One of the most effective ways of increasing blog traffic and social engagement of your blog posts is by creating a round-up infographic.
What is a round-up infographic?
It’s pretty simple actually. It’s an infographic that compiles tips or advice from a number of different experts within a field.
Round-up infographics are a great way to connect with influencers and also drive tons of traffic back to your site and are commonly linked back to and republished.
Trimming the fat for your round-up infographic:
For anyone that has written an expert round-up blog post, you know that the answers you get can vary substantially in length. You will have some influencers who send you a response that is only a few words, and others who will send you a paragraph. Unfortunately, if some of the tactics you include in your infographic are only a sentence, and others are an entire passage, you will end up with a very messy and text-heavy design.
Your first step is finding the one most actionable tip from the long responses you get. Aim to include the best 5-10 words that each influencer wrote. With infographics, less is always more.
Laying out your round-up infographic
The next step is laying out your infographic so that it isn’t too cluttered and redundant. This can be pretty difficult since you’re literally listing a bunch of tips one after the other. Well, there are two really easy design tactics that you can put into effect.
The first is the quadrant layout, and the second is the progressive layout.
Quadrant layout:
The quadrant layout structures your infographic into 2 columns. Here is an example of a quadrant layout:
The title takes up the entire width of the infographic, and then your experts are positioned side-by-side with rotating colors.
The reason the colors need to rotate is to simplify the reading process. If the left side was all blue, and the right side was all gray, it would be very easy for information in one quadrant to bleed into the next. Put your audience first and make sure that the flow of information is seamless.
Progressive Layout:
A progressive layout structure your round-up one after the other. Typically instead of the influencer’s picture being on top of the text, it is beside the text, like in this example on how to connect with influencers:
Notice as well that the background color is a different shade for each tip. Once again, this makes it easier for the reader’s eye to flow from one point to the next.
Promoting your round-up post:
The best part about an infographic round-up is the vast potential for promotion and link-building. I like to think of it as hijacking other people’s influence. After you’ve designed your round-up infographic and included it in a blog post, include an embed code underneath it. This will allow people to easily include the infographic onto their own sites.
Here’s an example:
Then, email each influencer on your infographic and ask them if they could, 1) Share the post on social media for you, and 2) Publish the infographic on their own blog.
In the past, I’ve experienced that about 30%, when asked, will repurpose the infographic, and 80% will not hesitate to share on social media. So if you have a round-up post of 50 influencers, and 30% link back to you, that’s about 15 high-quality backlinks!
This I know solely from experience. Go ahead, Google the term “addictive content”, what shows up?
The point is, you can use round-up infographics to boost traffic by targeting long-tail keywords. They are also a great way to boost traffic from social media. Chances are if influencers with thousands and thousands of followers share your content, many of their followers will likely visit your page and share it as well.
Conclusion:
When putting together a round-up infographic, it’s important to remember to keep the length of each tip roughly the same number of words or characters. The last thing you want is for your infographic to look cluttered and messy. Try to find that one golden rule in the longer paragraphs that are sent your way.
When designing your infographic, be sure to find a layout that works for you. You can choose between a quadrant layout or a progressive layout. Use different rotating colors to simplify the reading flow.
Finally, promote your infographic by hijacking other people’s influence; get the experts who contributed to your round-up to share, and even backlink to your article. Chances are if you ask you will receive.
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Hi Nadya, another solid post! Great job!
I’d like to do a round up of influencers in my area (college basketball coaches) but I know they are slammed this time of year getting ready for the season. Asking them for advise or comments or thoughts on something right now would be inappropriate. What are your thoughts on taking their quotes from the media and using those for a round up?
Thanks!