Give it Up! Social Media Edition

Infographics – yes everyone talks about them but they really do work

What makes a good graphic? Lots of data/info, aesthetically pleasing, and complex ideas made simple!

  • Example: STD’s across America – shows hotspots of STDs per region and what the main STDs are – this was a challenge because the client didn’t think there was anything in social media they could do
  • Example: Who owns the most servers in the world – - picked up by Engadet, Gizmodo and many other sites – several thousands of back links after only a few months, would have been boring as text.
  • Example: What is a Petabyte? (same client as above) – another example where the client did not think they could do anything cool / viral about their brand.
  • Example: Where does the money go? US consumer unit expenditures – picked up by tons of newspapers and magazines as well as going hot on Digg and other social news sites – hit the nail on the head for people. Around 29,500 back links according to Yahoo
  • One of the best thing about this kind of stuff is you’re getting a link profile that your competitors cannot possibly replicate (they can do similar things but not get the same links)
  • There is still a problem with social news sites like Digg, Reddit etc – they don’t like commercial domains and sometimes domains get bans (you can ask to be reconsidered though, getting better at being more commercial friendly now)
  • Tip: Digg is saying all banned sites will be unbanned – when this happens don’t submit your A grade content straight away – give it time and submit other stuff (incl old posts etc) and give your site some age / natural profile first.
  • A way of getting around difficulties with getting commercial sites/domains to go viral – set up non-commercial dedicated domains -Example: Visual Economics – a noncommercial site full of financial infographics – has built up 50,000 backlinks (I think) and lots of authority
  • An average infographic takes a couple of days. Mostly research time (we use students to do a lot of this)

Guest Virals / Blog Outreach – one step beyond guest blogging

  • Guest virals = putting viral content on high profile sites on behalf on your brand. This is actually really easy to get big sites to host this (who wouldn’t want this kind of stuff) but ask for a link back to the client site – eg within the Embed code for the viral
  • We’ve been successful with this on some of the biggest news sites on the web – they wouldn’t be interested in just a guest post (they have plenty of written content) but a well designed infographic
  • Tip: reach out to people who have linked to / embedded / dugg etc your content and build a relationship with them, these are invaluable for getting them to help you with follow up content
  • Track social success – analyse viral successes/failures to learn for the next time

Having a pre-planned content strategy is very useful. Note: marketing messages don’t count! Think above and beyond and try and do engaging content above and beyond the typical sales pitch.

  • Align this with marketing calendars and PR initiatives
  • Find someone in your organisation that can speak like your customers do
  • Transparency. No-one wants to be a part of a community that’s not genuine. Allow feedback, talk/respond to people.

Monitor - Make a decision before you start on what you want to achieve. Make sure you understand the correlation between activities and metrics. Always be wary of changing metrics halfway through a campaign, this can cause issues and also can alter transparency.