Link Baiting and Viral Marketing with Venn Diagrams

A venn diagram is a diagram representing sets by intersecting circles and visualizing the relationships between the sets (overlapping circles show those features either unique or common to two or more concepts.).

This is my favorite type of the visualization because a venn diagram usually gets you thinking. Unlike infographic, for example, a venn diagram does not require any design skills and lacks visually-appealing elements but it actually works much better for inspiration and providing food for thought. A venn diagram also cannot be created in any case and requires less research but (possibly) more brainstorming.

How can we leverage venn diagrams in marketing?

• Link building: here’s a great idea and tutorial on how to use venn diagrams to visualize backlink profiles;
• Product promotion: if you are promoting a unique product, it can be a great idea to visualize your offer or its feature set using the venn diagram. See the example of how CCEverybody creators explained the new tool unique offer with a venn diagram.
• Link bait and viral campaign: take a hot topic and turn it into a venn diagram. See “FINALLY: The Difference between Nerd, Dork, and Geek Explained by a Venn Diagram” as the perfect example of that.

5 great examples of SEO-related venn diagrams:

1. Social Media Venn Diagram

A Venn diagram created by despair.com shows the psychological forces at work among users of different social networking tools.

What do you get if you mixed behavior narcissism and stalking? Facebook. What do you get if you mixed ADHD and narcissism? MySpace.

Besides being an interesting example of a venn diagram alone, this one is also a great example of a successful link bait using the venn diagram.

2. SEO Venn Diagram

Does SEO really include everything listed in the diagram? – What’s your take?

3. Happiness in Business Venn Diagram

This diagram is based on three business scenarios:

• We can’t determine how to make enough money from the things we want to do, and do really well.
• We’ve found things we want to do, and can be paid for, but we’re not the best game in town.
• We’ve come across things people want us to do, that we do well (or at least better than the competition) that we really don’t want to do

4. Conversation Venn Diagram

How brands communicate with their customers?

• Brands that communicate privately with consumers sit in “Closed Conversation.” (feedback forms, newsletters, or surveys)
• Brands that do not participate in any conversation but have consumers enjoying sharing experiences, stories, and news within the community, sit in “Open Conversation”
• Brands that use Twitter feeds as a way to broadcast news with little/no followers or active conversations sit squarely in “One Way Broadcasting.”
• => Brands should find the right balance and should sit in the middle of all 3.  Not only broadcasting feed but to also build relationships to generate RTs and spreading the word to the community.

5. Twitter Conversations – Venn Diagram

Twitter Venn creates an interactive Venn Diagram for your set of terms using data from Twitter Search. Each dot represents a conversation and you can hover the mouse over any dot to read the corresponding tweet message.

Do you have some great examples of successful and popular venn diagrams? Please share them in the comments!

For more useful SEO and social media content, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!