Content Creation

8 Tips for Creating an Infographic Campaign

CopyPress

January 3, 2017 (Updated: March 2, 2020)

Infographics play an integral role in any successful content marketing campaign. If you’ve never developed this type of visual content before, however, it’s hard to know where to start. Follow these eight tips for creating an infographic campaign, and build a marketing effort that gets results.

Decide On a Concept

Image via Flickr by faroekat

When it comes to infographic ideation, there’s more than one way you can start. You can build an infographic to highlight fascinating data that you’ve collected, but many brands take the opposite tack: deciding on a concept first, then researching the data to support it.

To land on a few great concepts for your campaign, call a brainstorming session with your content team. Consider industry trends, social and tech movements, breakthrough news items, or even upcoming events. If they relate to your brand, you can probably turn them into an eye-catching infographic. As you proceed through the ideation phase, always make sure that you’re creating an infographic for your target audience rather than developing content for a generic set of readers.

Be Unique

No matter what concept your team chooses, one aspect is critical. Always strive to make your infographic campaign unique. As this type of visual content becomes increasingly popular, you’ll want to stand out from the rest. Establish a creative team that’s at the top of its game or hire professionals to create infographics that get your brand the attention it deserves.

To ensure that your concept is unique, research it thoroughly during the ideation phase and understand whether other industry voices have covered the topic before. Incorporate interactive content and rich media to make sure that your infographic rises above the competition.

Create a Style Guide

Like every piece of content that you create, your infographics should look like your brand produced them. If you haven’t already taken the time to create a style guide, do so now. If you already have one that covers blog posts, articles, and white papers, make sure that it incorporates infographics and interactive media.

An effective style guide should include a few key elements. Outline the goal of the campaign, decide on standard fonts and color palettes, and establish an appropriate tone. Stop short of creating a rule for every element of the infographic campaign, but provide enough information that your team will be able to produce consistent work.

Develop a Template

It’s no surprise that infographics’ popularity is skyrocketing. By incorporating text and images, they help your content get nearly 100 percent more views and three times more social shares than any other type of element.

Since you’ll almost certainly want to make a series of infographics, consider developing a template to streamline your efforts. Rather than just downloading any old template, create or outsource a signature template for your brand’s infographics. Make it flexible enough for a number of different uses, but make it distinctive enough that it provides another visual reminder of your brand.

Follow Design Best Practices

Whether or not you’ve created an infographic before, take the time to review design best practices. Since this type of content incorporates both images and text, it’s essential to maintain a delicate balance between the two.

Choose a single-column layout for a simple infographic or opt for two or more columns if you’re creating a more complex piece of visual content. Next, select the right type of chart or graph to highlight the information you want to convey.

Use two or three fonts to introduce just the right amount of visual interest, and add some color contrast to make the most important parts of your message stand out. Create balance and flow to guide readers through the content, and use white space to your advantage to show readers where to focus their attention.

Emphasize Branding

Even an incredibly memorable infographic won’t increase brand awareness if you don’t make your company’s identity clear. Visitors who see your content on your own website might make the connection, but once you let your infographic out into the wild, your content might become disassociated from your brand.

To combat this issue, always include your logo and essential contact information within the infographic itself. The logo provides a visual reminder of your brand’s identity, and the website offers an easy way for readers to learn more about your company. Include your social profiles, too, so new visitors can connect with your brand instantly.

Establish a Marketing Plan

As fascinating as infographics are, they won’t attract attention on their own. That’s why establishing a marketing plan must be a key part of developing your infographic.

Take steps to build a content marketing campaign around your infographic. Begin by highlighting the infographic in your email newsletter. Create a short series of blog posts that elaborate on interesting components of the infographic and point visitors to your newest content.

Great infographics have the potential to go viral, but you’ll need to lay the groundwork on your social media channels before you can expect results. Along the same lines, a well-done infographic should also boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and earn a substantial number of links on industry blogs and expert-level sites. In order to make that happen, you’ll have to connect with influencers to make the connections you want.

Analyze the Metrics

Even the most successful marketing plan won’t get you the results you want if you don’t measure them properly. Before you launch, take the time to determine what key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to achieve and what numbers you want to hit. As you earn links, generate traffic, and get social shares, track how closely you’re meeting your goal.

Once your campaign finishes, sit down with your team to recap. How well did your infographic resonate with your audience? Did you meet all of your KPIs? What was your return on investment (ROI)? All of these questions will help you determine whether you’re right on track or how you can take your next infographic to new heights.

From brainstorming a concept to carrying out a marketing plan, you can create an infographic in a series of straightforward steps. Add infographics to your content marketing mix to expand your audience, build brand awareness, drive traffic to your site, and much more.

Anna Sonnenberg

Anna Sonnenberg is a digital marketer who specializes in paid social strategy, social media management, content strategy, and email marketing. For over five years, she has run Sonnenberg Media, a digital micro agency that works with small businesses in the natural food and beverage industry, health and sustainability market, and travel space.

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