Infographics: Generating Buzz in the Social Realm

The following post is a great guest blog on infographics from Topher Lee. Want to guest blog with CIK? Then drop us a line!

In the world of marketing, if people aren’t talking about you or your products, you are probably doing something wrong. Business owners know this and so do marketing firms. Need evidence? You need not look any further than the recent push in social marketing, where success is measure in things like Tweets, Diggs, Bookmarks, Likes, StumbleUpon’s, and Shares. These are all societies’ ways of letting us know what’s hot and noteworthy.

Businesses have started to take notice, and campaigns are being enacted every day in order to create as much social buzz as possible surrounding their brands. Great idea, but implementing it is a fairly daunting and time consuming endeavor. With so many social avenues out there and new ones creeping up each day, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to get the buzz to come to you? In some cases this isn’t too difficult. Where your more sensational or trendy brands and products are concerned, social interaction from consumers might be a given. Logistics companies on the other hand? Sorry, you are going to have to create your own social buzz.

Infographics Make Everything Cooler

Let me offer up an example. Take for instance, once of the most mundane subjects (outside of Excel spreadsheets) known to the business world . . . shipping. If you were to produce a dissertation relating to information surrounding say, shipping and customer conversion rates; I would guess you might be fairly surprised if that document even made a ripple in the social realm. I know I would. With the exception of a few outliers, most people don’t want to sit and read someone’s statistic-packed 52 page dissertation about shipping cost and conversion rates. Most consumers wouldn’t be likely to even read it. I don’t image even if they did, that they would “Like” it. And they certainly wouldn’t “Tweet” about it. So how does one go about conveying relevant information to business owners and consumers, while also causing a bit of a stir in the social realm? One answer, my friend, lies in infographics.

Visually stunning, while still being informative; infographics are like the double edged sword of the marketing world. Not only can they cater to the intellectual side of your audience with the top notch information they can provide, but you also get the benefit of addressing those whose proclivity is more towards shiny objects, (I myself like shiny objects). Being a designer at heart, I have always known the benefit of well-designed marketing materials. I was astounded though when a friend of mine showed me how well a recent infographic he designed was doing socially. Within 4 hours of going live, the graphic had made it to number 4 on Delicious, been “Tweeted” 107 times, “Liked” 60 times, shared on LinkedIn 20 times, submitted to Digg 65 times, and renamed by one user as “The Holy Grail of E-Commerce” (which was the number one result Googled returned when searching for the article).

I find this interesting seeing as how the topic of the graphic, which relates to how people make purchases according to shipping options, is vaguely interesting at best. The design is top notch, but I’m probably just biased. Put them together though, and you have something with some real mass appeal.

Below is the infographic in mention. Marketing professionals and business owners may want to take note.

[Via: Fedex Shipping]

This is a guest post by Topher Lee. Topher admits to having a slightly unhealthy obsession with all things related to marketing and social media. When he is not utilizing his talents as a designer at his 9-5, he can be found spending time with his wife and two daughters.