Most blogs start out for someone to have an outlet for their passions, to talk about themselves or because they want to share their knowledge of something. Eventually some of those blogs build a following. Once the following starts to grow, the blog takes a turn from being just about that person and mixes in posts to solve problems for the reader base.
By solving the problems or providing potential solutions, they further bond with their readers, attract a new audience and the blogger can move their website forward towards the next milestones. This progression is why infographics can be good for bloggers.
A good infographic will explain a complex solution in a visually appealing and easy to reference way. Other times it can entertain an audience because it’s something they agree with or makes them laugh. You can use them as inspiration for new blog posts and if you promote them the right way, they can be amazing tools to grow and scale your blog.
Here are 5 reasons why you may want to consider publishing an infographic you like, myths about posting them and why you may want to think about how it could benefit you, instead of deleting the email with the pitch.
You’re Not Giving Free SEO, You’re Getting FREE SEO
Common complaint: I’m not giving XYZ company free SEO.
Reality: Good, you don’t have to give the creator “free SEO”.
If the infographic is good and relevant for your audience, it can actually benefit your own SEO and increase your ad revenue. A good infographic on your website can attract backlinks from fellow bloggers and even news sites that find it through your website. Because the infographic is on your website, there’s a very good chance you get the backlink, even when the infographic is branded for a company.
This helps the page build authority and you can pass that authority through an internal linking structure to increase your own rankings in the search engines.
If you don’t want to pass authority to the infographic creator, giving them “free SEO”, add rel=”nofollow” to the links in the infographic. Now you’re not going to pass authority or give an SEO benefit (for now) to them. With that said, Google may start giving credit to sites, even if there is a no follow in the future. However, before you no follow the links, think about the site the backlink would go to.
If the infographic is created by a website with a lot of authority and it is content relevant to you, giving them a do follow link may actually benefit your own SEO. Do a Google or Bing search for terms like “do follow links help SEO”, “when can do follow links benefit SEO”, “will using dofollow links help my SEO”, etc… You’ll see a lot of extremely reliable sources that will say this and you may even find mentions where Google itself says you can or should use do follow links to increase your own websites ability to rank. I also have this post on when to use do follow and no follow links.
Use Them to Increase Your Own Ad Revenue
Common complaint: I’m not giving free advertising to the company who created it.
Reality: If you feel it is free advertising, then you need to measure and monitor how much traffic you get on each new post. Many of the bloggers I hear this complaint from can’t actually give “free advertising” to anyone because they don’t have a real site wide following. They may have a lot of traffic, but it is on one or two posts. The rest of the site (including new posts) remains almost dormant.
Others have a large social following, but it may not be active. Without engagement, there is no real advertising.
Because the infographic will more than likely not appear on a post that brings in traffic, the company who created it is getting almost no advertising from the blogger. The lack of traffic and engagement can cause the brand to never want to work with you again, even if you do build a following in the future.
If you feel you’re giving advertising by sharing the infographic, use tools like Pretty Links Pro and MouseFlow to actually measure how many click throughs you get on it. If you have real stats and traffic information via new posts or shares on social media, then you can say you’re giving advertising and back it up with stats.
Side note: your stats for the entire blog or website do not count unless you’re placing the infographic somewhere visible to every single person who visits your site, which probably isn’t possible since they tend to be huge.
Now let’s talk about how they can increase ad revenue for you
By having a quality infographic on a page within your site, you can attract backlinks like above and also bring in traffic from social media sites. This traffic increases your impressions allowing you to sell more CPM ad space, gives you an opportunity to grow your newsletter and if it is one that helps to solve a problem, you can use affiliate links in the post to provide the products or services to monetize the content from the infographic.
Infographics give you an easy way to help increase your revenue, assuming they’re good and you can push them out and monetize them the right way.
Turn Them Into Affiliate Links
You can think about an infographic as a huge and informative banner ad if you decide to share it. Look to see if the creator has an affiliate or revenue sharing program. The infographics produced by a specific merchant are almost always directly related to their products or services. This gives you another way to make money.
By having an informative, helpful or entertaining piece with a direct tie in to the merchant’s products or services, you now have a great tool to sell product. If they have an affiliate program, why not get permission and make the infographic a huge banner ad as well?
If they want it on your site, you should be able to earn revenue and gather an even more important stat…revenue driven.
Try using text and image links below the infographic as well as a roundup at the bottom. If the merchant does the hard work of creating the content, now you can take this content and use it to make money. It’s a win-win for both of you. They get exposure and you get good content for free that you can monetize. You can then gather the revenue and add it to your click and impression stats to sell ad space.
Side note: you’ll want to ask the affiliate manager or the PR person sending it to you if you are allowed to turn the infographic into an affiliate link. Some programs prohibit the use of anything that isn’t provided through the affiliate network. By getting permission in writing from the company, you may save yourself a few headaches.
You Can Now Tie Your Site to Revenue And Charge More for Ad Space
If you do turn them into banner ads, you can also start to measure how much traffic goes from your site to the site when people click through. This provides you with solid data and stats that you can add to your media kit. Now if you want to sell ad space to companies pitching infographics, you can show actual sales data to justify the fees you charge per sale.
Because many bloggers do not have this data, you now have the upper hand. If you feel like you constantly lose out on ad revenue because they go with larger sites, challenge the PR or marketing rep. to ask the bigger site for sales data. Having a positive return on ad spend (ROAS) says more than having no sales data and can give you an advantage.
Because They’re Fun & Can Add Value to Your Readers
The last reason to not always reject them is that they’re fun. Quit thinking that every time a brand asks for something that they’re out to get something for free. If you legitimately like the infographic and it could be entertaining for your readers, why not share it?
Good content is hard to find and if a great infographic is pitched, try running with it. You never know how your audience will react and if it will become a new source of backlinks, traffic and revenue for you.
We’ve all seen infographics we really liked. Many of us comment, like and share them on social media sites. If you haven’t, you’ve probably seen your friends doing this. They could be lists, quizzes, solutions or explanations. Now think about if that infographic was on your blog. You could be getting that attention and traffic instead of everyone else.
The next time a company pitches you an infographic, take a closer look at it and if you think it is good and helpful, give it a shot instead of instantly rejecting it or sending a media kit. You never know when it could turn into your next source of traffic, backlinks and revenue.
