Infographics are visual presentations of data or information that use elements of design in order to attractively display content. If you’re looking to make your content more appealing and interactive, infographics are definitely the way to go.

Here are a few reasons why we think you should integrate the infographic into your overall content strategy:

They’re eye-catching & engaging

We’re not talking about your everyday bar graph, here. Infographics take all that mundane and complex data and turn it into colourful, appealing and unique works of graphic art. Infographics are all about telling a story. Images and words work together to share information and facts relevant to a certain topic.

The format piques interest and demands attention. As Internet users, we read until we’re blue in the face. An infographic, which breaks up the text while still communicating valuable content, is definitely a welcome change. It makes research, learning and discovery more entertaining and, dare I say, fun!

It’s everything you need to know, simplified

Sure, you’ll be impressed by the design, but you’ll be even more blown away by what you’ll learn. No need to rack your brain: infographics are super easy to understand. You could always read the whole 200-page report, but who has the time?

We’re busy people with busy lives and infographics provide access to all the important stuff in a convenient and efficient manner. They deliver the message quickly and clearly in one compact, interesting and appealing package. Because of this, infographics actually enhance comprehension of the content that’s presented.

Leave them wanting more

Infographics are so easily digested because they address the valuable ideas, facts and statistics that people want to know.

It’s true, you can’t relay as much information in an infographic as you can in other information marketing materials. However, infographics can function as a kind of teaser or call to action; encouraging users to read or download the extended e-book or whitepaper.

Unparalleled shareability

Because they are so easy to understand, infographics are also easily shared. Infographics often explode via social media and, in some instances, even go viral.

Be sure to share your infographic with relevant influencers and infographic aggregators to generate the most impressions.

Have you discovered any awesome infographics? Share them in the comments below!

Both social media and your website should be working together to promote your online brand. Unfortunately, most brands aren’t fully leveraging the power of social media on their websites and, as a result, they’re losing out on potential interactions, impressions and sales.

Avoid making these mistakes. This post will outline how your brand’s website and social media platforms can work together to maximize online exposure and increase brand awareness.

1. Placement of Social Media Buttons

I know, I know. This one’s obvious. But you might be surprised how often social media buttons are lost among crowded content. The best buttons aren’t necessarily the biggest and the boldest, but should definitely stand out and catch your eye.

Buttons should be placed in visibly obvious locations or integrated among Contact information. Keep in mind, your audience is now just as inclined to reach out to you on Twitter and Facebook, as they were to phone and email you. Furthermore, Facebook’s new Timeline for Brand Pages permits a user to contact the brand/business directly.

2. Be Consistent

Your social media buttons shouldn’t only be found in one place, either. Make sure they are consistent throughout your website and can be found in the same places when moving from page to page. Social media buttons that are locked in the navigation bar or menu are best.

3. Use Common Sense

Only integrate social media where it logically makes the most sense. Just because you’ve signed up for every social platform out there, doesn’t mean you have to link to all of them. If you haven’t touched your Twitter account since you created it, there’s no need to draw any attention to it. If the platforms aren’t updated frequently or actively managed, there’s no reason to link to them.

4. Include Social Feeds

If you’re an avid Facebook or Twitter user, why not add the feeds directly on your website? Including your social feeds gives visitors a taste of the kind of content you publish. It also shows website visitors that you are engaged and offering value through interesting, shareable content.

5. Incorporate Share Buttons

If you use your website to publish useful and valuable resources, articles, blog posts or other helpful content, don’t you want as many people as possible to see it? Share buttons allow website visitors to share or tweet your content to their social networks with a simple click of the mouse.

This isn’t just a great idea for content publishers; share buttons give brands selling products or services via their websites a great opportunity to increase social impressions, too. With share buttons, online shoppers can share great deals or hot finds on their social platforms.

6. Track your Success

Make sure to use analytics so you can discover how often website visitors are using your social media buttons. Google Analytics is a great tool. It allows you to see how many people are actually clicking on your outbound social media links. If you don’t see the results you were looking for, perhaps you need to consider a change in your button design or location.

Brands are always looking to increase awareness, sales and growth. You should know by now that, if you’re ignoring the online space, you are losing valuable business. A professional and informative website combined with an active presence on social media platforms help to communicate your value to potential customers.

Unfortunately, many brand managers don’t understand the difference between custom and template websites. This post will provide an in-depth exploration of the 2 alternatives and identify the advantages and disadvantages of both.

Template Websites

A template website is a layout that is used to display content and information for a simple website. It acts as a foundation on which you build your own content.

Affordability

Template websites are a great resource for brands with low budgets that are looking to get up and running as soon as possible. However, while it would appear that using a template would result in shorter development time, this is not always the case.

Restrictions

When using a template, you will be limited in the features you can and cannot customize. Without any specific technical knowledge or coding skills, you will need to spend the time learning or spend the money to hire someone in order to get the right look. Some templates are laid out in a very specific manner. If you wish to display your own graphics or include extensive content, there’s a chance the template won’t allow it.

There are also going to be many others out there using the very same template. If you find the template appealing, there is a chance that hundreds of others thought the same. Moreover, if the template design is relevant to your business, there is a chance that your competitors may be using the exact same one.

Unless you pay for exclusive rights to the template, the provider is going to continue to sell it to anyone who comes knocking. And even if you choose to pay the price, there are others who have bought the template before and still retain the right to use it.

Custom Websites

Custom websites, unlike templates, are built to your specifications by a web designer of your choosing.

A Unique Design

A custom website has a unique design that is created for you and you alone. Because your website is different from anyone else’s, it will help distinguish you from the competition and stand out in the crowd.

A unique design means that your website will be more adaptable to your brand’s unique needs. You are not limited to the offerings of a template. You are free to integrate a blog, include your social media feeds, incorporate sign-up forms and add other custom extras.

Don’t worry if your current budget doesn’t allow all your dream features to be implemented from the start. Simply set a few priorities and give your designer an idea of what to accommodate in the future.

Optimization

Having a great-looking website is only part of the package. When potential leads run a web search, results appear, sorted by relevancy, which match their search criteria. When delivering results, the search engine will present those websites with the highest SEO value first.

Hiring the right web designer means that your website will be built with SEO in mind. Custom websites improve your SEO value, bringing more visibility and awareness to your brand.

Control

Think you’d have no control over a custom website? Think again. Content management systems (CMS) can be very comprehensive and user-friendly. Although they come at an additional cost, a CMS will allow you, as the client, to access and modify all content pages, form submissions, blog posts, traffic analytics and much, much more.

When deciding whether or not a custom web design is the way to go, keep in mind that potential customers go to Google before they come to you. You want your brand to stand out among the rest and you need a website that answers the most important question “why me”.

We believe that A/B testing is on of the most powerful marketing tools out there. Test results can provide marketers with invaluable insight into customer behaviour and conversion rates.

Unfortunately, A/B testing is not as common a practice as other Internet marketing strategies, like SEO and web analytics. We think this is because people don’t completely understand what A/B testing is, how it can benefit them or how they should be doing it.

Read on to learn more about the basics of A/B testing and how you can rediscover the lost art.

What exactly is A/B testing?

Originally a direct mail strategy, A/B testing has now been adopted in the online space to test digital marketing campaigns such as buttons, banner ads and email newsletter campaigns.

Quite simply, A/B testing is a method of testing out 2 versions of a campaign simultaneously and seeing which performs better against a pre-determined metric of success. When the test is finished, you measure which version performed best and select it for use going forward.

Say, for instance, that a brand wants increase online sales. To test conversion rates, they decide to experiment with their calls to action on an email coupon promotion. The first version states: “Coupon offer ends Friday! Use promotional code 1 at checkout”, and is sent to the first half of their mailing list. The brand then modified the call to action in the second version to read: “Don’t miss out! Enter promotional code 2”. This version was sent to the second half of their mailing list. Now, the brand is able to observe response rates by monitoring the use of promotional codes. Whichever version performs better will be used or tested against in future campaigns.

What Should I Measure Against?

The answer to this question will depend on what exactly you care about. Many engage in A/B testing because they are looking to increase conversion rates, clicks, sales, registrations or signups. Results can vary significantly depending on what metric you choose to measure against. Whichever metric you decide to use, make sure that it is measurable.

In the example above, the test’s purpose was to discover the most effective way to motivate customers to make a purchase. On the other hand, if the goal was to see which version would generate the highest CTR or traffic to the website, then the results may have turned out differently.

The answer to this question will depend on your particular goals for the test. For example, if you want to increase the number of completed sign-up or registration forms, then you might want to test the type and number of entry fields in the form, the length of the form or the call to action.

While every A/B test is different, certain elements such as copy text, length of text, colours, layouts, graphics and calls to action are among the most commonly tested.

Have you ever tried A/B testing? Please share your experiences by posting a comment below.

Information marketing is an awesome tool for spreading your message and reaching your target market.  By offering relevant and helpful information products, such as e-books, webinars and other multimedia, your brand can establish itself as a knowledgeable industry leader.

It’s a pretty simple concept, but under no circumstances does that mean it’s an easy one. Information products can be very time consuming and completely fruitless if created and marketed without the right strategy. Before you begin marketing your latest information product, take a look at our step-by-step guide to guarantee the best result for your brand.

Step 1: Determine a Topic

Of course, before you create your information product, you’re going to have to decide what it will be about. Consider the following questions: What are you an expert in? What does your audience already know about the subject? What do they need to know?

Step 2: Do Your Research

Of course, information products are supposed to be informative. To be a successful information marketer, you need to know your stuff. Take the time to really research your topic. Providing supporting facts, statistics and additional reading material and resources along with your original content will prove your value.

Step 3: Select a Type of Information Product

Now that you’ve selected your topic and done your research, you need to decide the form in which you’ll offer your product. Common types of information products include: e-books, webinars, videos and audio.

Again, you will have to consider your audience and which medium would work best for them. What type will be the most useful when presenting your content? You should also consider which is the best method based on your topic and subject matter. For example, if your topic is more data-heavy, you may want to consider an e-book where you can neatly display charts, statistics and other graphics.

Step 4: Develop the Content

Once you’ve narrowed down your topic and done some research, it’s time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard?). While writing, it’s important to keep a few things in mind:

It’s About the Customer

Keep your audience in mind when writing every sentence and speaking every word. Your product should be informative, not salesy. It’s all about the customer and what they want – do not disappoint.

K.I.S.S.

We’re all busy people, so remember to keep it simple. Brevity is the key to engaging your audience. You need to grab your audience and offer value right away, otherwise you’ll find your potential customers jumping ship.

Likewise, when writing e-books, be sure to write in short paragraphs so that people are able to skim through the information easily. Aim to use images and graphics as much as possible to break up a lot of written content.

Keep Your Eye on the Prize

Remember to always stay focused on your brand’s business goals. While it is true that your information product concentrates on informing the public, the ultimate strategy is lead generation. Be sure to subtly suggest how your brand can help with the topic.

Step 5: Distribution

One of the best things about information marketing is that you’re your own publisher. If your brand already has a website, e-mail service or a social media platform, there are virtually no printing or distribution costs involved. The information becomes available to your audience in a quick and timely fashion.

You have a few options when it comes to distributing your information products: do you want to give your product away for free or would you rather offer it for a fee?

Many brands offer e-books and webinars for free via simple website download. This option will likely give you the widest audience. Similarly, some brands offer information products for free, but only if the visitor provides certain information, such as an e-mail address. If you think your product is simply too good to be given away for free, you can also charge for downloads or views.

Once your e-book or webinar sign-up goes live, you’re ready to start driving traffic. Advertise it on your website, reference it in a newsletter, post it to your social media channels. Spread the word!

Step 6: Track your Success

If you’re capturing contact information via squeeze pages or purchase transactions, be sure to follow-up with your customers, ask for their feedback and see if you can offer any further information or service.

Track how many people are downloading your e-book, watching your videos or attending your webinars. See how people are responding to your product. If your turnout is less than you expected, test something new. If you’re seeing a ton of interest – good work! – but what can you do to grow that number even more? There’s always room for improvement.