Quick, Appealing, Captivating: Learn How to Create an Effective Infographic

Here’s a simple truth: people process visual messages more quickly than text.

That should be all you need to know to spur you to make visual media a priority in your content marketing efforts. With the staggering amount of information available to your audiences, you need to help them absorb your message in every possible way.

However, for those who are less artistically inclined, the thought of putting together a visual presentation may be daunting.

But how about an infographic? A good infographic conveys information in a concise and aesthetically pleasing style, which helps increase retention. Plus, they can easily be built using various online tools.

This one, for example, was built with the help of Piktochart. Please absorb and enjoy these 5 tips for creating an effective infographic.

Identifying Your Content Marketing Mission

It’s not about what you’re saying. It’s why.

For your content marketing program to be effective, you need to start with a clear, simple mission.

That’s just one of many valuable insights shared by Joe Pulizzi (Twitter: @juntajoe), founder of the Content Marketing Institute, in a recent presentation hosted by AAF Madison.

Joe's presentation included several examples of content marketing mission statements.

Joe advises answering these three questions to help guide all your content:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. What kind of content are you delivering?
3. What outcome are you trying to produce for the audience?

Start with that foundation, and build compelling stories from there.

Enjoy many more content marketing tips from Joe’s presentation, posted below.

10 Steps to Content Marketing Success - AAF Madison Wisconsin from Joe Pulizzi

Content Marketing Makes Your Integrated Strategy More Important

Fearless prediction: In 2013, you’ll continue to hear a lot about content marketing.

And rightly so. In an age when audiences are increasingly likely to ignore your hard sell, content marketing is a way to hold their attention by informing and engaging them. (It’s an approach that also supports the longer sales cycle of many B2B companies.)

But like any other effective marketing tactic, creating content your customers and prospects care about takes a fair amount of effort. You want to make sure you make the most of it. That’s why an integrated strategy is more important than ever.

Here are three steps to get you started toward consistent, efficient, effective content marketing in 2013:

1. Involve your sales team. Ensure your content aligns with your sales initiatives and appeals to your customers’ evolving needs.
2. Spread the word across channels. Use and reuse – taking different angles with different audiences – in blogs, social media and more.
3. Create relevant landing pages. When you share free content, you can bring audiences back to properties you own to capture leads and continue the engagement.

 If you’re interested, explore these other integrated marketing ideas.

3 Keys to Creating a Great Online Newsroom

As promised, here is a follow-up to last month’s post on 3 Reasons Why Your Website Needs a Newsroom. Building on the basics of what a newsroom is, what it isn’t and what it can accomplish, let’s look at three best practices of successful online newsrooms and a client example.



1. Keep it simple: Facilitate easy browsing and discovery.

Make sure the newsroom is easy to find and can be accessed from any page on your website, and vice versa. Done correctly, a newsroom will be one of the most visited pages on your site. Get more out of that traffic and enhance the user experience by linking visitors to other sections of the site. The user experience is more than just site navigation – it also involves strategically planning content. Think like your audience: What are they most interested in? Where will they look first, second?

2. Add more substance: Content equals more than just words.

Use digital media such as videos, images and graphics. Use original photography or develop simple graphics to add visual stimulation and excitement. But, be conscientious about balancing your message and using complicated images or technologies. Many users will view your site on mobile devices and tablets, so don’t be too flashy (literally, don’t use too much Flash video) and make sure all essential elements are easily viewable on different devices.

3. Let them see the real you: Showcase your personality with social feeds and other information.

If you maintain social media channels, bring your newsroom into the mix, housing feeds from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other networks. These not only provide strong calls-to-action to engage with your company, but they often show more of your company’s personality. Link to related research, educational materials and industry articles, as well as tradeshows you’re attending, events you’re speaking at, awards you’re receiving, etc. If someone wants to start a conversation, let them know what you’re up to.

In general, keep in mind that newsroom visitors are your potential or current customers, employees or media contacts. Make sure they know something more about your company after stopping by.

3 Reasons Why Your Website Needs a Newsroom

Years ago, maybe your company could have managed without an online newsroom – a home base for releases, media coverage, byline articles, event information, team biographies, fact sheets, media contacts, images, logos, etc.

But in the information age, it pays to make as much information as possible available and easy to find.

Here are the top 3 reasons an online newsroom is a smart investment and a crucial component of a successful marketing communications strategy.

Reason #1: Real-time reporting and shrinking staff.

At a time when overburdened media members are facing tighter deadlines than ever, if you don’t make information easily and quickly accessible, guess where reporters, editors or even potential customers are going to go for the information they seek?

A well-developed and populated newsroom turns browsing media into interested publishers who are more likely to tell your story than that of your competitors.

Reason #2: Digital distribution and re-purposing of content.

Remember that release that you wrote, that earned you an interview, which you videotaped and then edited, that you put on your YouTube channel and then announced on multiple social networks?

Well, where is all of that content now? What return is it earning you if no one can find it? All of that owned content should live right there on your newsroom.

• Integrated into social media feeds
• Linked to your blog
• Archived in your releases

Reason #3: Search engines love them.

Search engine spiders are out there crawling for fresh, valuable content. And that’s just what an online newsroom gives them. Quality content built around industry keywords is your ticket to a major traffic spike.

A newsroom also can increase your online real estate – meaning you have more unique pages for search engines to index, increasing the likelihood you’ll be found in search queries.

In a future post, we’ll look at the key components of a successful online newsroom. In the meantime, here’s a pretty good example to shoot for: InsideSH News..