Category: Infographics

StumbleUpon: Where Randomness meets Serendipity

Infographics, Mining the Gold, Social Media, Web/Tech

When I first started blogging, every now and then I’d receive an avalanche of traffic. In fact, the first time it happened it crashed my server (I had been running the Servantofchaos.com blog on a server in my garage, and it just could not cope) – and I ended up switching to Typepad.

The culprit was StumbleUpon.

These days, social networks like Twitter or Facebook garner most of the attention, but this new infographic from column 5 media shows just how powerful StumbleUpon can be. In fact, it drives over 50% of social media traffic in the US. And the coolest thing is that while pages shared via Twitter have a half life of about 3 hours, stumbled pages are over 130 times more effective.

StumbleUpon also has a cool way of managing and scheduling your shared links. Called su.pr, it helps you optimise your shared links by time of day – I wrote about it here. And while many people tend to dislike the StumbleUpon toolbar, with a small investment of your time, the system can deliver you some great content and plenty of new on-topic information. It takes the randomness of the web out and replaces it with serendipity. What more could you ask for?

Stumbleupon-lifecycle-web-page-c5-1

The Melbourne Cup, Gambling and the Cognitive Surplus

Good Works, Infographics, Innovation

That wild, wonderful thing that is Wikipedia has changed our lives in all sorts of subtle ways. Gone are the vast bookshelves of leather bound tomes that held me in thrall as a child – and in their stead is a white page, an empty search field and a button.

Amazingly, as Clay Shirky reminds us, Wikipedia was built by a global collective donating 100 million hours of time to its grand vision. But this cognitive surplus is just a drop in the ocean of time that is spent by Americans watching television each year – estimated to be many times that number.

Now, while this is fascinating as a data fact, what I am more interested in is the substitution that is taking place. You see, for 100 million people to donate one hour of their time – a deliberate choice is being made. The choice is to create rather than to consume. And the thing is – as humans, we seek the pleasure of consumption over the cold choice of decision. We have to be driven to act. Compelled. Consumption, after all, is the easy way.

Now think about the current debate in Australia around the regulation of gambling. Clubs across Australia are claiming that these regulations will impact their ability to employ people and to support the community through their charitable giving and community support programs. But as Ben Eltham points out, most clubs direct a miserly proportion of their revenues into such programs:

Or examine the Rooty Hill RSL, also in Sydney’s western suburbs … Poker machines raked in $43.2 million of the club’s total operating revenue of $64.7 million … [with only] $601,000 [spent] on donations.

What would happen if INDIVIDUALS actually chose where to invest their “community support” programs? I’d actually be keen to see some small percentage being funnelled into a microloan style service or even an insurance fund to help problem gamblers (but that is a whole other blog post).

Today, on Melbourne Cup day, the folks over at DebtConsolidation.com.au have put together this infographic that images what could be done with all those wagers being made at the track and at betting agencies across the country. Makes you think – what good could we do if we made better decisions? What indeed.

The-Melboune-Cup-The-Race-That-Could-Save-A-Nation

How Well Do You Listen and Engage With Your Customers?

Customer Experience, Digital Strategy, Infographics, Social Media, Strategy

Increasingly, businesses are turning to social media as part of their marketing mix. There is a smattering of Facebook, a Twitter account – and maybe even a YouTube channel. Some will have a social media monitoring solution in place, others a bunch of Google Alerts bombarding their inbox with messages and updates. But there is often a gulf between the listening and doing – between the monitoring and engaging.

And perhaps, more alarmingly, there are precious few businesses who have done the work to put social media into a framework or business context. That’s why I advocate continuous digital strategy. It’s why I think a social business maturity model is important – so that you can actively work to transform your business relationships, systems and processes in such a way as they deliver sustaining value over time.

Social Business Maturity Model

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Unfortunately, many of us only take on transformative challenges when we are forced to – often because our competitors beat us to the punch.

Wouldn’t it be nice to lead and set the agenda instead?

The Dell Social Listening questionnaire gives you valuable information from seven relatively simple questions. Based on Forrester industry data, it allows you to model your own business (or your competitors’ business) and have it visualised as an infographic. Here is one I did for a medium sized tech company. Makes for interesting reading … but it can also be a useful way of laying out your strategic challenges – especially if you are also working in a medium sized tech company.

dellsociallistening

How do you compare? Where are the gaps? And what are you going to do to close them?

You see, it is important to listen to and engage with your customers. But that’s not the end result. It’s the start. Get to it!

Want SEO? Create Useful Content First

earned media, Infographics, Social Media

There was a time when we used to create websites to solve a problem. Now, often, our websites are the problems that need to be solved. They no longer tell the story we want to tell. They don’t engage the people that they should. They aren’t relevant to the communities we claim to serve.

To solve this new problem, we often turn to search engine optimisation (SEO). What we are looking for is a quick fix. The problem, of course, is that you can’t quick fix bad content.

My recommendation is always to focus on useful content. Make sure that what you are creating helps the people who need it. Make sure that it reaches them in a format that is easy for them to consume. And design it so that it can be shared with others who have the same challenges.

Sounds simple, right?

But, don’t take my word for it. Check out what the folks at Brafton have to say in this funky content marketing for SEO infographic. Then stop looking for silver bullets and get to work on some quality content. Your customers will love you for it.

WhyContentForSEO_FINAL_2-600x1641

We Are What We Share

Infographics, Social Media

When AddThis launched it was a very welcome addition to the blogging tool set. No longer did we need to clumsily add icons or images and links to the bottom of each web page. We simply added a few lines of code to our blog templates and a row of sharing buttons would appear. Like magic.

But the best thing of all was the analytics. AddThis were ahead of the game in providing decent analytics your posts, click throughs and so on. In the process, they have accumulated a wealth of information about WHAT we share and WHY. This infographic celebrates AddThis’ five year anniversary.

sharing-trends

How to Get Started with Infographics

Infographics, Storytelling

Infographics can be fascinating. Done well, they can tell a compelling story, bringing data to life in completely new ways. But they can also be bland. Boring. Or worse – irrelevant.

Now, I have created a few infographics:

And while these have had between 1000 and 5000 views, they clearly could be better. And now, with this guide from Eloqua, maybe they will be. My first focus – “think ‘data narrative’”.

But what about you? Have you created an infographic (or 10)? What have you learned? What works? And which one is your favourite?

Infographics in 15 Minutes

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The Growth of Social Media [infographic]

Infographics, Social Media

When I first started blogging I could count my readers on one hand. Actually, on one finger. But as the months went by and I began commenting on others’ blogs and linking and discussing ideas, my traffic grew.

And sure enough, more people started writing blogs – and we’d link to each others’ articles and the cycle would repeat.

When Facebook and Twitter started to take off, so too did the amount of attention that these sites garnered. Corporate blogs started to provide more interesting and useful content – and next thing you know, this sideline hobby known as “social media” or more simply, “blogging”, began to morph into something completely different.

But how has it affected your life? Or the lives of your friends, colleagues and yes, even your enemies? This infographic from the folks at SearchEngineJournal show what the data reveals.

infographic-growthofsocialmedia

Find the Gaps in Your Work Profile

Infographics, Personal Branding, Visualisation

I am always on the lookout for cool alternatives to the standard resume. Most, unfortunately, require a great deal of effort and creativity. And while the best of these really do showcase the skills of particular people (especially designers), what about non-designers? What about the design-challenged?

Well, vizualize.me may well be the answer.

After signing up for the beta test and receiving your invitation code, you can connect with LinkedIn and turn your resume into a funky infographic.

Interestingly for me, I realised quickly that my LinkedIn profile was not telling the whole story. There was an over balancing in some skills and an under-representation of others. At some stage I will need to go into LinkedIn to remedy this (vizualize.me doesn’t update your LinkedIn profile – it just uses it as a source) – but it is amazing to get a new perspective on your experience and skill base. Check it out. Here’s mine – what do you think? How would you feel if someone sent this through to you as part of a job application?

 vizualize.me

A Guide to Typography

Infographics

When I first worked in publishing, typography fascinated me. I loved the thinking behind the crafting of typefaces. I loved the thought that someone had spent hours and hours agonising over the shape of each letter – crafting the balance between the x-height and the decenders/ascenders.

But more importantly, I realised that every typeface told a story. And that story had a subtle impact on every message, every word – and every mark on the page. It’s why good designers study and understand typography. And why all communicators should have a base level of knowledge. Now thanks to this infographic you can.

infographic-typography