If your brand sends out regular emails to mailing list subscribers (like SEOmoz do with their monthly Moz-Letter), then be sure to include your infographic in your mailouts - place a small, eye-catching section of your infographic in the email with a link back to the full version on your website. This can not only increase traffic, but encourage both social media sharing and reposting (and therefore links).
Real World Marketing
This is often overlooked by agencies and brands looking to promote their infographic, but it's something that when done right (and combined with a link to an online presence, most notably a QR code) can be fantastic for increasing brand awareness and mobile traffic to a website.
Let's look at an actual example from one of our campaigns from last year. One of our clients is a luxury, five-star guesthouse in the city of Brighton, UK, and as part of their marketing campaign we produced an infographic on tourism in Brighton and Hove. As well as promoting the infographic online, we also printed physical copies of the infographic and placed it in relevant part of the City, including the local tourist office. We placed a simple QR code at the bottom of the infographic that allowed people to visit the website by scanning the code with their smartphone:
Infographic section via The Claremont Hotel Brighton (click the image if you'd like to see the full infographic).
Not only did this result in a dramatic increase in website traffic via mobile devices, but did a great job of improving overall brand awareness in Brighton. As an added benefit, we noticed that people were also talking about the infographic and posting photos of it on their social media profiles, increasing the number of social media links pointing at the Claremont website.
Admittedly, this technique isn't always suitable for infographics, but it's well worth bearing in mind if local customers are your primary focus.
Chasing Down Other Links
Now that you've produced your infographic, reformatted it, pushed it out to as many different platforms as possible, and promoted it via social media channels, it's time to chase down a few extra links by finding website who have reposted the infographic without a credit link.
The easiest ways to do this are with a standard Google search and taking advantage of the drag-and-drop function on the new Google Image search. Start by searching for the title of your infographic (as well as a few variations) and visit every website you find that has posted the content - do the same with the image search function, by dragging your infographic from your desktop into the Google Image Search.
This will give you more publishing sites, allowing you to create a list of sites that have reposted your content. From here you can visit each one and note down the URL and contact information of any site that has published your infographic without linking back to you, then simply email each one with a polite request for a credit link. Sure, some webmasters won't reply to you, but you can gain a few extra links by doing this with every infographic you publish.
So that's it for my infographic link-building post - did I miss anything? Do you have a useful tip for gaining additional links from your infographic design? Let me know in the comment below and I'll do my best to respond to every comment.
Post by John Pring, head of SEO and content creation at Designbysoap Ltd.
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