Infographics

Creating Infographics Online

CopyPress

March 16, 2018 (Updated: March 24, 2020)

In this article… 

• Get Inspired and Do Your Research
• Creating Infographics Online With Design Elements
• Streamline Infographic Design With Templates
• Hire an Experienced Infographic Design Team
• Publish and Share Your Work

From technology to wellness to tourism, eye-catching infographics highlight key issues and exciting developments in virtually every industry. Infographics are effective ways to educate your audience, grow your base, drive website traffic, and even generate leads, so they’re smart solutions for savvy marketers. If you’ve never created one of these visual assets before, you might be surprised to learn just how easy they are to create, no matter your design skills. Start creating infographics online with the few simple steps below.

Get Inspired and Do Your Research

Image via Flickr by wocintechchat.com

Creating infographics online all start with an idea and solid research to back it up. After all, infographics can vary widely in their look, but each one focuses on a central concept and relies on data to tell a compelling story.

If you don’t yet have an idea in mind for creating an amazing infographic, try reviewing a few examples from your favorite brands or browsing online infographic libraries. As you seek inspiration, remember that any idea you pursue should be relevant to your brand and your marketing goals.

Focusing on a general topic or an idea that doesn’t directly relate to your brand might not get you anywhere. However, highlighting industry trends, analyzing current events, sharing interesting internal data, or shaping a story around an upcoming company event are all great ways to capture your audience’s interest in a meaningful way.

Once you have an idea in mind and the beginnings of a story to tell, you can back it up with cold, hard facts. If you’re sharing internal data, you’ll likely get most of your research from your company’s teams, but you may also find it helpful to reference external sources for added context.

If you’re creating infographics online around current events in your field or trends in your industry, you’ll need to seek out reliable sources. In many cases, publicly available data can help you tell your story. Try a few of these invaluable public data sources:

• Google Public Data: Google’s public data directory makes it easy to search datasets from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and many other organizations.
• Amazon Web Services Public Datasets: AWS hosts high-level datasets on topics including geospatial and environmental science, genomics and life science, and machine learning and regulations.
• United States Government Open Data: Data.gov makes available over 230,000 datasets on topics ranging from agriculture, climate, consumers, and education to energy, health, manufacturing, and public safety.
• United States Census Bureau Data: Here, you’ll find everything you need to know about U.S. citizens, including population data, issues in various geographic regions, and much more.

No matter where you source your data, be sure to keep careful records. The best and most reliable infographics include citations that add extra credibility and help your audience learn more about topics of interest.

Creating Infographics Online With Design Elements

Once you’ve done your research and gathered your data, it’s time to turn the information into a visual story. If you have at least entry-level design skills and you feel comfortable trying your hand at a DIY project, you can search for basic infographic software or packs that contain essential vectors, icons, and graphics. These resources give you everything you need to start creating infographics online from scratch:

• Edraw Infographic Maker: One of the most robust tools you’ll find online, this free application has what you need to build an infographic from the ground up. With Edraw Infographic Maker, you’ll start with a blank slate, onto which you can add your choice of icons and graphics. You can also add charts and graphs, and you can customize each element to showcase your data. Add text blocks to tell an effective story, and change the colors and fonts any way you like.
• Canva: One of the easiest graphic design tools to use, Canva has all the basic elements you need to create infographics online. Its drag-and-drop interface is user-friendly, and Canva also offers a vast library of icons and graphics. If you’re planning a particularly data-heavy infographic, note that Canva allows you to change colors, fonts, text, and layouts, but its options for customizing charts and graphs aren’t quite as advanced as the Edraw platform.
• Easel.ly: With Easel.ly, you can create your brand’s ideal infographic just the way you want. Start with a blank page, and then add backgrounds, icons, shapes, and text blocks. If you’ve already developed custom graphics or images, you can upload and add those, too. While Easel.ly makes it easy to create great-looking infographics with plenty of images, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan in order to add charts and graphs.
• Freepik: If you already use a graphic design program but want to add more functionality for infographic creation, Freepik is a smart choice. This platform features over 18,000 downloadable vector packs. Here, you’ll find everything from charts and graphs to diagrams and maps to icons and images. Since all downloads are free, this is a great resource for designing from scratch on a budget.

As you’re developing infographics from scratch, be sure to keep some best practices in mind. First, although you might feel tempted to include as many graphics and as much detail as possible, don’t overcrowd your infographic. Always leave ample breathing room so your audience doesn’t feel overwhelmed. Next, remember that infographics can be confusing if they don’t start or stop at obvious points. Create a clear path that your audience should follow to digest the information, even going so far as to include arrows or numbers as guides.

Finally, don’t forget to add essentials like citations and branded links. No matter why you created an infographic, you’ll want to make sure readers can identify your brand as the author and click through to learn more or connect with your company.

Streamline Infographic Design With Templates

If you want to save time or if your design skills aren’t quite up to par, you can still create infographics in-house. Several online infographic creation tools feature premade templates that you can use to streamline the design process. Try one of these tools when creating infographics online:

• Visme: While you can start with a blank slate on Visme, this platform offers numerous professionally designed templates that you’ll want to use instead. Visme also offers nearly two dozen chart options and allows you to add custom maps and data widgets, too. You can even link your infographic to live data to ensure accuracy. With options like embedding videos, audio clips, or surveys, this platform makes interactive infographics easy, too.
• Venngage: With Venngage, you don’t need prior experience with infographic creation, as the platform takes care of the design work for you. Start by browsing all available templates or search for a layout that works best for you based on the type of story you want to tell. The platform labels templates based on difficulty level to make choosing the right one easier, but you can customize almost any element no matter which layout you choose. Note that you can get started for free, but some templates are available only for paid premium or business users.
• Piktochart: Piktochart offers templates, customization options, and user-friendliness on par with most other online infographic creation tools. However, this platform takes infographics to another level. If you want to get as many eyes as possible on your infographic, you’ll also appreciate Piktochart’s built-in search engine optimization (SEO) features, which increase the chances of your brand appearing in relevant search results.
• Mind the Graph: If you’re in the science, medical, or health care field, Mind the Graph offers even more customization. You’ll appreciate the thousands of science-focused illustrations and the numerous options for adding charts and graphs.

While premade templates certainly make infographic creation faster and easier, you should still keep best practices in mind during the design process. After all, you won’t save time by using a template if your finished product doesn’t help you achieve your goals.

First, do some searching online to make sure that hundreds of other brands haven’t already used the template you’ve chosen. You want your visual assets to look fresh and custom, not tired and overused. Next, make a point of changing the color scheme and fonts to reflect your brand. Using the default colors and fonts increases the chance of your infographic looking just like another company’s, while using your own elements reinforces your brand and can increase brand awareness. Add website links and social media profiles so readers can easily connect with your brand.

Finally, find a way to work a call to action (CTA) into the design. After all, you want your audience to do more than merely look over your infographic. You also want readers to take a specific action, such as learning more about your products and services, subscribing to your list, or taking advantage of an incentive that you’re offering.

Hire an Experienced Infographic Design Team

If you want to produce high-quality visual assets but you don’t have the time or resources to DIY, you can still create infographics online. Hire the experienced team at CopyPress to create static or interactive infographics, and you can look forward to adding sleek, professional visual assets to your content arsenal.

When you work with CopyPress, the creative team will take care of every step of the process, starting with ideation. You can expect the team to propose a unique concept for your infographic, do the research and data collation, write the text-based content, and design each element of the layout from scratch. Since the CopyPress team is fluent in infographic best practices, you can rest assured that you’ll have a finished product that tells your story beautifully and compels your audience to take action.

When your infographic is complete, you can publish, share, and promote it in any way that works for your brand. Whether you want to improve brand awareness, establish authority, or generate leads, a CopyPress-produced infographic is up to the task.

Publish and Share Your Work

When creating infographics online, whether you opt to make it from scratch, use a premade template, or hire an experienced team, you’ll want to give the finished product the exposure it deserves. Start by publishing the infographic alongside a brief introduction on your website, and then create an effective promotional plan. Think of an infographic the way you would a white paper or an e-book. While you should make the infographic available on your website and share it on social media, you’ll also want to tackle much more extensive promotional efforts.

To give it more exposure on your website, create a series of blog posts that touch on various aspects of the infographic, and share the posts with your subscribers and your social media followers. Share the infographic with your subscriber list via a dedicated email that highlights why your audience will benefit from it and what they’ll learn from it.

Don’t stop at promoting the infographic to your existing audience, though. Plan extensive outreach efforts to earn links and features for your infographic. Go through your contacts list or create a custom list of brands and influencers that you want to link to your infographic. Send each one a tailored pitch that encourages them to peruse your infographic and share it on their site or with their social network.

Consider adding even more value to your infographic by offering to produce guest blog posts for the sites on your list. Not only can this strategy help you get your infographic featured and build more links, but it can also help you build a network of influencers that you can reach out to for future projects. Be sure to track features, shares, and clicks so you know which aspects of your promotional strategy produce the best results.

No matter your design skills, your budget, or your goals, you can develop great infographics that tell compelling visual stories. Put these tools and tips to work and make infographics a key component of your content marketing strategy.

CopyPress

March 16, 2018 (Updated: March 24, 2020)