This recent Hyundai commercial for the Dutch market got itself banned. So what happens when your marketing efforts have this effect? Go to the Internet where you’ll be thanked for an amusing/interesting/racy commercial. If your banned commercial is good enough. you’re no doubt going to fee the viral effect. I can see this one being a little too much for the young ones, but overall it’s a well done commercial that highlights the cars most unique feature.
As most of our followers will know I’m a huge motorsports fan, and I’m an even bigger Nissan GTR fan so writing about this was a joy! When it comes to attracting links, buzz and followers within your niche you have to do something unique right? Well in the tuner world the competition is fierce, so standing out is harder th an ever these days. The fine folks at Illtech Auto certainly have done a great job of making noise in just the right way…both on the web and with this monstrous beast of a machine.
So what’s a good lesson to learn from all this? Well them building this amazing car lead to them getting this video done which has nearly peaked to 1.6 million views! You couldn’t ask for better brand exposure, especially for this small tuning company. I took a look closer and this video hit a whole lot of forums and blogs, which in return generated a lot of natural delicious links. There’s not much more that I can write about except get inspired by this and know that one video done right can do you a lot of bloody good!
Can you get penalized for building a link wheel? Well that’s something that’s debated quite a bit these days and I’m on the side of them being a method you should most likely steer clear of. Why do I state that? Well it is clearly a link scheme defined by Google’s linking guidelines because they’re used to inflate your rankings. The other problem is that 99% of the link wheels created out there are being done with spun low quality content, and then blasted with Xrumer, Scrapebox and whatever other spam tool out there. I’m not one to judge at all here, for those doing it clearly know it works well and is making people money.
When it comes to building links the legit way for a business you plan on keeping high in the SERPs, then this isn’t a method you want to dabble with. I’ve written about the Pros & Cons of the Link Wheel before, but we’re certainly a company that won’t ever be offering this service any time soon. While I’ll agree link wheels form naturally in the wild through the magic of social media, the obvious ones will be easily sniped by Google.
I’ve constantly stated that you can find me helping out in Google’s Webmaster Help, and I’m running across more and more link wheel related issues on the boards. As you can see in the video above, SEO firms are offering this service to a more business oriented crowd, and this could potentially lead to disaster. I’d recommend at least offering a warning about these methods to clients before blindly leading them down that path.
So clearly link wheels work well, and I’ve personally seen a few that were done so professionally that I don’t think Google would ever have caught on. The site it was ranking for was within the finance niche and has been ranking top 5 for nearly two years now on nothing but a giant elaborate link wheel. While that’s all good and dandy, I’d still have a hard time sleeping at night, wondering if Google will have caught on and sent my site into it’s -50 black hole.
Now I’ve been in many verbal web arguments over whether link wheels are a spam link building tactic. Looking at Google’s TOS it is an obvious YES YES YES. I don’t care what else you have to say about it, you’re never going to be right in saying otherwise. I’ve said this before, but link schemes are considered a no-no, and by looking at the picture below, do you not see something that could be defined as a scheme?
So let’s get into the examples where people are talking about real world examples of sites getting in trouble, people talking about whether it’s spam or not and whatever else. The Google Crawling, Indexing and Ranking section of their webmaster help is full of those examples and I highly recommend you read through these to further ease your mind. With that being said, feel free to post up if you’ve had a problem or want to vent why you think they shouldn’t be considered a black hat tactic.
– http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5d58a7d8d4202170&hl=en
– http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7a00668e8f6aec39&hl=en
– http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6de8a41394ea9df2&hl=en
– http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=4041e919ec2611ad&hl=en
– http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=3e8893966e432139&hl=en
– http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=75617ba48a9a6518&hl=en
– http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=50788bc7fcbb9c8c&hl=en
These are just some of the posts that are popping up lately over there and I’d expect to be seeing more. I know I’m not the only one who’s been seeing different behaviour towards links right around the time of Panda. It makes sense as well because Google is having a really hard time locking down the link spam that takes place. It is still quite evident that links will rank you just fine still, even if you have down right crap content. While it may not last for more than 2 weeks, there are keywords out there that make enough money to make it worth building another site for the next two weeks.
I’m just trying to define some sort of line because a lot of businesses out there are using link services out there and have no idea what they’re getting. You may also have nothing but great results from a proper link wheel, but do you really want to risk waking up one day to a bunch of devalued links?
I just love smart marketing/PR stunts, and Abercrombie & Fitch has got the world’s attention today with theirs. In a world where it’s hard to grab the attention, social buzz, links and viral crazyess their marketing team has managed to that so well. You know you’re doing well for your brand when you’re trending on Twitter! Luckily for Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, this could work out well for him as any press is good press.
“We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino’s association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans. We have therefore offered a substantial payment to Michael ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino and the producers of MTV’s The Jersey Shore to have the character wear an alternate brand. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently waiting a response.”
This is something to be studied by everyone in the marketing game from student to master because this is how it’s done these days. If you take a quick look on news sites, blogs and the search traffic/chatter you’ll see that they’re coming out big with all sorts of win. The amount of links alone that will be flying at A & F should well be worth it. While I don’t think The Situation will be wearing anymore of their clothing (not a big loss really), this is a good time for some other clothing company to jump out of the dark. So hear me now, if you want The Situation to rock your clothing label, you’d better start beating the doors down now. There’s a seriously good amount of marketing to be gained from this so heed my warning!
From time to time I see Ecommerce sites using Twitter in really effective, fun and marketable ways. I’ve been saving a few of these one day for a post and finally got something to go on here for everyone! We’ll take a look at some big players, and of course the smaller niche shops out there doing it large.Most of all the brands mentioned are favorites of mine, so oh happy day for them because they’re getting a link! I’d like to do this type of post more often as well, so send us in some tips of your favorite brands doing awesome things via Twitter!
Twitter is a great way to interact with real people in near real time, and this is great for business. I like the fact the small to big brands can take part and actually make some serious coin. I especially like how you can build a real trust level with customers just from interacting. You bigger brands really can make someone’s day just by sending them a Tweet, so take advantage of that!
@Sheepskins – http://www.sheepskinfurs.com
This is a great example of interacting with someone who owns some sheepskin and obviously is having some problems. I’m not sure if this lead to them getting a sale for a new rug, but they handled the interaction spot on in my books! Offering the discount a new sheepskin rug also may keep their brand in her memory every time she gets a whiff of that smelly old rug.
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@DJPremium – http://www.djpremium.com
This is a great use of Twitter for helping a customer out and I imagine the more active you are doing this, the greater your conversion rate will be! If the Twitter manager knew the answer directly, then obviously this would have been the better choice. Regardless, it’s nice to have a brand speak back to you on issues at hand. I buy a lot of my denim from these folks so it’s nice to be able to use them as an example of Twitter customer service!
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@OswegoHotel – http://oswegovictoria.com
This happens to be one of of favorite hotels in the world, and they happen to be right in my neck of the woods. The social media team for this boutique hotel is on the ball to say the least. They’re insanely good at social interaction and I’d recommend just studying how they run things for a great example of how to do social media.
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@Hublot – http://www.hublot.com
Hublot is one of my favorite watch brands, and they’re a company that doesn’t need to use social media to thrive at all. However, they do one helluva job making their fans know what’s what. @JayZ has recently started rocking their brand and it makes for a great celebrity endorsement…perhaps one of the biggest. They’re doing a lot of good marketing tactics on Twitter to raise awareness and this is just one example.
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@3DCart – http://www.3dcart.com
This brilliant ecommerce platform is no stranger to marketing hard via social media and I’ve always liked how they’ve handled themselves. With all the ecommerce software competition out there, you’re going to have to hustle to keep the users flocking to your service. Here’s a good example of them winning over a new client.
Since I’m a Toyota owner/lover/enthusiast (MR2 to be exact) I thought I’d deliver the latest commercial in a series Toyota has been doing. I grew up with a skateboard strapped to my feet as well, so this one featuring pro skater/entrepreneur/awesome guy Bob Burnquist caught my eye.
This is the first in a series of posts covering the little awesome tools that make up the LRT in its entirety. Chris Cemper and his team (Christine big thanks) were gracious enough to let me test these tools out for months now. I’ve been using them on a daily basis and at this point they’ve sunk in as an extension of my link building subconscious.
We’ll be looking at the backlink analysis tool first up because it’s what we’re all here for, the rest is just a mind blowing concoction of tools for link ninjas(and we’ll be getting to those shortly). The first thing I’ll mention are the reports that come out. Why? Well, if you’re like me and read a lot of link data you like something easy on the eyes. The spreadsheets that you can download are really one of my favorite aspects as I don’t need to dink around with anything. This is especially great for clients because I can just fire it off and they can understand what’s going on.
Starting A Campaign:
As you can see from the picture beow, you have a few options from domain, page and analysis internal page backlinks. For this post I’ve ran LRT on our Twitter profile to see what links to it. We’ve built a lot of links to it through online apps, business profiles and other random places that it just gets picked up. Do this to some of the most followed accounts and you’ll really see some interesting things.
This is where you can plug in your OSE API key and get that data juicing in. So again, for the download data link coming up we went with analyse page backlinks because I don’t have 2 hours to wait around for it to accidentally run the Twitter.com domain….oh my that would be a doozy. As you can also see, you have an option to upload your own backlinks from other sources in a few different formats which is really handy. So the link below is the report of our Twitter account, so check it out
Click Here To Download The Backlink analysis
Metrics You Can Run:
In this social day and age, you’re going to want social metrics as well right? No problem for LRT! You have just about everything covered here so you can quickly get the data you need and please yourself, or your client. The only downside to running these with every backlink report is it can slow down the process. If you have a big site it can reall take its time, but you can set it and forget it which makes it no big deal really.
Check it out;
That’s all there is to this part of the LRT and I’ll be covering another aspect of the tool again here this week. If you have any questions about the program, feel free to drop them in the comments below. I know I got access to this for free, but if I had to pick one negative feature it would be the price. I think it’s a little steep but then again there is API access fees, CPU/server/bandwidth costs so it can add up for them on their end. It’s definitely more for a team/company/brand to utilise and it’s something I’d highly consider. The day pass is a great way to check it all out though.
Web: http://www.linkresearchtools.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/lnkresearchtool
LRT Product Tour: http://www.linkresearchtools.com/tour/
Marketing your infographics properly is a sure fire way to snag natural links, build brand buzz and gain social media followers. It’s a form of content creation that is relatively inexpensive to do and can continue to bring in links for years to come. The latter aspect really gets me excited because I’ve seen some crazy good links come in a year later from some great topical link bait. There’s no doubt that infographics have become the most widely used link bait tactic in the past couple of years, and I don’t that expect to slow down any time soon.
Source: Infographic of Infographics by Ivan Cash
There are millions of ways to tackle the creative end of things, the marketing, however, can be done either correctly or incorrectly. We’re all in the market for links from related sites, so make sure you stick on point. For the most part, I’ve seen mostly topical infographics being used with the right market in mind, but I’ve also seen others where the goal is to just get whatever links from whoever will give them to you. Not to worry though, you’ll want those related links anyway so focus on your niche.
There’s a lot of prep, or at least a lot we do, before starting your marketing efforts, so prepare your spreadsheet of choice. We’ll cover the tasks we lay down and hopefully this helps you structure your campaign better. I typically have this sorted while the client’s infographic is being worked on so that should be more than enough time to prep!
Last but not least, make sure your infographics “info” is really friggin awesome, because it’s going to make life a lot harder if it isn’t. How many infographics have you started reading only to quickly hit stop reading? This is where big flashy pie charts, numbers and eye catching statistics should be popping out like a 3D movie! You’re going to want to also provide an embed code with your infographic for ease of spreading; it blows my mind the amount of people who don’t do this.
Identify The Influencers:
So get out your spreadsheet and think of each point I make here as its own area or tab within it. We’ll need to start finding the social people out there that are within your vertical and you might stand a chance to get a share from their end. Hopefully most of you are already quite active on Facebook, Twitter and have made nice with a few bloggers. Your reach can potentially lead to huge success. To demonstrate visually, let me refer you to the picture below:
Image Courtesy: SocialMediaToday.com
Twitter: – I definitely like to have at least 25 of my most active Twitter friends on my “to contact” hit list for D-Day. Tactics like pulling a pre-emptive strike by contacting them a day or two early to see if they’d be willing to help spread the content are also a good idea. This social network alone can launch your infographic into viral orbit if you’re lucky so make sure to target the beefy and influential users that you are friends with. If you don’t really have strong ties with 25 users on Twitter, then make a list of 50-75 people you can contact in hopes of matching the same ROI… best of luck there! There are always infographics being marketed on Twitter, so check out what’s going on there to get some ideas. (Hint) Guy Kawasaki LOVES tweeting about infographics so much that I cannot tell if he’s getting paid to or not… either way, you get him you’re golden!
Facebook: – This one is tricky because you’re not usually friends with your digital cohorts at this level, just your mommy, friends from school and perhaps a girlfriend/wife if you’re lucky. The same mentality from Twitter applies here. Prep who you can contact to potentially get the Facebook shares going like wildfire. Hopefully your brands Facebook page has some decent followers that can start that initial push. If not, this one will be a tough nut to crack. I’d check for groups and fan pages as well for your brand, then get ready to share with those folks too.
Key Blogs: – This is the really tough part. I’m sure you do enough link begging, but now you need to infographic link beg. Break down a list of the best blogs in your niche and get to it because, again, just a couple shares can lead to big things. If the content is any good, blogs should jump at the chance to collect some of the hype that goes with it. You’ll be able to see which blogs have already shared an infographic from others, which blogs have a “submit news/tip” form and you should also find some other contact details like their Twitter and other social media information. You’ll be surprised at the response you’ll get from fellow bloggers and if they’re fans of your brand, then you’re in for an easy day.
Forums: – While I don’t recommend signing up to your niche’s top forums to spam them with your infographic, I hope you already have built a rep. Forums spread content like wildfire, so identifying the forums that will help launch this to a different crowd is quite important. A lot of niches won’t be so lucky, so if you have a big forum option, make sure you utilize it (or at least prep your accounts for future use). Forums are great for marketing and making friends, and mixing the two together will keep you out of trouble and in a good brand spotlight.
Reddit/Digg/Buzzfeed/Delicious/ETC: – There’s no doubt that Digg still has a lot of influence in spreading your content. The same goes for a number of other social news sites. Unfortunately, the chances of going hot on Digg are next to none unless you pay for it. Yes even after they “changed” their algorithm, the website is still dominated by a few users who get most of the stuff to the front page. Reddit is a deadly serious site that requires no spamming about on your end! Submit that sucker to the appropriate subreddit and hope for the best. If you content is good enough, it should do alright in the right subreddit, but then again, even Reddit votes are bought.
Buzzfeed is also a great place to get your infographic going around the web like crazy. You can buy front page spots for this, but you best have $3000-$5000 PER DAY to spend on this. Because of the huge price tag, the site can send a lot of traffic and get your infographic around if you’ve got the green. The other social media sites out there are up to your reach and influence, including niche specific social sharing sites. This is what we do, so if you’re looking for infographic marketing help, get in touch.
Link Analysis & Social Media Recon:
This is a no-brainer, but do your homework on other infographics both inside and out of your niche. While it’ll give you an idea of what to expect, it will also lead to other market help you may have overlooked in your initial setup stages. There are a whole host of search and link tools out there that will break down the anatomy of an infographic success story. Here’s what we use to do a quick rundown:
– Link Research Tools – know who and what links to a successful past infographic campaign. Take special note of the infographics that provided an embed code, and the ones that did not. You’ll see how the linking patterns evolved and this is pretty important stuff to know. LRT can also report back on the number of social shares which can be valuable information if you know how to interpret it.
– Twitter Search – I love seeing who’s sharing infographics around Twitter, especially in my target niche. People who are already enjoying them are more than likely to give yours a Tweet, so why not beg/ask? This will also lead to seeing how their followers react by checking out the RT love that that Twitter user’s post got.
– Google Blog Search – While we could perhaps just use regular old Google search for this, I want to know specifically which blogs are engaging infographics. Those older posts are a potential spot to drop a link to your related infographic as well, even though that might be a bit spammy in some people’s eyes. For the most part, a few choice blog posts isn’t going to hurt anyone and if the moderator approves it, then you’re good to go!
– Google Discussions – You’ll definitely want to know what forums were picking up past infographics because they’re the breeding grounds for natural links and viral activity. Since you get time stamps on posts, you can tell with your own eyes how that piece took off (or didn’t).
Infographics Gone Viral:
Image Source: Marissa Louie ( Her old site is now dead and links to Viagra )
Hopefully you have all your prep in place and you’re ready to rock once your infographic is good to go. The launch is an exciting part of the whole process, if not the most nerve-racking, so enjoy it and learn from it! There is a good chance you’re going to come up with nothing but fail, but don’t let that discourage you. We continue to see links come in over a year later for past infographics so it will be worth it no matter what if your content is good.
There are a few key places to which you can submit your infographic making life a lot easier as well as providing some initial links to the piece. Remember that people love this type of content so there will be browsers that will kick off the viral aspect of it all. The list provided here is not the end all be all, and more sites are popping up all the time so keep an eye out (hint: set an infographic Google Alert).
Infographic Sites:
– http://infographicsite.com/contact-us/
– http://infographr.tumblr.com/submit
– http://infographicsgenerator.com
– http://videoinfographic.com/submit-infographic/
– http://www.reddit.com/r/infographics
– http://www.infographicas.com/?page_id=39
– http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/submit/ (costs $100 for a review)
– http://www.infographicsarchive.com/submit-infographics/
– http://www.cloudinfographics.com/submit-infographic/
– http://submitinfographics.com/submit-infographics
– http://www.newsilike.in/submit-infographic/
– http://videoinfographic.com/submit-infographic/ (video infographics only)
– http://www.infographicpost.com/submit-an-infographic
– http://theinfographics.blogspot.com/p/submit-infographic.html
– http://visual.ly/
– http://dailyinfographic.com/contact
– http://iheartinfographics.tumblr.com/submit
– http://infographicsbin.tumblr.com/submit
– http://fuckyeahinfographics.tumblr.com/submit
– http://www.styleandflow.com/submit/
– http://infographipedia.com/submit-infographic-4
– http://www.omginfographics.com/submit/
– http://infographic.co.za/submit/
– http://www.bestinfographics.info/submit-infographic/
– http://iinfographic.com/submit-brilliance/
– http://www.infographicgallery.com/contact/
Submit A Press Release:
Why not? If you’re working on an infographic that has a really big reach, then you need to set aside a budget for a press release or two. I’d recommend using PRweb.com’s social media package as well as a release from Market Wire. Some news sites definitely pick up infographics and you an see for yourself with a simple Google news search. I cannot stress enough the importance of the content here for any sort of decent exposure.
Attacking Your Contacts like A Boss:
This is another time when all your prep comes into play. Just like with any viral marketing attempt, be on the ball and make sure you’re out there interacting and keeping the chatter alive. If you’ve got your social media vote buys on the ready, then make sure those are off to the races because you can forward those voting links to people who matter on your end.
Your Blog / Youtube / Newsletter:
I hope to the social Gods that you have at least two of those in place. Your company blog will most likely be the first link it gets and it makes for a great place to show off the social voting buttons for your fans to get acting on. A YouTube video talking about the infographic can’t hurt either, especially if your brand has a big following there (people even make videos of their infographics). Lastly, use your newsletter for what it was intended to do… share news! You can ask in private for your readers to check it out and vote it up if they have the appropriate contacts.
Infographic Resources:
– our infographic design and marketing services
– Infographic design resources and tutorials
– 40 blogs, portfolios, resources and other awesome infographic related material
– TopRankBlog’s infographic marketing post is a must read
– Adobe Illustrator infographic design resources
– Tips for designing and creating beautiful infographics
