Infographics have grown to become one of the most efficient and lucrative forms of inbound marketing, giving businesses a chance to show off their knowledge, create something pretty, and attract dozens (if not hundreds) of natural backlinks for SEO in a single go. To someone new to the world of infographic marketing, the strategy may seem like a gimmick built around a buzzword, but the data doesn’t lie. People strongly prefer visual content, and infographics take advantage of that opportunity.

However, infographic marketing isn’t as simple as creating a piece and posting on your website. If you want to get the best results for your infographic and maximize your chances of making it go viral, you’ll need to put some work into it.

Why Infographic Marketing Is Important

Infographic marketing is valuable both as a short-term means of attracting visitors and as a long-term brand strategy:

Infographics increase your brand authority. Your brand is your company’s identity, and infographics are the perfect way to promote that identity. You’ll have a chance to show off your branding and your personality in the wording and design of the infographic, but your subject matter is what really counts. Depending on the depth of research you do, you can prove yourself as an industry leader and establish yourself as a major authority. It makes people trust you and value you more.

Your brand is your company’s identity, and infographics are the perfect way to promote that identity. You’ll have a chance to show off your branding and your personality in the wording and design of the infographic, but your subject matter is what really counts. Depending on the depth of research you do, you can prove yourself as an industry leader and establish yourself as a major authority. It makes people trust you and value you more. They attract natural backlinks to your site for SEO. Search engine ranks are largely dependent on the quality and volume of backlinks pointing back to your site. However, if your links appear to be built unnaturally, you could face a penalty from Google. Infographics are beneficial because they naturally encourage people to share and re-post the digital material with links pointing back to your site. You get all the links you could ever want, and you don’t have to worry about them appearing to be artificially built.

Search engine ranks are largely dependent on the quality and volume of backlinks pointing back to your site. However, if your links appear to be built unnaturally, you could face a penalty from Google. Infographics are beneficial because they naturally encourage people to share and re-post the digital material with links pointing back to your site. You get all the links you could ever want, and you don’t have to worry about them appearing to be artificially built. They increase click-through opportunities for raw web traffic. Finally and perhaps most obviously, the presence of your infographic will entice people to click through to your website. That means a greater number of relevant visitors from around the web as your infographic circulates.

A Final Checklist for Your Infographic

Before you start syndicating your infographic, it’s a good idea to run through a final checklist of must-have qualities:

Make sure your branding is visible and recognizable. Include a watermark if necessary to make sure the infographic can only be attributed to you.

Include a watermark if necessary to make sure the infographic can only be attributed to you. Double check your reference list. People want infographics they can trust, so make sure all your reference links are accurate and working properly.

Create an embed code, or include a link to your site in the infographic itself. This will ensure that people can quickly and easily share your infographic with the accompanying link.

Infographics can be very effective ways to spread your message. They are eye-catching and often much more compelling than plain text. Here are 27 powerful methods for promoting your infographics.

1. Submit it to Infographic Directories

Just as there are article directories and video sharing sites, there are also infographic directories. Some of the leading ones are Cool Infographics, Infographic Directory, Daily Infographic and Visual.ly.

2. Make a Video From It

You can get more mileage from your infographics by turning them into videos. A simple way to do this is to separate the different parts of the infographic and make them into PowerPoint slides.

For added appeal, you can add music to it. You can also make this type of video using services such as Animoto.

3. Send it to Your Subscribers

If you have an email list, you should let them know whenever you publish a new infographic. The easiest way to do this is usually to give them a link to your blog. Sending attachments or inserting the infographic in the email itself are also possible, but these tactics can lower your delivery and open rates.

4. Form Partnerships With Your Best Sources

When you include links in your infographics, you are helping to drive traffic to these sites. You can therefore contact these bloggers or webmasters and ask them to help promote your infographic in return. They are, after all, helping themselves as well as you by doing this.

5. Tweet About It

While you can’t include the full infographic in a tweet, you can include teasers. Tweet certain key points and include a link to the full infographic on your site.

6. Send Out Press Releases

If you have an infographic that is filled with valuable content, you can promote it using press releases. A press release must be written as a news story rather than an advertisement, but you can still build links from the site where your infographic is published.

7. Share it on Pinterest

In addition to other social media sites, be sure to use Pinterest, which is an ideal platform for infographics. Since this fast growing site is image-oriented, infographics are very popular there. Be sure to create boards that attract the kind of traffic you’re seeking. You can create as many boards as you want on Pinterest.

8. Optimize Your Infographics

Whenever you create a new infographic, be sure to optimize it the same way you would an article, blog post or video. This means using a variety of keywords, both primary and long tail. It’s always a good idea to do keyword research to come up with words and terms people are searching for that you might not have thought of.

9. Let People Embed Your Infographic

If you want your infographic to get shared and go viral, you should make it easy for people to embed it on their own sites. It’s not difficult to learn how to create an embed code for your infographic, and this can help you get it out to a wider audience.

10. Include Portions of the Infographic on Facebook

Complete infographics often don’t look their best on Facebook, which is why it’s often better to publish teasers instead. This can also be a good way to get Facebook friends and fans to visit your website. As you’re creating your infographic, keep in mind which segments might be especially appealing to readers on Facebook.

11. Repurpose the Text

The text portion of an infographic can be repurposed into blog posts, articles or documents on sites like Scribd or Docstoc. When you do this, don’t forget to include a link to the complete infographic.

12. Translate Infographics Into Other Languages

This is an innovative way to get traffic from completely new sources. Images are by nature universal, so you just have to translate the text. Be sure to get good translations, though, as otherwise your messages could be distorted or misunderstood. This can be a good way to get traffic from other parts of the world.

13. Publish it on Content Curation Sites

There are lots of content curation websites where you can publish infographics. These can be a valuable source of traffic. Some of these include Bundlr, ScoopIt and Internet Billboards.

14. Have a Main Site For Your Infographics

If infographics are a major part of your marketing strategy, you should have one central place to publish them. This can be your WordPress blog, business website, Blogspot blog or anything that works for you. This way, no matter what promotional tactics you use, you can point traffic back to this central site. If your infographics are too spread out, it’s harder to promote them.

15. Encourage People to Share it

When you post your infographic on your blog, make sure you have share buttons for Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Don’t be afraid to ask people to share it if they like it.

16. Use Paid Ads or Facebook Sponsored Stories

If you are willing to invest a little money into promoting your infographic, you can use Google or Facebook ads for this purpose. Another useful tool is Facebook Sponsored Stories. To get the most out of these advertising platforms, it’s necessary to test and carefully track your results. Find out which headlines and ads bring you the most traffic.

17. Connect With Influencers

Influencers are the people in your niche or industry who have a large following and are considered experts. These are people who can help you connect with a wider audience. Reach out with them via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and on their blogs. Study what type of content that they typically publish and pitch them about using your infographic.

18. Choose a Catchy Headline

As with other types of content, people will usually notice a headline before anything else. That’s why it’s important to choose a title for your infographic that people will be attracted to. This will depend on your target audience, of course. While you should be thinking in terms of keywords and SEO for headlines, you also have to make your headline compelling so that people will be drawn to the infographic.

19. Pitch it to Blogs

Many people are familiar with guest blogging, where you seek targeted blogs to publish your articles. A similar tactic can be taken with infographics. Make a list of active blogs in your industry and pitch them on using your infographic.

20. Get Involved on Forums

Forums can be good places to connect with a targeted audience and get people interested in your content. The best approach is to not be too blatant about self-promotion and to rely on your signature for promoting. You can use your signature to drive traffic to the site or post where your infographic is located.

21. Pay Attention to Design Principles

Not all infographics are equally popular. One key reason for this is that some of them are poorly designed. This can mean that there’s too much text, the wrong color scheme or a confusing layout. The best infographics are usually concise, not overly long without too much data. It should flow in a natural way, so the eye moves from Point A to Point B without getting distracted.

22. Use Google Alerts to Find Additional Places to Promote

Google Alerts can let you know when new content is published that is related to your infographic. You can then contact the publisher and let him or her know you have an infographic that might enhance their content.

23. Promote Offline

There are ways to promote your infographic offline. You can post links on business cards, bulletin boards or in classifieds of local publications. For this purpose, it’s best to have a simple and short domain name that can easily be remembered.

24. Publish Images on Flickr and Instagram

Just as you can publish the text portion of your infographics as articles, you can publish the images to sites such as Flickr and Instagram. In this case, you should include the link to the complete infographic with each image.

25. Promote it on Answer Sites

If your infographic solves a problem or answers a question, you can promote it on sites like Yahoo! Answers and other answer sites. Search for active questions and you can use the link to your infographic in your answer.

26. Tie in Your Infographic With Seasonal Events and Holidays

You can make your infographics more relevant by connecting them with events or holidays that people are thinking about. This may take some creativity, but you may be able to alter an existing infographic and tie it in with a certain holiday, sporting event, news story or pop culture reference.

27. Link to it in E-books

You can link to infographics from e-books. These can be free e-books that you use to build your mailing list or perhaps an e-book you publish on Kindle. Most e-book platforms, including Kindle, support live links.

Want more information on content marketing? Head over to our comprehensive guide on content marketing here: The All-in-One Guide to Planning and Launching a Content Marketing Strategy.