The No Brainer, Practically Guaranteed Way To Generate Buzz and Links To Your Site
Data visualization is the graphical representation of information. Interesting graphs, timelines, chart, and maps can take large amounts of data and help your reader visualize and recognize patterns in that data. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and infographics can be worth a billion data points.
You’ve all seen them. Those awesome images that show you at a glance how many people are doing some activity all across the world. Or the ones that show show an interactive timeline, and as you hover your mouse over a year, detailed information is presented for that period of time. Or those colorful pie charts that shows whether or not your opinion is like that of most other people, or shows that you are in the smallest minority of people surveyed.
All of these wonderful graphics have more than just their awesome coolness in common. They all create buzz, and get talked about, shared, and linked to.
If you create a cool infographic for your site, you can almost sit back and watch as it gets shared on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and social networks, and then smile as you see the links to it rise. I hear you thinking to yourself, “Well sure, those fancy graphics would definitely attract links to my site, but I’m not an Infographics Geek. I don’t have a clue how to actually make one of those things! And I definitely don’t have the money to hire one of those geeks to make one for me.”
Well, of course, I wouldn’t be suggesting you do something unless it’s either free, or easy, or preferably both. So, below are 5 tools to turn you into an Infographic, Link-Attracting, Geekazoid. (Please note that the resulting infographics may only be viewable on the sites that created them. In order to make sure your site gets the buzz and link glory, take a screenshot of the infographic, make a thumbnail out of it which is not too small, and build your announcement or post around that – on your site. Encourage others to link to this announcement. Of course, the thumbnail, when clicked, can open a popup window which shows the infographic in all its glory).
ICTA – Create an interactive graph that analyzes blog posts, forums, chats or social network text surrounding your topic of choice. Maybe you have a hot product that’s being talked about online? Want to share that info in a creative, interactive way, and earn links back as an added bonus? The Internet Community Text Analyzer can do that for you. I recommend watching one of the demos to see how this works.
GeoCommons Maker! – Map it! Everyone loves a map mashup, and Maker! gives you the resources to do this. There’s not much to say about this. Plot data on a map in various ways. Share with the world. Enjoy the social love you receive from it. 
A good place to start is the User Manual. It’s really easy to do, so get your map mashup on!
ManyEyes gives a wide array of options for visualizing data, from graphs to maps to word clouds. You can use their data sets or upload your own, then just choose which type of visual graphic you want to use, edit and publish.
Exhibit – I can’t describe this widget any better than they describe the tool themselves. lets you easily create web pages with advanced text search and filtering functionalities, with interactive maps, timelines, and other visualizations. This tool is the best of the bunch, but it comes with a price – not of the monetary kind. Exhibit is free and open source. By “price”, I mean you have to do a little HTML coding, but most of it is copy/paste. So the labor involved is slightly more intense. It’s not hard (here’s the getting started guide), but it’s just something to be aware of. Still, it’s well worth it for what you end up with – awesome infographics!
There are probably lots of other infographic mashup tools available that will allow you to create buzz-worthy, link-attracting content for your site. Don’t assume you have to be an infographic geek to make it. Just use the tools that other geeks have already provided for your use!
Be watching for more buzz and link building tips coming here in the near future. And, of course, I’m always available to be hired as your eBuzz Coach.
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An ebusiness coach, web developer, Internet Marketer, SEO, and all around web geek who makes her living from home doing all of the above.
Thanks Donna, I got one excellent idea out of your post for a widget I am working on right now.
Dave Dugdale
You have just ruined my afternoon! I will nothing done now as I play around with these cool tools. Thanks for the post.
Dave, I’m going to have to start calling you widgetman.
Brandon, glad I could help ruin your afternoon.
Hey Donna!
I think these tools are cool & attractive. What I like the best about your post is that your simplification would make a lot of readers relaxed, comfortable & willing to get involved.
Today’s inspiration quote is terrific. It is amazing.