Promoting your work can be a tough business and building links can be even more difficult. Maybe that is the reason why people are opting for the more enticing way: guestographics. Seems like a new word? It isn’t really. Now, with the internet almost flooding with new content every day, people are looking for ways to make their content stand out and add a little oomph to their sites.

With this movement towards guestographics, people have found the freedom to promote their stuff without having to beg someone to share it.

You still get to use infographics but instead of waiting for people to promote your content, you entice them to do it and pay them a small bribe in return. Not the monetary one. It’s more or less like free marketing of their product or site.

Now who can say no to that!

And it was on my search for guestographics and their success, when I first discovered Perrin Carrell’s case. I had read his amazing content a few times before and was almost a fan.

But it wasn’t until I discovered the success of his guestographics that I was really reeled in.

So here’s the full story of Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog.

Perrin Carrell of HerePup

Another such success story is of Perrin Carrell. He had just adopted a puppy and wanted to find the best dog food on the market. His search turned up nothing helpful and he realised that there was a gap in the market.

New pet owners are always on the lookout for advice on how to take care of their pets and Perrin seized this opportunity. To help new pet owners like himself, he started off his own blog, HerePup (formerly called ChewieSays). He faced tough competition from massive authority sites and was anxious to come up with a solution. And he found one!

“I saw a few smaller blogs ranking for low-competition keywords. I thought I could top what they were doing. I also noticed that authoritative pet blogs were getting insane traffic. Even though it was going to be really tough to beat these bigger sites, that showed me that the ceiling in this niche was really high.” –Perrin Carrel

[clickToTweet tweet=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock” quote=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock”]

Perrin could have gone the usual way by posting stuff on his blog and waiting for a miracle to happen; or taking up Alex Chris’s advice of following ways to Google boost his blog. That would have taken up too much time and Perrin knew that the market was moving towards visual content.

Keeping this in mind, Perrin decided to go in for the kill and promote his unique content.

And that’s where guestographics came in the story.

Even the social media marketing industry report agrees that visual marketing plays a bigger role than blogging. 37% of marketers prefer visual marketing as compared to the 36% who voted for blogging.

With over 65% of your audience being visual learners, using infographics is important. Just think about how linking images to a text can increase the retention span of a person’s mind. Even after three days, people are likely to retain 65% of the information.

It took time, but Perrin was able to achieve what he wanted. His blog was promoted by a number of popular pet blogs and was even featured in Huffington Post. And naturally, the traffic on his blog increased by 975% within 6 weeks.

Those are some amazing numbers!

To be honest, infographics were just one of the reasons Perrin Carrell achieved success. His results might be different for you. But just to get you started, here are the steps you need to follow to make guestographics work for you.

1. Create Creative and Engaging Infographics

Infographics are three times more likely to be shared and liked on social media compared to other types of content. And this should be encouragement enough to get you started on making some unique infographics.

While on the lookout for the bets topic to base his infographic on, Perrin came across a slideshow that had just the material he was looking for but its design was nothing impressive. WebMD pages don’t exactly satisfy the visitors, but they sure are effective in attracting backlinks from referring domains.

But getting backlinks with guestographics isn’t hard and Brian Dean has figured out the secret. Perrin however, wasn’t enticed with the content he had found and realised that he had a great opportunity:

“That’s not a good article. It’s just fun facts with cute blurbs. There’s no design or research to speak of. I knew I could do it better, and one of the ways I wanted to improve it was to make an infographic.”

And then the rest is history. Perrin knew that people would want the same data but in a more scalable way, like an infographic, and he cashed in on the opportunity.

That is exactly what you also have to do.

If you manage to get the content right (unique and creative), the next steps would come easily. The content will determine how well your infographic is received by the public. When you are sure that you’ve given your 100%, you can move on to the next step.   

[clickToTweet tweet=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock” quote=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock”]

2. Look for Blogs that Cater to Your Target Market

You need to look for blogs and sites that will be interested in your infographic. The key is to find the right blog, which can be done by doing a Google search.

For example, say your infographic is about HVAC repair, for which you’ll need to search for blogs that cater to the target audience. HVAC unit services will be quite happy to include your creative infographics with one of their blogs. All it needs is a thorough search.

Through infographics, you can reel in lots of traffic for your website, in fact even double your traffic by following the ways prescribed by Neil Patel. Or, a quick look at Alltop.com can help you choose the blogs that sound unique to you.

And then you can move on to the next step.

3. Reel in the Deal

Things weren’t exactly easy for Perrin the first time he started working on guestographics, the reason being that most people don’t pay heed to bloggers. And the same would have happened to Perrin too, had he followed the same, boring routine of approaching people.

Sending email newsletters helps drive more traffic to blogs but unless you have some fabulous newsletter ideas, you’ll just be another one of those pushy pitchers. And we all know what happens to boring and sloppy emails…

They get deleted!

Perrin hadrealisedd this a long time ago, so he sent out a short and quick email, nothing too long or boring. He wanted the receiver to be interested in the idea and then pitch the idea to him.

In fact, the first email he sent didn’t even have the infographic attached to it. It was just a short email, asking if they might be interested in viewing his infographic.

This is a good sample to check out.

Perrin followed the same tone and was able to get positive answers from 5 people out of 92. The conversion rate amounts to 5.4% which isn’t bad for starters. Once you get the green light, you can move on to the next step.

[clickToTweet tweet=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock” quote=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock”]

4. Make It Easy For People to Share Your Infographic

Now that you are finally about to achieve your goal, it’ll be a shame to delay the process. The best option you have here is to make the sharing process easier for bloggers. They are agreeing to include your infographic and the least you can do is facilitate them.

This is the part where the “bribe” comes in. Some people may hesitate to include an infographic in their blog just because they would have to write a unique and creative introduction for it. After all, it’s your piece of art and you should be the one to do it.

Your pitch email can be something like this:

Not only will you be able to shed good light on your infographic, but since you would be decreasing the blogger’s work, you’re going to be a hit with them. Nobody likes a pushy pitcher who adds work to their already tight schedule.

So do the right thing and send a 200-250 word introduction as soon as your infographic gets approved. When you save them the trouble, the bloggers would be happy to review any more infographics in the future. Once you are able to pitch it right, you can enjoy the benefits for long after.

5. Insert a Link

A little more promoting won’t hurt anyone and writing the introduction gives you the best opportunity to do so.

When people will see your infographic, they might want to go through more of your content. So, to increase traffic on your site, insert a link to your website in the introduction. This is not just a way to boost your referral traffic, but it’s also good for SEO.

Just remember that instead of embedding backlinks (a case that is common when sharing infographics), guestographics links serve a better purpose when they are used as a part of the introduction.

Here is a good example:

These steps will help you boost your content and of course, increase the referral traffic. All you need to focus on is coming up with unique and creative content. Remember, the audience is moving towards visual content and you should too. 75% marketers are already using visual assets in their social media marketing, as compared to blogs (68%). So don’t let this opportunity pass you by!

[clickToTweet tweet=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock” quote=”How Perrin Used Guestographics to Grow His Pet Blog via @lilachbullock”]

Now It’s Your Turn

Just remember that as long as your content is enticing and you know how to pitch it, you can make guestographics work for you.

When looking for bloggers, be specific. You wouldn’t want your content to land in the wrong hands (Yes, it does happen).

The “convincing the blogger” part is pretty difficult but if you come on strong and don’t go into long, boring details, you can actually catch a break. And don’t forget to insert the links!

Keep in mind that after all that hard work though; your success depends on sheer luck and the traffic on the internet!

About the Author

Bill Acholla is a digital entrepreneur helping small business owners build their brand through content marketing. If you resonated with this article, please subscribe to my business blog and you will get a free report about content publication strategy, which will change your life.