A picture may be worth a thousand words. An infographic, a thousand Web links. But the eye-catching, cryptographic portrait displayed at left (click image to enlarge) adds up to 70 different Website brands. Find them and you have a shot at a grand prize drawing if you can guess at least 50 of the brands represented by the portrait’s rebus-like images. The deadline is in three weeks.
Infographics are all the rage these days as companies take to illustrating the various stats, strata and spatial schema of our info-laden world. The key is to convey useful information, and, in the best case, how a company’s products and services can help, in easy-to-espy visual terms.
The marketing benefits of IGs are impressive, particular from an SEO standpoint. By embedding the code to host an irresistible infographic “objet d’ art” on your Web site, you can share it with your fan base and let them share it with their friends, while it links loyally back to your Web venue creating an instant surge of “link love.”
Amy Balliett, co-founder of “Killer Infographics“ in Seattle, started the company doing around 10 Infographics or “IGs” per month. Now she and business partner Nick Grant are up to 100! Could this be the new info-brewed business model of the future? Will KI soon be gobbled up? Amy and Nick might be tempted to sell as they also engage in other Internet marketing ventures like ZippyCart, an e-commerce shopping cart comparison site, and other lead generation projects.
To download the full-size version of the “Pixel Portait Puzzle” image, visit the 70-Website-Challenge landing page. See site for official contest rules and details [24×7]
Un-Linked: SEOmoz Will Have to Wait Another Day to Monetize Millions!
Monetizing the benefits of a search engine link building campaign can seem elusive. So how do you monetize the Net worth of an SEO software tool company who specializes in valuing those links for SEO agencies and consultants? And what happens when the link breaks? That was the narrative, first made public in a blog post by SEOmoz co-founder Rand Fishkin, of the VC link that did not convert.
Talk about your “Paid Links.” The pending deal of $24 million that went south valued SEOmoz at $89 million in “post-deal” dollar value and provided a $1.25 million payout to Fishkin, the chief executive, and a $4.75 million payout to his mother, Gillian Muessig, who started the original marketing company in 1981 as a Madison avenue ad and media industry veteran.
Rand has long held to the concept of “Radical Transparency” about his company and the latest round of revelations is no different. Not only does his blog describe the Sturm und Drang of the current VC machinations, Fishkin also publicly shared the pitch deck which SEOmoz used to convince its earlier backers, Bellevue’s Ignition Partners, to participate in the new round.
In the presentation, Rand portrays SEOmoz as Seattle’s next $1 billion company. And, to his credit, personality, and sheer force of will, Fishkin has succeeded in creating the mozRank as a recognized industry metric for Web link trustworthiness and built a link indexing and diagnostic toolset that has attracted several thousand subscribers. But for an industry which has a love-hate relationship with the search engines it serves, and a market that does not yet understand how to think about monetization in SEO and social media, the monied plans of SEOmoz may just have to wait for a stronger and more trustworthy link to emerge. [24×7]
