At one point in time content was the marketing medium of choice, but like all things, marketing is a constantly evolving field. New technologies, better graphics, and an increasing surplus of written media is leading to the eventual result of graphics and media taking pride of place for marketers, mainly because it attracts more attention, provides more value and is more difficult to plagiarize.
While at one point a single article could garner dozens of links and thousands of visitors, today that article is replaced with visual media including infographics, videos and photos and today, you can learn how to use them for your own link building strategies.
Data suggests that visual media is processed more quickly, liked and shared twice as much, and have as much as a 40% stronger impact on viewers than text. Why? Studies show that the brain processes visual information more than 60 times faster than written information, meaning that it is absorbed and considered even before the conscious mind finishes looking at the image.
When combined with the fact that graphic media including video and images are shared more than 12 times more often than text media or links, you have a great way to promote yourself and your business.
1. Images
Images are the easiest type of visual media to integrate into your link building strategies because they are easy to create and easy to share. By building a library of share-alike (Creative Commons 2.0) images to offer bloggers, you are creating a library of link bait that could turn into hundreds of links across blogs and websites as they credit you for the creation of the image.
Images have their pros and cons, but are a great way to get started in creating visual media. However, it is much more difficult to enforce that the user links back to you, and much more difficult to control the quality or niche of the links. For example, if you have a photo of one of your products, it could show up on any type of site and in any context.
2. Infographics
Infographics are quickly becoming one of the most respected forms of visual media link building because they provide the most value in terms of bang for your buck. The infographic is relatively inexpensive to produce compared to other types of media and when done correctly can result in hundreds of relevant backlinks from sites in your niche.
According to Forbes, this is one of the fastest and easiest ways to create shareable media. The infographic is a visual explainer that conveys as many ideas as possible in as small of a space as possible.
There are hundreds of poorly researched, and less informative infographics out there, don’t make a mistakes of sharing just any infographics. Skyrocket infographic marketing recommends you invest time and resources into your infographics with good graphics that can literally go viral overnight. As a Creative Commons 2.0, that means hundreds of links to your site.
3. Video
Video media is a bigger investment than any other type of shareable media because it takes more work, more money, and is a bigger risk. You can produce the best video in the world and get zero traffic and zero shares.
However, if you create a brilliant, funny and relevant video on a high interest topic in your niche, brand it with your logo at the end and link to your website in the media, you could quite quickly find yourself getting more than a good return on your investment.
The idea is to shock, awe, and otherwise forcefully grab interest in order to elicit a share. Viral videos can attract a huge amount of interest for your business as well as links, social comments, shares and traffic.
4. Using Visual Media for Link building
The process of using visual media for link building starts with content creation. You need a topic that you are an expert in, that your business or website is about, and that you can 100% verify every fact for. Then, you have to create a visual representation of this topic in a way that grabs attention and holds it.
The best information is useless to you if it’s not interesting, and for most, this is the challenging part. You have to visually represent yourself in a highly shareable and likeable fashion. If this sounds too difficult, don’t worry, there are a couple of highly talented designers who specialize in creating visual media and will work with you from concept to launch.
After creating a concept and design, you have to launch, market, and promote your content. If it is an infographic, you can’t just expect people to pick it up for you, you have to offer it to them in exchange for the linkback, or put it up as media available for use on blogs.
There are also many content sharing platforms that allow you to market your media in similar fashion to marketing a guest blog. You mostly just have to provide the infographic, the link, and perhaps an introductory paragraph or article.
If you already have a network of bloggers and website owners in your niche, you may be able to achieve the sharing and linking you want simply by sharing your content.
About the author: George Torres works with many clients to increase social and content links across multiple platforms.
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