Most of us have seen how effective infographics can be in link building and driving traffic to sites. What most people don’t pay attention to is the fact that not all infographics are successful. For starters, these are not that cheap to make if you are outsourcing the process. So you can’t just make a bunch of them without expecting any success. Besides, just having a shiny infogaphic on your website will not impress your visitors. You need to work hard to develop killer infographics people want to share with others. Here are 7 reason your infographics are failing on you:
- Lousy research: that is a killer. If your infographic is based on lousy research, it is not going to take off. You may be able to fool some of your readers with sub-par research. But you won’t fool everyone. People won’t share your graphic just because it looks shiny and sophisticated on the surface.
- Terrible topic: choosing the right topic for your infographic project can make all the difference in the world. You should try to be as creative as possible. At the same time, avoid picking topics that people don’t really care about.
- Awful design: I have had people develop a few infographic for me already. There is a good reason I don’t do them myself. While I know programming, I am terrible in design. People are less likely to share and link to your infographic if it looks awful.
- Lack of promotion: so you have gotten a designer to come up with the best looking infographic possible? Just because you have published it on your blog does not mean people will find it. You need to actively promote your visuals. That includes reaching out to other bloggers and sharing your infographic link on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
- Disorganization: it’s one thing to choose the wrong topic for your infographic. But being all over the place with your content and stats can be a killer too. People will ignore your work if it is unfocused.
- Lack of updates: just like regular blog posts, infographics need to be updated on a regular basis to keep their value. Old infographics get forgotten after a while. The good news is designers usually don’t charge a whole lot when it comes to updating their own work. Just make sure you discuss this with your designer before partnering up.
- Too much info: we all need water to survive. But too much water can kill you. The same applies to information. There is always this temptation to cover as much as possible in infographics. But if you include too much, you will turn your audience off.
Developing a killer infographic takes time and effort. You can’t expect to cut corners and achieve success with this tactic. Infographics are time-consuming and expensive to develop. So you should put your best foot forward when developing them to achieve the most success with them.