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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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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