I’m still playing around with free infographics tools and apps in preparation for my webinar tomorrow—Thursday, May 24—on How to Easily Create Free and Inexpensive Infographics.

You’d be amazed at the astonishing number of web-based tools, and reviewers, who refer to so many of these DIY graphics sites as “drop dead simple.” Not for my non-techie mind.

I abandoned Infogr.am, a site that a few reviewers were gushing over, when I tried repeatedly to load their template for a pie chart, but it kept loading something completely different.

OK, then. I chose another template and created a chart comparing the weight loss of three fictional women over a five-month period. When I got to the end of the project, about 45 minutes later, I lost all my work. Enough of that!

After doing a Google search for free infographics, I ended up at Piktochart.com and fell in love with this site! Everything is drag and drop. It’s easy to understand. The “undo” button, my best friend, is easy to locate. The only quibble I had was that I was unable to upload my logo or graphics. (Did I miss this somewhere?)

The infographic below took about two hours because I was super-picky about the fonts and colors. I chose one of their free templates rather than paying a monthly fee which would have given me a bigger selection of some gorgeous templates. I didn’t have time to research statistics to use when creating it, so I used information about my own business.

Also check out the other infographic I created earlier this week about 3 Questions Bloggers & Journalists Love using Easel.ly. If you want more time-saving tips about what to do, and not do, when you use these sites, register for Thursday’s infographics webinar here. I’m going to save you hours of time using these sites because I’ll tell you about all the mistakes I made. 
 

Now I know why PR firms and graphics artists charge a fortune for those big, detailed infographics you see everywhere, like these on Pinterest.

They’re very difficult to plan, draw and execute.

The one below took me about an hour and a half to create on Easel.ly, a free tool that’s still in beta. It’s a bit buggy but has responsive email support which really impresses me.

I’ll be explaining how I did it and I’ll show you the guts of the site when I host the webinar How to Easily Create Free and Inexpensive Infographics at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, May 24. If the time is inconvenient, register anyway because I’ll record it and send the video and audio replay links and the PowerPoint slides to everyone who signs up.

I’ll be covering things like bar charts, pie charts, doodles, Wordles, maps and flow charts. I’ll show you which free tools to use to illustrate quotes and turn them into colorful images to pin on Pinterest.

And I’ll give you lots of ideas on how you can use infographics to market whatever you’re selling, and things you should do BEFORE you start experimenting with these tools.

Here’s my first effort at doing something this detailed. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. But I wouldn’t hesitate to offer this to, say, a blogger, along with a guest post on the same topic. What do you think? Comments?

Don’t you  hate it when you visit a blog, read a post, love the topic, and even before you get to the end, you know what comment you’re going to add?

Then you reach the bottom of the post and you see this:
   

   
That’s what happened to me just now when I read the article 10 Ways to Amplify a B2B PR Campaign by Wendy Marx at Fast Company’s blog. I love her list! She invited comments. And I had four more ideas I wanted to add.

Sorry, but I’m not hanging around to log in because I can’t remember if I have a Fast Company account. I’d have to dig around for my login name and password. If I don’t have one, I’d have to register. And that’s way too much trouble.

So instead, I’m criticizing the magazine and its dumb policy here.

Media outlets, by the way, seem to be the worst offenders. Many newspapers, which are dying, force the few visitors they have left to create an account before commenting at their blogs or websites. I’m a former newspaper editor. Before I left the business 17 years ago, I was appalled by the “screw you” attitude and awful customer service that permeates the industry.

My Ideas for Publicizing Your Publicity

Here’s what I would have written at the Fast Company blog. These ideas work for any PR campaign, not just B2B:

1. When you’ve gotten national publicity, let your local newspaper, weekly newspaper or business journal know by submitting a press release. Go one step further. Pitch yourself and offer to explain how you got national publicity. 
      
2. Ditto for your college alumni publication.
      
3. Speakers, photocopy the article, with permission, and add it to your handouts.
      
4. Write a letter to the editor of the newspaper or magazine that just wrote about you. Discuss one or two points the reporter didn’t include, or elaborate on a specific issue within the overall story. You get in front of the same audience twice!  If readers missed reading the original article, they’ll see your name and company name in the letter.

Those are my ideas. Add yours to the list. Or explain why you think media outlets and others have idiotic policies that make readers log in.

A Tool That Can Help You

My Special Report #13: How to Recycle Your Publicity, has many more ideas on this topic. It was updated a few months ago. 

If you’re a subject matter expert who hosts live webinars, like I do, you know all the problems with webinar technology.

• You accidentally click the wrong button on the console and discover that for the last 10 minutes, your audience has been unable to hear you.
     
• Or you struggle to present in-depth content while keeping one eye on the box where questions from the audience appear.
     
• Or you hear bad feedback in your headset and don’t know how to make it go away.
     
• Or—and this is the worst one—a thunderstorm storm rolls through your area and knocks out electricity halfway through the call.
     
• The ongoing problem I face is taking the time to promote all the recorded webinars I sell as products. I’m usually so busy creating and promoting the next one, that the ones I recorded even a few months ago don’t sell as well as I’d hoped.
   

I’ve Found the Solution 

Tom Antion’s free webinar on “Hybrid Webinars: How to Make a Fortune with Live Broadcasts” is the answer to my prayers. I’ve seen Tom hosting these for months, and I’ve pestered him endlessly until he finally offered a webinar explaining how he does it. Watch the free replay here. (Affiliate link) 

He coined the phrase “Hybrid Webinars” because they’re a combination of a recording, with a live Q&A. Here’s how it works.

You choose a topic your audience will love and offer a free or paid call. Tom offers almost all of his for free and often gets several hundred people to register.

He presents content, takes questions and records the call. At the end, he makes an offer for a product or service.

Several weeks later, he offers a rebroadcast, often on a Saturday morning when his schedule is more open and when people have more time to watch and listen.  But he’s available during the rebroadcast to answer questions live.

During last week’s call, which was entirely live, he explained how profitable these webinars have been. I captured this screenshot::
 

Note that the $58,866.85 figure is only part of the money he made during this first webinar. The video includes other slides that show additional revenue earned by doing other smart things during the webinar. It helps that Tom markets these webinars to an email list of more than 60,000 people. But even if your list is far smaller, you can see that you, too, can easily start bringing in more revenue from these calls than if you were to simply record the webinar and sell the replay with no live Q&A.  

Jeff Herring, one of Tom’s students, hosts these Hybrid Webinars, too, and actually answered questions during one replay while he was away from home at a speaking engagement! In fact, you can even answer questions while you’re on the beach, using your mobile phone.    

Tom explained ethical considerations, shortcuts, marketing tips, and techie tips. He showed us how he uses a dirt-cheap program (I use it too) that lets you create macro keys with answers to frequently asked questions. So with just a few keystrokes, you can give a lengthy answer to a question without having to retype the answer every time.  

I’m On Board, How About You?

I hope to start recording free or paid webinars soon using Tom’s system. I’ll check back with you to let you know how it’s working for me. 

After you watch his webinar replay, weigh in here with your comments on whether you think this would work for your business model.

I’ve been researching a variety of free and inexpensive programs and apps that allow you make infographics you can use in a PR campaign, at your website, in marketing materials, to share on the social media sites, or just for fun.

You can learn them during the webinar on How to Easily Create Free or Inexpensive Infographics from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, May 24.  

If you’re on Pintereset, you’re probably noticing all the really cool infographics, from the big, fancy ones that cost several thousand dollars to the sticky notes that include pithy sayings and quotes. 

I used Pinwords to quickly create this image of two of my favorite dog sayings:

I used Wordle.net to create this word cloud, based on words that appear at this blog:

You can use wordles in your marketing materials, at your blog, as part of a contest, or in many other ways that I’ll explain on Thursday.

A  few weeks ago, I showed you a cool graphic I created in less than 15 minutes at Visual.ly that compared my Twitter profile with Oprah’s. 

These are three of the easiest ones I’ve created. I’ll show you more, including bar charts, pie charts, flow charts and others during Thursday’s webinar. If the time is inconvenient for you, register anyway because I’m recording it, and you can access the replay, the MP3 and the PowerPoint slides I used. 

Have you created your own infographics? If so, email me with the links and explain what tool you used. I might include them in my webinar. Or, comment here and let me know if you’ve heard about any infographics programs that others have recommended to you.

People love quizzes.

So do bloggers and journalists. That’s why adding a link to a quiz can super-charge your press release and tip the scales in your favor that a website, newspaper or magazine, or your favorite blogger will announce your news, or use the quiz by itself.

Each year, The American Kennel Club announces its results for The Most Popular Dogs in the U.S., based on registration statistics. Read the press release for the 2011 rankings. Here’s a screenshot of what appears at the end of the release. Notice all the links and the invitation to use the trivia questions. 
 

I also love the list of statistics for 50 U.S. cities, the invitation to interview the AKC spokesperson, and the note about photos. 

What kinds of quizzes have you offered with press releases?
   
   
Other Tools That Can Help You:

89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases, my free email course

Special Report #30: The Shortest, Easiest Articles You’ll Ever Write

One of the most powerful tools for marketing your books is the treasure trove of online book review and book recommendation sites like Goodreads, AuthorsDen and Shelfari.

You can create a community of hundreds or even thousands of raving fans who will examine which books you’ve placed on your virtual bookshelf. They’ll discuss, review and recommend your books. They’ll ask you questions about your characters or plot lines, and sometimes hang on your every word.

But with the good, comes the bad.
   
   
Prepare for Negative Reviews

Somebody, somewhere, won’t like what you’ve written and respond with a bad review that they believe is completely fair and accurate.

Resist the urge to respond! Here’s why:

• If you do, you’ll most likely invite another comment from the reviewer that’s nastier than the original. You won’t be able to help yourself. Before long, you and the reviewer will be in a drawn-out debate that looks and sounds like sour grapes.
   
• You’ll come across as too sensitive, unable to accept criticism, and resentful. Do you really want your followers to see you that way?
   
• You’ll turn off other potential reviewers because they might fear that you’ll come back at them with both guns drawn.
   
• People don’t all like the same things. Go over to Amazon and look at some of the best-sellers. You’ll see negative reviews mixed in with reviews that gush about the book.
   
• You might develop a reputation on blogs and discussion boards as an author who can’t stand the heat.
   
• Those public comments might show up when people, including publishers and journalists, do a Google search for your name or book title.    

   
   
What to Do Instead

Practice acceptance. Know that you are not alone. And move onto the next project.

If your’e still angry, walk away from the computer. Take a walk. Take a nap. Resist the urge to keep going back to the bad review and reading it again, hunting for any inaccurate morsel.   

Don’t appeal to your fan base and ask them to write good reviews to “push down” the bad one. Don’t ask them to stand up for you in the debate.   

Instead, read this lively discussion about “reviewer abuse”  on Goodreads.. 

As a publicity expert who teaches reputation management, I know how damaging these public squabbles can be. 

Am I wrong?  

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

5 reasons traditional PR is dead. http://ow.ly/aYitX

Authors: How to get your books in front of librarians. http://ow.ly/aYk8n

Tip on finding your target market: Make it easy for THEM to find YOU. Offer various forms of content online.

3 simple ways to turn yr web archive into profitable books & ebooks. http://ow.ly/aYtzc

7 NEW Things to Do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post. http://ow.ly/aYxk6

Still can’t figure out Facebook’s tricky settings? @MariSmith walks you through them. Webinar replay. http://ow.ly/aYQCk

6 tips for asking for–and giving–Linkedin recommendations. http://ow.ly/aYjC7

Guest Bloggers: This is perfect time to pitch a guest post & tell the blogger to save it for “when you’re on vacation”.

4 ways to fire a client without burning your business. http://ow.ly/aYkoa

9 ways to find guest blogging opportunities. http://ow.ly/aYNQu 

It’s hard to decide which part of Facebook drives people craziest: The super-secret settings that nobody tells them about, or the difficulty for businesses to really gain traction and see a return on their investment of time.

I vote for ROI.

But then, I almost drove myself crazy when my Facebook fan page disappeared early last year. I finally got it back when I appealed for help on Twitter. Dave Kerpen of Likeable Media found a glitch in my settings and told me that only people in the Philippines could see my page. He fixed it in a jiffy and I was back in business. 

Part of the problem for many of us is that every time Facebook rolls out wholesale changes, it’s like entering kindergarten at Facebook Elementary School because we have to learn how to use it all over again.

Mari Smith, The Queen of Facebook, helped more than 14,000 people understand Facebook’s new timeline this week when she presented a free 90-minute webinar. It’s called “10 Essential Facebook Money-making Techie Tips” and if you’re at all confused about Facebook, I encourage you to watch the replay.

I’m promoting this as a compensated affiliate and I earn a commission if you buy her new Facebook product. I’m promoting it because way too many people, me included, find Facebook so frustrating.

Or, jump to the page where she’s selling the product.

What part of Facebook do you find most frustrating? The secret settings, difficulty seeing ROI, or something else?

You’re creating gorgeous Pinterest boards filled with stunning sunsets, wedding cakes fit for royalty and bling you can only dream about. And you’re having a ball.

But does Pinterest bring money through the door? It sure can, if you know which product  photos and images at your website are being pinned the most.

PinAlerts, a new and free Pinterest tool that’s sort of like Google Alerts, will email you every time your website receives a new pin on Pinterest. You can decide how frequently you want to be alerted: daily, weekly or as it happens. The emails include a link to the latest pins with a description.

You can read how PinAlerts works. 

PinAlerts.com was developed by Pinterest experts Janet Thaeler, Paul Wilson and John Benson of PinnableBusiness.com. Pinnnable Business develops Pinterest marketing tools and solutions. PinAlerts is the company’s first release and is currently in beta. 

5 Ways to Use This in Your Marketing 

Janet helped me compile a list of ways you can use this cool tool in your marketing campaigns:

• You can tell instantly which product photos are the most popular. If photos of some of your most popular products aren’t being pinned, it might be time to reshoot those photos. 
   
• You can do competitive research to see what others in your industry are pinning so you can see the types of content that does well in your niche.
   
• You can find potential joint venture partners. “Yesterday, I sent an alert to OrangeSoda and they saw that the person who pinned their new product works for a major newspaper and could be a potential partner,” Janet said.
   
• You can see how the market views your product by reading the descriptions below the photos that people are pinning. Often, the descriptions are very flattering.
   
• “I also want to know what articles I write get pinned,” Janet said.  So she creates images to accompany them, using a variety of free web tools. See “How to Easily Create Free or Inexpensive Infographics,” a webinar I’m presenting next week that feature some super-cool and drop-dead-simple tools for creating everything from pie charts and maps to those colorful quotes that you see all the time on Pinterest.  

A heads-up from Janet: “People pin your head shot from your website or blog. So make sure it’s pinnable and good-quality.”

What other uses can you think of for PinAlerts? Any other Pinterest tools you know about and use?