10 Commandments of Infographic Virality

Infographics — you know you love them, as do most people. Statistics don’t lie:

• High quality infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than text articles.
• 40 percent of people respond better to visual information than text.
• Publishers that use infographics grow in traffic an average of 12 percent more than those who do not use infographics.

When you create a visually stunning infographic with compelling content, you want everyone to see it! Need some guidance on how to make your infographic spread?

Following these 10 Commandments of Infographic Virality and be blessed with traffic.

Ten Commandments of Infographic Virality

1.Thou Shalt Create Compelling Content

The rules of engagement for infographics remain the same as those for regular content: it must be compelling, unique and provide value. You can religiously follow the rest of the commandments laid out here, but if the actual infographic you started with isn’t worthy of engagement, you’ll get nowhere. First and foremost you must create something worth sharing — and the virality (and backlinks) that can come with it.

2. Thou Shalt Share

The usual suspects are involved: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and the like hold the keys to virality. Your brand should be active on any relevant channels and you should obviously push out the infographic, optimizing each tweet, post and share for keywords, and also including any helpful hashtags (including #infographic). And not just once — promote it multiple times (though not in a Twitter bomb fashion) throughout the days or even weeks following its creation.

3. Thou Shalt Analyze

Use Tweriod to determine the optimal times to share for your Twitter account. My Twitter followers are not the same as your Twitter followers — each group of followers has its own unique trends. Use Tweriod’s free analytics to discover your own, and then leverage them to your advantage.

4. Thou Shalt Simplify
In addition to your own sharing, make it easy for others to share. The actual page where the infographic lives should offer social media buttons and an option to embed the infographic.

5. Thou Shalt Promote

Write about the infographic on your blog or newsletter and be sure to include a screenshot.

6. Thou Shalt Consider Who Thou Knows

Reach out to your colleagues and industry peers via email and invite them to share your creation on their own sites.

7. Thou Shalt Create Media Hype

Publish a press release announcing your new creation (read up on Press Release Basics).

8. Thou Shalt Get Curated

Search Engine Watch suggests you submit to infographic curation sites and offers this List of Infographic Sites from Paddy Doogan as great place to start. Here are the top ten sites (by domain authority) off his list (eight of which are free!):

9. Thou Shalt Rank

The actual page that the infographic lives on should provide a helpful summary that places the infographic in context. This text should utilize relevant keywords and be comprised of at least 200 words. The keywords should be peppered throughout the summary and also included in the Title tag, ALT tag and Meta Description. This won’t help the infographic go viral, but it will help it rank in Google. Let’s say you create an infographic on cows, and someone saw it on Facebook and then couldn’t find it again. If they type “cow infographic” on Google, wouldn’t you like your site to be the one that pops up on page 1?

10. Thou Shalt Be Inspired

Behold, the top three infographics from Visual.ly with the most views.

What are the Odds? (2 million views)

 

30 Shots (432,000 views)

 

What’s your experience with making infographics go viral? Share any additional tips in the comments!

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.