Tips for Creating Infographics

There’s an infographic for everything these days. From weather patterns to sales data, fundraisers, ice cream flavors, and real estate. (Check out this one on if browsers were celebrities), this visual and content-based method of sharing data is only continuing to grow in popularity. There are even infographics on infographics —very meta!

Today, there are more than 500 million blogs on the internet, with a new blog posted every 0.5 seconds. This means that users have an almost unlimited choice of where they go for content. With all of this choice, making sure your website and blog stands out is crucial for capturing your visitors’ attention.

Images and infographics can be a great way to help your content stand out, and resonate with your audience. Some 65% of people retain information from graphics for at least three days, with that number dropping to 10% for written content; highlighting the fact that visuals are one of the best ways to get important information over to your visitors. Among visuals, infographics are one of the most effective marketing tools. Not only are infographics more memorable, but they are also three times as likely to be shared on social media than other visuals.

According to one study, adding an infographic to your blog post can boost views by more than 90%. Infographics are also highly versatile and can be added to marketing emails, social media posts, and your website equally well. Since 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual in nature, infographics are the perfect way to take your marketing to the next level. They’re a great tool for helping your message to really come alive and stick with your audience for longer.

Creating Infographics: Getting Started

Infographics are visuals, charts, or images that share statistical information or data about a specific topic. 

While highly effective, creating a strong infographic is important if you want to ensure that it’s effective. Ensuring your images and data are compelling, accurate, and appealing is paramount. Your infographic also needs to look good, meaning things like color and font choices absolutely matter.

A strong infographic can improve your company’s visibility, strengthen your relationship with your clients, and lead visitors on down the sales funnel. When utilized properly, infographics are an excellent way to share your message or explain why your product or service is necessary. And since people enjoy sharing content like infographics, this makes it easy to reach a large audience quickly.

Below are some tips on how to start crafting your own infographics that get results.

Come Up With a Great Idea

“Coming up with an infographic idea is half the battle to creating a killer infographic,” says marketing expert Neil Patel. “And the way to come up with great infographic idea is to figure out what your audience wants.”

Start by putting yourself in your audience’s shoes. What are things that they’d be interested in, that you could present in an engaging infographic format?

Instead of looking to create something that’ll resonate with the entire world, narrow it down and focus on your specific audience. Remember: you don’t have to be everything to everyone. Instead, it’s better to take a more targeted approach.

Create a Catchy Headline

The first thing that your audience will notice when they see your infographic is the headline. Not only is the headline the best way to summarize what your infographic is about, but it also can help your infographic achieve a higher Google search ranking. When you combine SEO with visual content, people are more likely to share your post and Google is more likely to increase the search ranking of your infographic when users search certain keywords and terms. Adding a strong and catchy headline to your infographic also increases its trustworthiness, which helps improve its Google ranking as well.

The headline is also your opportunity to tell your audience what question your infographic is answering. Creating a catchy headline means making sure it is relevant, memorable, and succinct. Headlines should usually be less than five to seven words and should be optimized, meaning the headline should include at least one keyword related to your company or product.

A strong headline also makes it easier for people to share the content, as the headline will appear when your audience shares your infographic. A catchy headline makes it more likely that people will read your infographic, which helps improve your traffic and increase the number of time people stay on your website.

See: More Tips for Creating Clickable Titles.

Keep Text to a Minimum

“We constantly are attempting to organise, collate and curate information that pours at us from screens in a torrent,” writes marketing expert Jeff Bullas in his article 9 Awesome Ways to Use Infographics in Your Content Marketing.

“Consuming that data is like drinking from a fire hose.”

Information overload means that it’s impossible for us to take everything in. 

“Infographics are a visually compelling communication medium that done well can communicate complex data in a visual format that is potentially viral,” Jeff continues.

“They take deep data and present it in a visual shorthand.”

The entire point of an infographic is to provide a visual alternative to written content, meaning that limiting text in your infographic is important. Only include necessary information in text, such as statistics and a short summary of important key points. The most effective infographics and short and to the point, meaning brevity is your best ally when creating them.

Go through your infographic draft and see if you can shorten any sentences or text boxes. Think of the written component of infographics as a way to elaborate more on the importance of the topic, rather than to draw out every detail. Remember, articles are the best way to rely on words to discuss a topic, not infographics.

Although there is no set word count, a good rule of thumb is that two hundred words should be the top end for an infographic.

Keep It Simple

The goal of an infographic is to explain something to your target audience—maybe it’s why your products or services solve a relevant problem or how your industry works. When your reader looks at your infographic, they should learn something new or gain a deeper understanding of the topic. If your infographic is too complex, it can lead to more questions than answers.

Avoid jargon. Pick words that are easily understood, meaning don’t choose terms that are too industry-specific or aren’t known by the common reader or target market. Keep in mind that simplifying a complex idea is much harder than overcomplicating a simple idea, so be aware of overly wordy explanations and look to keep your visuals as straightforward as possible. Imagine having to explain your infographic topic to someone that has a limited understanding of your topic. The reader should be able to understand the topic quickly after reading your infographic.

Stay on Topic

When you decide to create an infographic, picking a topic and sticking to it helps keep it simple for you and your audience. A great way to check to see if your infographic is short, sweet, and to the point is by having someone else review it before you post it. The goal is that someone who doesn’t have experience in the field can understand your message and that the information makes sense.

The topic should be relevant to your company, products, or services; or address an up-and-coming issue. Make sure that all of the information in your infographic adds to your topic, meaning that you need to avoid using stats and charts about something irrelevant to your topic.

Double-Check Your Facts

Statistics and data usually play a central role in a strong, effective infographic which means it’s imperative that your facts are accurate. Make sure that you use the most current statistics. Using outdated statistics makes your brand seem out of touch, and could lead your target market to look elsewhere for information.

Consider double-checking your statistics and data with at least two sources and using legitimate resources. Websites like Statista have databases of statistics covering various topics, making it easier to fact-check your infographic.

Pick the Right Fonts, Graphics, and Colors

Readability doesn’t just mean avoiding grammatical errors. You need to make sure that your infographic is easy to read, which means picking the right font and colors. Make sure that your font selection matches the theme of your infographic and that the background colors make it easy to read your text. Using sufficient white background space is a great way to ensure your text is legible and highly visible. Avoid hard-to-read fonts and make sure your choice isn’t too casual. 

Coordinated colors are another way to spice up your infographic. Colors that go well together make your infographic more attractive and attention-grabbing.

Tools for Creating Infographics

The idea of making your first infographic may seem intimidating, but there are plenty of great tools to help make the process easier. 

Infogram

A free infographic creator, Infogram makes it quick, easy, and painless to create infographics.

Infogram doesn’t require any design or high-tech computer skills to use. It’s also free, but they also offer subscription packages that have additional features. The design package allows you to upload custom images or choose from a library of royalty-free pictures. You can choose unique fonts, colors, and layouts. 

Infogram also lets you include interactive features on your infographic such as clickable legends, tabs, hyperlinks, charts, and maps. Interactive features improve engagement with your target market and audience and can help make your infographic go viral. Additional features allow you to collaborate on your projects with co-workers and track the effectiveness of your infographic. Infogram also lets you optimize your infographic for mobile devices, which is important considering that many users prefer accessing the internet on their smartphone.

Animaker

If you want to shake up your visual content, Animaker is a great way to make your infographics and blog stand out from the crowd. Animaker offers free and subscription-based plans that allow you to create your own animated videos. Video content is more engaging, so mixing the strength of traditional infographics with animated videos can help your viewer better retain the information. Videos are also more likely to be shared on social media, meaning that a strong animated infographic can help your marketing campaign to succeed. 

Animaker allows you to work as a team on your animated infographic, as well as use their extensive library of content and special effects. They have over 100 different styles of graphs and charts, over 3,000 maps and more than 1,000 icons you can include in your infographic video. Animaker allows you to easily create unique and creative animated infographics that you can share on your social media profiles or during an email marketing campaign.

Adioma

No need to build an infographic from scratch. Adioma is a great tool that automates the infographic creation process. When you use Adioma, you enter the text you want to be included in your infographic, and the program automatically completes your infographic by adding visuals and images. More specifically, Adioma builds the infographic as you add text, so you can quickly adjust and tweak elements as you go. 

You can compare multiple templates, meaning that as Adioma constructs your infographic you can change the template to select the best layout and presentation for your goals. You can upload your own content or use images from Adioma’s library. You can also adjust things like your infographic’s color schemes.

Visme

Visme is a great infographic creation tool that gives you the option of using templates and mixing and matching pre-designed content blocks, which can cut down on the time you spend creating infographics. A cool feature of Visme is that you can upload data from Microsoft Excel and other sources, including live data! You can choose from more than 20 different charts and include interactive maps as well. Visme also lets you add videos, tables and embed data, making it easy for your customers and audience to interact with your infographic. 

The data widgets available on Visme let you visualize data, meaning that you can select population arrays and other icons that match your theme or topic. Visme also has a huge database of high definition pictures, allowing you to pick from more than 500,000 images when you are designing your infographic. Visme also lets you track the effectiveness of your infographic, allowing you to track how many unique views you got. It’s also great if you regularly work with other team members, as you can set templates for your team and create brand guidelines, which ensures your message is consistent regardless of who is designing your infographics.

Infographia

Another great option, Infographia is the perfect tool whether you’re new to creating infographics, or a seasoned pro. 

Infographia’s infographics are also compatible with Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Keynote; making it easy to create and share them with ease. They offer over 1500+ infographics for you to choose from; all of which are completely customizable, and ideal for almost any industry niche. This tool is a great time-saver, allowing you to create professional charts in very little time.

Prices start at $98 per month, so this is a good tool if you’re serious about infographics, and looking to turn out at least two or three visuals per month.

Should You Outsource the Job?

If you are struggling to design the right infographic or your infographic isn’t delivering the results you want, outsourcing the task can save you time and money. Marketing agencies that have experience with virtual content can make sure your campaign starts with a bang. If you find yourself spending too much time trying to master visual content creation, outsourcing is a great option. Plus, agencies will generally have prior success in delivering infographics and visual content which means you will see results quickly.

Whether you create your own infographics from scratch, use infographic design tools, or outsource the job to an agency, infographics should be an important part of your marketing strategy. They are a powerful way to craft unique, sharable content that reaches and resonates with your target market. A regular infographic creation strategy can help to keep visual data circulating online as it’s shared on blogs and social media platforms; helping to keep your brand at the front of your target audience’s mind. 

Looking for help extending your content’s reach? Get in touch today for your FREE 20-minute consultation call. We’ll show you how easy it can be to reach your audience.

Or, check out these helpful articles to learn more about improving your content creation process:

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