8 Great Tips for Making Infographics
In this article…
- Know Your Audience
- Invest in Design Time
- Choose Images Carefully
- Highlight Your Research
- Make the Most of Your Content
- Optimize Formatting
- Edit Multiple Times
- Market to Your Target Audience
Infographics are an extremely useful and efficient method of marketing. When planned out correctly, the highly visual and carefully designed layout of the infographic makes it more appealing to consumers. Utilize the following tips for making infographics to create a marketing tool that reaches and inspires your target audience.
8 Tips for Making Infographics
Image via Flickr by india7network
Before you even get started, be sure to choose a strong topic for your infographic. It is important to pick a topic that is relevant to your business and that is also useful to your audience, as this will give readers a reason to click on and read the infographic. Infographics are often used to target a specific audience and to provide them with information about a product or service that is the most useful to them.
You will also need to find a way to set your infographic apart from others on the internet. The goal is to make your infographic newsworthy. This can be achieved by researching current trending topics in your industry. Use tools like Google Trends, Twitter Trends, Feedly, and Facebook trending to find out what topics are currently getting the most attention.
Competitive analysis is also a great way to find out what is currently important in your industry. Once you have narrowed down a topic that is likely to resonate with your target market, you will want to customize it to fit within your specific business industry. Check out these 8 great tips for making infographics to help you create yours!
Know Your Audience
One of the most important and most commonly overlooked tips for making infographics is to know your audience. Today’s internet users are unlikely to read articles from start to finish. Instead, experts estimate that most users only have time to read about 20 percent of a website’s content.
While you likely already had an intended audience in mind when you first chose the infographic topic, now it is time to really narrow in on the specifics of your target audience. The goal is to get your infographic in front of the people that will find it the most useful and that are most likely to convert.
There are a few methods you can implement to learn more about your target audience. The easiest and fastest way is to look at your current customer base. Where do your current customers live? How do they communicate with you? What are their buying habits? You can also research any target markets that are you are attempting to break into. Finally, do not underestimate the value of simply asking your customers. Many consumers are willing to share feedback about products and services.
Creating a buyer persona can help you detail the exact person you are trying to reach with your infographic. This step will also help you with creating your marketing strategy for promoting the infographic later on. Crafting a detailed buyer persona involves taking what you already know about your customer base and compiling it into one, or a few, customer profiles. This effort helps you narrow down your targeting and really understand what is relevant to your intended market.
Invest in Design Time
The overall design of your infographic is what your targeted audience will see; therefore, the making of the design tends to be one of the critical tips for making infographics. The completed image should be engaging, relevant, and aesthetically appealing. Keep things simple and straightforward with a layout that includes images and text that gets your point across. The design should ideally promote your product or educate your audience within the first few seconds.
Another important aspect of the design process is to focus on the background space. Pay attention to the image/data ratio. Infographics are very visual, so you do not want to overwhelm the space with too many images or text. White space, also known as background space, provides the reader with a visually appealing experience. It also draws the eye to the most important parts of the infographic, thus really driving your point across. White space improves the reader’s focus and can ultimately increase views and infographic conversions.
When creating a fully optimized design, stick to the common rule of thirds in design. Although this concept was originally applied to photography, it can also be used when designing infographics that are visually appealing. Instead of using the center of the page as your focal point, consider dividing the space into thirds. These imaginary grids can help you arrange the data, images, and content in a way that is appealing to the eye.
Choose Images Carefully
Think of images as the base of your infographic design. Images are used to draw the focus to specific statistics or text data. You can actually control which items your readers spend the most time viewing. You can also encourage the exact facts that they take away from the infographic. Stock images are free images that can be easily pulled from the internet. You can then use a variety of editing programs including PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, and Canva to personalize the images to your brand. You can also input paid images or actual images and logos from your business.
You will want to test multiple images in your infographic to see what fits with your current color scheme and patterns. It is also important to check the licensing agreements, date, and source of the image before using them in any of your infographic marketing.
Highlight Your Research
The supporting data of your infographic is just as important as the images chosen, as they’ll need to correlate with one another. You can also increase the visual aspect of the data by displaying it in bright, colorful, and catchy ways. Draw the reader’s attention to the most surprising statistics. Avoid lengthy or wordy captions. Display the information in short and concise blocks to get important points across.
You can further enhance your research with pictograms, charts, and graphs. Visual displays of information tend to do better than simply listing it. If you must list the information, be sure to use bullet points as they hold attention longer. Also, stick to primary colors to avoid an overwhelming design.
The data used in the infographic should also be relevant, interesting, and accurate. If you are unable to find an accurate source of information, it is best to leave it out of the infographic. Infographics are a great way to establish an authority and expert role in your industry, as long as you are offering information that is accurate. Avoid using sources like Wikipedia or Facebook for data, as these sites are often not checked for accuracy and anyone can post or edit them.
The data used in your infographic should also be current. Using data that is accurate, yet outdated, can result in it no longer being relevant to the industry. New research is constantly replacing older research, and including inaccurate or outdated information on your infographic is a quick way to lose brand trust and damage the authority of your business.
Make the Most of Your Content
Although there is minimal content in an infographic, it is a necessary and important part of the design process. The content needs to be carefully planned and worded concisely to meet the minimum space abilities. Outsourcing your content creation can help you make the most of your minimal content space.
The content should also take advantage of previously researched keywords. Keywords will help with search engine optimization (SEO) and will help users find your infographic during an internet search. Keywords should be relevant to the information in the infographic, as well as to the industry. If you want users to specifically search for infographics within your topic, you will also want to rank for the word infographics.
The entire purpose of creating an infographic is to draw attention and convert traffic to your product or service. While it is important to educate and inform readers, you also want to leave them with something to take away. Call to actions encourage the reader to take action, whether it is signing up for a newsletter, sharing the content, or making a purchase. Include branding on the infographic so readers can associate the information with your brand.
Another important part of the content process is creating a headline. The infographic headline is the first thing that your readers will see, and it should grab their attention while also giving them an idea of what to expect throughout the design. Utilize keywords in your headline to target specific readers looking for information about a product or service. Avoid headlines that promise but do not deliver.
Optimize Formatting
You have carefully selected the images for your infographic. You have fact-checked the statistics and data you want to include. You hired a professional copywriter to make the most of the minimal content space. It is now time to fit all of these important aspects of the infographic into a completed project that is formatted for your readers. The size of the images and the format of the information is an important part of the visual experience.
It is best to start with standard size recommendations and then customize it to fit your specific marketing needs. You will also want to consider where your viewers will be accessing the infographic most often. Once the infographic is completed, you will want to publish it to multiple sites, including your own. Staying within sizing recommendations will ensure that it properly shows up on these sites. A good rule of thumb to follow is to stay within 600 pixels wide and 1,800 pixels long.
Some platforms also have minimum formatting requirements. Facebook, for example, requires that all uploaded infographics are a minimum of 403 x 403 pixels. If the majority of your target audience is likely to access the infographic through mobile use, you will also need to format it for mobile devices. Most tablets can successfully show infographics that are formatted for desktop use. Smartphones, however, cannot go over 288 pixels in width. Infographics that are meant for a smartphone should also be optimized with larger graphics and font sizes for easier readability.
Edit Multiple Times
A single error can ruin your entire infographic. Editing multiple times can help you catch grammatical and structural errors. You also might want to consider outsourcing a professional editing service to look for any additional errors. Keep in mind that editing differs from proofreading. The designer of the infographic will complete basic proofreading tasks while creating the design.
Proofreading looks for basic grammatical errors or missing punctuations. Editing, on the other hand, scans the infographic for content clarity, voice tone, and any structural or mechanical errors. Both proofreading and editing are necessary tasks, especially when the content will be used in marketing materials.
Market to Your Target Audience
Once you have a completely finished infographic, it is time to get it in front of those that will find it the most useful. You should already have a target market in mind and have a good idea of where they are at. Share your infographic across multiple relevant platforms. Include social media share tabs on the content so users can share it with their network. Share it with your own businesses social media accounts. Expand the visibility even more by outsourcing your promotions through native advertising, publisher connections, and social promoting.
You can also use programs like Bitly to shorten the URL of the infographic site. Internet users are more likely to share the link to the infographic if it is concise and easy to copy. Also, including a specific call to action that invites readers to share is a great way to increase infographic views. Monitoring the success of this particular infographic also important. You can use the feedback, share data, and analytical results to make improvements to future infographics.
Creating an infographic from scratch might seem like an intimidating process. However, with these tips for making infographics, you can design an effective marketing tool that provides your readers with value and information about your product or service.
CopyPress writer
More from the author:
