You know it – your infographic isn’t as good as the other guy’s. Your infographic was supposed to build interest, raise brand awareness, generate link traffic and promote shares. What you thought was a masterpiece turned out to be a dud.

So what even is an infographic? The good people over at Macmillan Dictionary tell us that an infographic is simply a visual representation of data or information. What everyone from company marketers to the U.S. Census Bureau now knows is that a great infographic generates interest, disseminates information, increases awareness and creates a buzz. How do you go from an awful infographic to a great one? Let’s find out.

It’s All About Me!

Think back to Marketing 101 – it’s NOT about you. It’s about your target audience. Think about who they are. What are their interests? What do they care about? Does your product or service solve a problem, relate to other interests or add value? The most effective infographics tell a story the same way a blog post does. There is a beginning, middle and end. Choose a story, outline a plot and stick with it.

Here are the most popular angles to consider when choosing an infographic topic:

• Humor: Observational humor is one of the most effective ways to engage viewers, generate interest and increase shares. Presenting social phenomena, current events or combining observations in a humorous way pulls viewers in. It’s also a chance to show off your human side.
• How-to: How-to guides are particularly effective in an infographic format. Value is king and how-to guides are full of value.
• Novel observations: Use your infographic to look at something in a new way. New research, novel approaches and out-of-the-box thinking generates buzz.
• Current events: Current events include hot company announcements, such as the release of your latest product, or news events that appeal to your target audience.
  ​

Bad Design

Avoid the bad design trap. Take your time with the design, graphics and color scheme. Try different layouts and approaches before deciding. Use a two- or three-color palette and choose graphics that fit your subject.

Don’t use every font in the book. Instead, choose two easily readable fonts. Use font size to reflect importance, but don’t make text too small. People view your infographic on different size screens, whether it’s on mobile devices, tablets or computers. Make sure text is readable across the board.

Too Many Words

Over 65 percent of the population learns best through visualization, which is why infographics are so valuable. As such, words are often the culprits when good infographics go bad. First, it’s the title. You have about eight seconds to interest a viewer. If your title is too long and wordy, viewers say goodbye. Make your title catchy, short, interesting and to the point.

Words play an important role in infographic design, but too many words negate the value that visuals bring. Use as few words as possible to provide context. Generate interest with attention-grabbing headlines and subheadings.

Too Much Information

Too much information can be a real turn-off for viewers. Limit yourself to covering six main points in a single infographic, if possible. If you must cover more than six, divide the graphic into parts with the most important points at the top.

Speaking of information, make sure yours is up-to-date and accurate. Place clickable reference sources at the bottom of the graphic to backup your data and prove you’re an expert.

Did You Brand It?

Your purpose is to drive traffic and generate interest, but you can’t do that if you don’t brand your work. The trick is to let everyone know the infographic belongs to you without making that the focal point. Do this by adding your company information at the bottom. Make it clickable.

Keeping It Secret

The best infographic won’t bring in traffic, generate interest or enhance your SEO efforts if no one sees it. Write about it on your blog and share on your own social media sites. Make your infographic easy for others to share by adding Facebook and Twitter buttons. Utilize meta title and descriptions on the page that hosts your graphic and add supporting text to help Google find it. You have a great infographic, now get it out there.

There it sits, your sleeping giant. What used to be your go-to marketing solution now sleeps in the corner, snoring away. Email marketing doesn’t get the hype it used to. In fact, it barely gets a mention most of the time. That’s a shame because email is still a powerful marketing tool. If you’ve put email strategies on the back burner in favor of social media, it’s time to take another look. You’re missing out on a promotional outlet that gives a $40 per dollar spent ROI. That’s something you can’t ignore.

It’s Not Your Dad’s Email

OK, maybe the giant needs a little updating. In the old days, businesses sent out email newsletters to maintain customer relationships and develop new ones. Social media and mobile usage have made that form of email communication obsolete. According to Statistic Brain, an adult’s attention span in the year 2000 was 12 seconds. In 2015, it’s 8.25. In other words, the goldfish in your aquarium has a longer attention span than you do. Your emails have to do more in less time. Email marketing is effective but only if you adapt.

Selling online was supposed to be easy, right? You set your shopping cart up, added pictures of your products and wrote descriptions and … waited. And, waited. What’s going on? Why aren’t people buying? If you aren’t getting the sales out of your e-commerce site you thought you would, it could be that you neglected a few fundamentals of online selling. The good news is that you can fix it. Here’s how.
​
But, What Is It?

You’ve seen them. Product descriptions that say things like “Easy to use, does everything except tuck the kids in bed at night!” leave buyers wondering what the product is and skeptical about its virtues. Potential buyers don’t trust descriptions that sound like hype.

To be effective, your product descriptions have to highlight product details and benefits to the buyer. Descriptions should also use words that convey feeling and quality. For example, instead of saying “Black leather shoes,” try “Elegant black leather shoes with rubber soles, soft and luxurious lining in a classic style.” Who wouldn’t want stylish and comfortable shoes?

Don’t be afraid to be creative when you write your product descriptions. By creative we don’t mean hype, exaggerations or hard-sell, but adding a little personality to the product description makes it unique. In fact, Google does not like duplicate content, so making your description unique is imperative. One way to do that is to make the descriptions more personal. If you have customer testimonials – if you don’t, you should – add a short phrase in your description to show how the product improved someone’s life. You could say, “Joanne says that her organizer travel case saved the day on a recent business trip to Tokyo.” Provide a link to the customer testimonial to give readers a chance to read it in its entirety. Doing so not only provides proof of benefits, but linking internally is a plus when it comes to search engine rankings.

Of course, descriptions should always include the details, such as colors and dimensions. Clear, high-quality pictures are also important. Use thumbnail images on product pages and give users the option of seeing larger photos with a click.

Writing descriptions, isn’t difficult, but remember to answer these questions in each product description you write:

• Why would a person buy it?
• What does this product do?
• What problems will it solve?
• What does it look like, how big is it and how much does it weigh?

Tip: Don’t forget to use descriptive keywords. If your description says, “Never lose your keys again with this handy device” and you forget to say it’s a “key chain,” you’ve made a big mistake. Use your keyword in everything from product page urls to meta and alt tags.

More Writing? Really?

Great product descriptions are just one part of getting more sales from your e-commerce site. And, yes that means there’s more writing in your future. High quality content is essential if you want to improve your search engine rankings. How can you add content? Here are some great ways to do it and at least one is pretty painless.

Add customer reviews to your product pages. User written content in the form of reviews and testimonials is one of the quickest and easiest ways to add information and value to your product pages and e-commerce site.

Add a blog. A user-friendly, blog that includes keywords, but is not keyword-stuffed, is a great way to add content and develop a personal relationship with customers.

Add how-to and informative articles. Nothing establishes your expertise and improves search engine rankings more than offering customers information about how to use or care for the products they purchase from you. If you sell jewelry, add an informative article about how to safely clean and store different pieces. Be creative, tell a story and offer readers something they don’t know.

Low-quality writing and keyword stuffing can hurt your Google rankings, so it doesn’t pay to take a chance if you’re not a pro. Many companies outsource blog and content writing because of the time, quality and SEO knowledge required.

Tip: Don’t add content all at once. Spread it out over time. Post on your blog weekly and add new informative articles periodically. Update reviews every few weeks. Stagnation hurts your standing with Google as well as your standing with customers.

The Internet is a game-changer. Small businesses compete with large corporations on a level playing field (okay, well, sort of). Big businesses still have advantages, of course. Advertising budgets are larger and corporations spend thousands on market research. You can’t do that as a small-business owner. That’s OK. If you brand your business the right way, you can still give the big boys a run for their money. Here’s how.

I Already Have a Logo, You Say?

The Business Dictionary defines branding as “The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumer’s mind.” The purpose of a brand is to establish a presence in the marketplace and make a business stand out from the rest of the pack. Although a logo is part of it, branding takes on the wider role of personifying a business. Attracting and retaining customers – that’s the goal. Your product or service may or may not be exactly the same as your competitor’s but your mission and business philosophy are assuredly different. If people find your company image compelling, they’ll not only find you, they’ll come back.

Know Your Business, Know Your Customer

You started your small business for a reason. Your products or services solve a problem for someone. You know your business better than anyone. Ask yourself, “If my business became human, what kind of person would it be? The caring friend, resourceful helper or knowledgeable expert?” Figure out what type of human message you want to send.

Most important, however, is get to know your target audience inside and out. What are their goals, concerns and habits? Don’t know? Ask them. Use customer service surveys, emails, Facebook posts and verbal communications as well as market research and internal statistics to hit on what makes them tick. Your customers are people. Appeal to their feelings and minds and you’re halfway there.

A Rose by Any Other Name May Smell Like a … Skunk?

What’s in a name? In the case of your business brand, it’s everything. A brilliant branding concept will fall flat if your brand name doesn’t fit your business and mission. Worse, if you have to rebrand down the road, you can expect to see a 5 percent to 20 percent sales drop. Try to get it right the first time. And, a word to the wise: if you expect to do business globally, make sure your brand name translates well. For example, in China, Burger King’s signature smoothie becomes the PooPoo® Smoothie when translated into English. Tasty!

Logo Matters

Branding is more than a logo, but your logo and color choices are important parts of the overall concept. Your logo is the visual representation of your business. Make sure it creates a positive impression that fits your business philosophy. The benefits of looking like a pro far outweigh the cost of hiring a graphic designer, so go ahead and spend a little now. Logo design is not for the novice. Once procured, incorporate the logo into everything from employee uniforms to the company website.

Don’t Cry

Anyone who’s been in business very long knows that nothing comes easily. In fact, the best-laid plans don’t always work. If you’ve experienced a business failure or two, you also know that failure can be the catalyst for success in the long haul. How? Take the example of a printer and toner cartridge sales firm. Designers created a cute and witty cartoon character named Dave to be the face of the company. Unfortunately, customers were less than thrilled with Dave. Cartridge Save managing director Ian Cowley says Dave’s failure was a critical turning point in the company’s branding strategies. Refocusing its efforts on company core values of best prices, fast delivery and excellent customer service, Cowley and Cartridge Save used the experience to learn what worked and what didn’t when it came to their customers. If change becomes necessary, learn from it and move on.

Out With the Old
​
Once you hit on a successful formula, it’s tempting to keep following it after it’s lost its oomph. Don’t let your image become outdated or passé. Innovate and try new things. Customers expect fresh ideas.
Branding is not an instant process. Take your time and move forward. As long as your branding strategies stay true to your business niche and serve your target audience, you can successfully compete with the big boys.
​

Discovering that a competitor has beat you to your chosen social media handle is not only frustrating, it could spell bad news for your business, particularly if you’ve built up some early marketing collateral around the name. Just ask the Rams franchise, which forgot to protect its old twitter handle and also lost out to this one.

Don’t worry. All is not lost. With a few tweaks and a little elbow grease, you can come up with an alternate handle that captures the essence of your brand and does your business proud — without confusing customers who know your business by a given name or, worse, actually changing your company’s legal name.

Quick Fixes to Reclaim a “Taken” Handle or URL

It’s 2016. By now, most generic business Twitter handles have been locked up. If you’re late to the social media party and your company has a straightforward name, you shouldn’t expect to get an exact-match handle: @stevestreats for Steve’s Treats, @BrooklynBooks for Brooklyn Books. Instead, opt for an imperfect, memorable alternative:

Numerals at the beginning or end: @1stevestreats, @BrooklynBooks45. Consider using significant numeral(s), like your business’s street number of founding year.

“Inc” at the end: @stevestreatsinc.

Location information, as long as it’s not too unwieldy: @stevestreatsNY, @BrooklynAtlanticBooks (because our fictional Brooklyn bookstore lives on Atlantic Avenue, of course). 

Names or initials, if relevant and your business is small enough: @BrooklynBooksMarco, @StevesTreatsSD (for Steve Davis, our fictional treat impresario).

Keywords or descriptors in place of your business name: @healthytreats or @healthytreats95 instead of @stevestreats; @rarebooksforless instead of @BrooklynBooks. This is a great way to reinforce your key value statement or top differentiator.

Differentiating words, such as “the” and “real,” at the beginning or end: @thestevestreats, @RealBrooklynBooks.

Underscores between whole words: @steves_treats and @Brooklyn_Books.

The same principles apply to Facebook and LinkedIn page names and URLs. Remember, all three social media sites have space for you to describe what your business does in a few sentences (140 characters in Twitter’s case, but still). If you feel like your fallback handle or page name doesn’t quite capture your company’s essence, this space is your chance to (succinctly) make it right with a kick-butt value proposition or elevator pitch.

How to Face Down Social Media Copycats

Finding that someone beat you to the social media punch fair and square stinks, but you can deal with it. 

What if the problem’s more sinister, though? What if you’re the victim of — dun dun dun — social media copycatting?

It happens. For various reasons, including personal feuds and intense business competition, people impersonate one another on social media far more often than you’d realize — unless you prefer to associate with sketchy people, in which case you probably know all this stuff anyway.

If you have reason to believe that someone is impersonating your business on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you have a few options:

Contact the copycat directly: If you suspect the copycat isn’t entirely malicious, contact him/her directly and see if you can work out a deal. Remember that it’s not kosher to extort legitimate business owners, so if the copycat asks you for money, report them to the social media network’s admins.

File a complaint with the network: If a deal isn’t possible or the copycatting seems wholly malicious, file a formal complaint with the network. You may have to jump through some hoops, but the situation is more likely than not to work out in your favor if no one else has a legitimate claim to the business name.

Invoke copyright authority: If you own your business’s copyright, invoke it. A formal cease-and-desist letter on scary-looking legal letterhead is often enough to produce the desired outcome.

Have you tried any of the above—or something else—that worked for you? Share your tip in the comments below.