Infographics have become very popular over the last few years. This is no doubt due to people sharing images and content through Facebook and Twitter. When I first viewed infographics, I generally found them quite interesting as they packed a lot of useful information into an easy to use image. Not anymore.
Marketing companies use infographics to generate organic links for their clients. The problem is that their popularity has reached insane levels with new infographics being published daily. A few months ago I published an article entitled “50+ Beautiful & Informative Infographics“. Due to this, I have been receiving a few emails every month from marketing companies advising me of their new “fantastic” infographic.
Each email always explains why their infographic is amazing and why my readers would find it interesting. The company then encourages me to share the infographic with my readers. Here’s the latest email I received:
Hi there!
I really enjoyed the infographic you posted a while back on your blog: https://www.kevinmuldoon.com/beautiful-informative-infographics/
I thought you might be interested in this infographic we just published. Definitely check it out as it’s a super-cool infographic about the wasted time in the workplace.
According to the data, unrelated browsing on the web like Facebook and Youtube is the number one time waster at work. If you want to find out more of how we exactly waste our time during business hours then definitely check this infographic here:
http://biz30.timedoctor.com/infograph-wasted-time/If you like it, feel free to publish it on your site. Let me know if you need any information.
Thanks a lot,
https://www.staff.com
The annoying thing about infographics is how aggressive companies are trying to promote them. In order for an infographic to be successful, they need to generate dozens or even hundreds of links back to it. So the marketing company sends out thousands of emails to blogs and websites in order to promote it. I see no big difference behind this tactic and the one used by spam companies marketing viagra etc.
As you can see above, the company did not even take the time to personalise their email template. So “Hi Kevin” was left as “Hi there!”. Perhaps more insulting is the assumption that blog owners will publish a whole post around their infographic. Granted, I have shared infographics before (in my collection post), and I may again if an image is relevant to a topic I am writing about; however I find it cheeky to assume that a blogger would write a whole post and link to their infographic for no reason.
The problem is that these marketing techniques can be effective and they will be continue to be effective as long as bloggers are receptive to publishing them.
Have you been spammed by a marketing company in this manner? How did you respond?
Kevin