Category Archives: Online Marketing
5 Tips to Help You Create a Rockin’ Infographic
Who doesn’t love a great infographic? A simple, clean way to present complex data and tell an interesting story in a visual manner that is easy to digest? Sign me up.
The volume of infographics being produced has really started to spike the last couple years as companies have latched onto them as an effective communications channel. Of course, variations of infographics have been around for quite some time in the form of simple design and pared down data visualization. As I’m constantly studying the design space and creating infographics day in and day out for clients, I thought I’d share a few tips to make sure you’re taking your infographic from good to great.
1. Start With a Purpose: Seems obvious, right? You’d be surprised at how many companies and organizations feel they need an infographic simply to have an infographic. Bad move.
What’s your end goal? Are you working to drive traffic to a blog/site to beef SEO or to serve as a pitch asset for media and bloggers? Is your best option a standard infographic or do you have the budget and would your audience be more likely to engage with a video infographic? Think through your intended niche audience and don’t try to craft a universal pitch piece that applies to everyone. As with most successful online marketing, it’s not about generating a piece that sells you but rather about creating creative content that your audience feels compelled to share and learn more about.
2. Gather Your Data -> Build Your Storyline: Data and storytelling naturally go hand-in-hand in infographic world. The most critical part of any infographic is taking ample time to do your research and cover your bases to ensure you are presenting accurate, interesting information. From there, you need to strap on your creative thinking cap and come up with a unique storyline and method of presenting the data. Depending on your intended format, visual.ly, coolinfographics.com, infographicsshowcase.com and videoinfographic.com can serve up some solid inspiration.
3. Make Your Design Dyn-o-mite: Bad design will turn readers away in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, great design will have readers sharing like mad and clicking through for more good content. Pay close attention to your careful balance of color coding, graphics/icons, and framing. Stay attuned to natural human tendency to scan left-to-right, top-to-bottom and focus on captivating attention via graphics size variance.
4. Provide a Conclusion: All too often, I come across infographics that lack any storyline and are instead merely a splattering of facts and figures bunched together into the equivalent of an online poster. Fine if you’re just looking for a creative way to present stats, but without a logical storyline, a reader is left without a conclusion, key learning or call to action that helps paint the whole picture. Don’t force readers to piece together their own takeaway.
5. Promote Yourself and Share Like Mad: Anyone that tells you that infographics are quick and easy to create is lying – or selling you on what is bound to be a disappointing final product. Great infographics take time to plan and design no matter what. As such, you should ensure that you’ve added your logo/URL to the bottom to get credit for your hard work. When it comes time for distribution, make sure you’re checking off every option possible such as the following:
- Utilizing as pitch asset for media and bloggers
- Posting on infographics showcase sites
- Sharing on own site, incorporating into blog post, sharing via e-news
- Sharing across your own and partner organization social channels
What tips do you have to share about creating great infographics?
Augmented Reality Is About to Become Your Reality
Gearing up to take that fun summer trip? Trying to gather together some maps of that great location? Concerned this image below may end up being you?
Given the quick advancements happening in the world of augmented reality, you may soon only have to rely on the device that already sits by your side all day long.
Mashable’s post today on the topic (Why Augmented Reality is Poised to Change Marketing) officially made me a firm believer that we’re on the brink of something big. In short, application for augmented reality is endless. Just over the course of the past few months, I’ve found myself thinking about various applications of the technology:
Ski Shopping - I live in a city. Mountains are quite a distance away. What good is it for me to stare at a $600 pair of skis and just trust that this is the pair I want to buy? Sure, I can demo the skis, but why not just let me hover over a tag above the ski rack and watch a quick demo video on my mobile? Ultimately, some quick hunting landed me on the video above but I can imagine few ski shoppers having the patience to hunt around online while in the store.
Record Shopping – Yes, yes, we all know it’s a miracle that record shops still exist. In many respects, I love it. I love sifting through CDs, looking at vinyl cover artwork and checking out hard to find zines. At the same time, digital music dominates the market. Why not provide record store shoppers with an easy way to check out sample music with a quick hover over an artist’s name in the CD rack?
Hiking – Assuming our state parks stay open, how great would it be to have the ability to scan tags along portions of a hike to update you on highlights along that portion of the trail or what lies ahead?
Relationship Status Scanning – I’ll stop there. Living in Seattle (where men are notoriously shy in their approach to women) I fear a city suddenly full of creeps pointing devices at each other to scan for whether someone is single or not. Saved heartache? Sure. Creep factor? Out the roof.
As you can imagine, beyond the personal and social applications, the opportunities for increased brand marketing engagement are endless. Check out this great demo video below and feel free to leave a comment below on whether you’re a AR fan, hater or drumming up your own creative idea for putting the technology to use.
Image courtesy of juzblurbs.
Let Pathos Drive Your Digital Storytelling
Pathos.
Sure, it may be a word that you haven’t thought about since half hearing it uttered by a droning professor during a random communications class back in college. But, as communications professionals, “pathos” or the art of emotional appeal, is something we all embrace as a core function of our job. Whether drafting a press release, brainstorming around a campaign brand or developing a video script, we are constantly working to build a strong emotional connection with our target audience.
Emotional Appeal = Audience Action.
I could repeat that line five times but I’ll spare you the eye strain. When it comes down to it, building a connection with your target audience takes work. A lot of work. Your messaging and storyline needs to be authentic, aligned with the core values of your brand and most of all – you need to strike the magical chord that resonates across your audience base.
You see this strategy implemented by nonprofits across the board. On the corporate front, I frequently reference Google’s “search stories” campaign. The original “Parisian Love” ad generated a lot of buzz when it was shown during this year’s Super Bowl. In my mind, the ad is stellar. In a sense, Google represents a creative whiteboard, serving as a portal to churn up a wealth of information around whatever topic a user can imagine. In this case, the creators of the spot did an incredible job of building out a storyline around the notion of love – a theme they knew would connect with everyone.
Beyond this initial spot, Google’s real genius is expounded upon through the way they further developed their Search Stories channel. They’ve even incorporated a search stories video creator tool that allows any user to build out their own Google search story within a matter of minutes.
G-e-n-i-u-s.
Lock people in, provide them with the tools that will allow them to easily participate in your storytelling and make it easy to share the content. Search is our entry to content discovery and Google does a great job of bringing to life all of the moving parts behind their simple interface. Kudos Google.
I had a bit of fun with their video creator tool last night and love the creative door this opens to groups and brands hosting contests or other fun storytelling projects.
How to Land a Job in Social Media
and a bit of cheese to top it off…
Let’s not forget that Facebook also utilizes a similar tool to acquire user-generated content that helps them demonstrate the value of their platform. In addition, Mashable announced today that Twitter has jumped on the bandwagon with their own version of user story sharing with Twitter Tales.
In essence, it boils down to igniting your brand supporters and advocates to make the shift from being joiners, spectators and critics to actual content creators. Especially from a communications perspective, we want to know how our users are being creative about engaging with our product or brand and how those ideas will influence others to engage with us.
Take a tip from Google, Facebook and Twitter. Now, what can you do to simplify your next storytelling initiative?
