Infographics

Social Media Infographics

CopyPress

April 5, 2018 (Updated: February 11, 2023)

In this article…

• Gather Relevant Data to Craft Your Story
• Turn Your Brand’s Story Into a Visual Narrative
• Use an App or Hire a Pro to Create Your Infographic
• Modify the Infographic for Your Social Media Platform of Choice
• Market Your Infographic on Social Media
• Post Links to Your Infographic
• Share Links to Related Blog Posts
• Connect With Key Groups and Social Influencers

Producing eye-catching infographics for social media can be a great way to drive social shares, boost brand awareness, and generate leads. To create effective social media infographics, you’ll need a story to tell, a touch of design-savvy, and an understanding of how to share and promote media on your social media platform of choice. Find out how to create high-performing social media infographics for your brand.

Gather Relevant Data to Craft Your Story

Image via Flickr by Jason A. Howie

Every effective infographic starts with an idea for a story. Since infographics easily translate to every industry, they can convey almost any story you want to tell, as long as you have the data to support your narrative.

For example, if your digital agency wants to position itself as an authority on social media as a means to attract new clients, you’ll need to gather relevant data on the various social platforms. If you’ve been in business long enough to gather data on social media marketing and best practices for promoting social content, consider starting with your company’s own facts and figures. Collect in-house data on strategies for audience growth, increasing engagement, or the types of posts that are most likely to go viral.

In many cases, you’ll want to supplement your in-house information with external data to give your infographic more depth and influence. While market research can produce valuable data for your infographic, you may be able to reduce project time and cost by using publicly available data. Consider using some of the following popular data sources to enhance your brand’s infographic:

• Pew Research Center: An excellent source for data on social media, the internet, and technology, the Pew Research Center makes much of its data available for download.
• Google Public Data: If you aren’t sure where to start your search, Google Public Data offers an extensive database that includes data sets from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Census Bureau, and many more organizations.
• Data.gov: For information on how Americans use social media, search Data.gov, which features open data collected from federal, state, and local government agencies.

Turn Your Brand’s Story Into a Visual Narrative

After gathering data to support the story you want to share, your narrative will begin to take shape. You can get ideas for turning a data-heavy story into a compelling visual narrative by browsing examples of effective infographics or searching Pinterest for infographic collections.

As you peruse examples and start to sketch the outline of your infographic, be sure to keep some basic best practices in mind.

1. Select a Relevant Topic: No matter how great your infographic idea may be, make sure that it’s relevant to your brand and your audience’s interests before proceeding. If you want your content to reinforce your authority or build brand awareness, the theme has to resonate.
2. Choose a Focus: You may have several eye-opening pieces of data to share, but make sure they all revolve around a single concept. Maintaining one area of focus helps you inform rather than confuse your audience.
3. Keep It Organized: Your infographic may have dozens of visual components and text blocks, but it should always have a clear sense of organization that aids interpretation. Use icons to guide your audience through the narrative, and leave plenty of white space so that readers have a chance to absorb the data before moving along.
4. Incorporate Your Brand: Include your brand’s colors, logo, and name in your infographic so that your audience knows who created it, no matter how widely circulated it may get. Feature your website and social media handles so your audience knows exactly how to contact you.
5. Add a Call to Action: Don’t leave your audience hanging. Instead, encourage readers to take action after viewing your infographic. Invite your audience to contact you with questions, learn more about your brand, or get a quote.

Use an App or Hire a Pro to Create Your Infographic

Once you’ve covered all the basics, it’s time to bring your infographic to life. Whether you want to put your own design sense to work or you’d rather leave it to the experts, you have several options.

CopyPress

When you contract CopyPress to create completely distinctive social media infographics for your brand, you’ll be hiring an experienced team to handle every step of your project. You can also leave the ideation and research to CopyPress, saving you more time and resources. No matter how much input you want to provide during the creative process, you can expect the CopyPress team to produce a professionally designed infographic that you can share on social media and use to promote your brand.

Canva

If you’d rather tackle the creative process yourself, Canva offers an easy way to get started. Select any of the design app’s premade infographic templates and add your own data and story. You can modify the premade layouts and change the color schemes as necessary or use the app’s icons and tools to create a layout from scratch. Since Canva offers free templates for most social media platforms, choosing the right size and format is a breeze.

Easelly

With Easelly, you can browse the app’s library of completed infographics to get inspiration and then choose a template to create your own. Use the free templates to create relatively complex infographics at no cost or upgrade to gain access to Easelly’s catalog of premium templates.

Freepik

If you’d prefer to sharpen your design skills, try Freepik, which offers hundreds of thousands of free vector graphics. Download the icons and graphics of your choice, and then import them into a design program where you can create your own custom infographics.

Infogram

If you have a relatively straightforward narrative to convey or you want to test out your design skills with a simple infographic, Infogram specializes in keeping the process simple. With this infographic app, you can turn data into charts and graphs quickly to make your infographic easy to understand. Even if you have only a few minutes to spare, Infogram can help you create a sharp-looking infographic.

Piktochart

One of the most user-friendly design apps available, Piktochart gives you the tools you need to tell your brand’s story with an attention-grabbing infographic. Piktochart also incorporates search engine optimization (SEO) best practices into its naming convention, making your final infographic more likely to appear in searches.

Venngage

Similar to Canva, Venngage serves as a high-powered design app that makes it easy to transform complex data into charts, graphs, or diagrams that can take your infographic to the next level. The Venngage business templates aren’t free, but with options such as interactive files and innovative layouts, Venngage could be worth the added expense.

Modify the Infographic for Your Social Media Platform of Choice

Not every content type or format performs well on each social media platform. To get the most out of sharing your infographic, you’ll want to use the right image sizes and modify your content for optimal performance on each platform.

Facebook

Posting horizontal images with a 2-1 or 3-2 ratio is best for Facebook, as the platform won’t attempt to crop or resize these images. However, your final infographic doesn’t have to meet these dimensions. Instead, consider repurposing your complete infographic into micro-content that isolates a single section or a main point from the original. This strategy distills your infographic down to its essence, highlighting a key point that’s sure to grab your followers’ attention. Since a single point doesn’t give away the entire infographic, your audience may be more inclined to click through to learn more.

Don’t stop after creating a single piece of micro-content from your infographic. Create several components that illustrate different aspects of your infographic and ensure that each one features your brand prominently. Consider posting an image carousel or creating a canvas that highlights several pieces of micro-content simultaneously and drives additional interest in your infographic.

Twitter

Posting micro-content or isolated snapshots from your full infographic works well on Twitter, too. Rather than simply reposting the image you developed for Facebook, create a separate graphic for Twitter. To avoid cropping or resizing, create a horizontal image with a 2-1 ratio. Make it as uncluttered and easy to read as possible to ensure that it stands out on Twitter. Consider highlighting a single fact, quote, or chart to drive home your message in a fraction of a second.

Similar to your Facebook strategy, you’ll want to create several snapshots to post on Twitter. Following this strategy will help you maintain your audience’s interest and meet your objectives with a variety of content.

Instagram

Instagram offers ample opportunities to get creative with your micro-content so that you can point followers to your infographic multiple times while still maintaining high levels of interest. First, try creating 1-to-1 snapshots of your infographic to take advantage of Instagram’s naturally square format. Consider posting a handful as an image carousel, with each one calling out a fascinating fact or figure from your infographic.

Give your micro-content more life by adding it to your Instagram Story, which is a great tool for adding a quick explainer to your visual content while increasing your reach. Since video performs best on Instagram, you can turn your infographic into a brief animation, too. Simply string a handful of infographic snapshots together, add some music, and publish your video.

Pinterest

Vertical images far outperform any other graphic format on Pinterest, making this presentation the ideal platform for sharing your complete infographic in all its glory. To ensure that it captures your audience’s attention, make sure that the title stands out prominently in your infographic and that the icons are easy to identify with a quick glance.

When you create your pin, include eye-catching callouts in the caption to help your audience understand your main points quickly. Feature relevant hashtags to make your infographic easier to find, too.

Market Your Infographic on Social Media

To make the most of your infographic and all related micro-content, you need a comprehensive strategy for marketing your content on social media. Follow the steps below to share and promote your infographic across your brand’s social media platforms.

Post Links to Your Infographic

First, publish your infographic on your brand’s website. Create a post with a short introduction and a call to action inviting site visitors to check out the infographic. Then embed the image file and make it clickable so that visitors can zoom in to read all of the text clearly.

Link to this post when you share your infographic or snapshots on each social media platform. Share the link frequently on each platform, but keep your social copy fresh to entice new click-throughs and engage with a variety of followers.

Share Links to Related Blog Posts

Not every social share has to lead back to your original infographic. Instead, mix in links to blog posts you’ve written to elaborate on the infographic’s main points. These blog posts should give your social followers new ways to connect with your infographic and a new perspective on your content. These posts may also inspire new ideas for creating micro-content or snapshots customized for specific social platforms.

Connect With Key Groups and Social Influencers

Social media platforms are great places to make key connections with both influencers and groups in your industry. Share your infographic with relevant groups and ask for comments or feedback. Tag or message influencers and ask them to share your infographic with their followers.

Once you have the attention of key influencers, pitch guest blogs that highlight your infographic. By writing a guest blog post for another major site in your industry, you can expand brand awareness and grow your audience, drive more traffic back to your website, and create more original content that you can promote on social media.

Whether you want to tell a compelling story about social media or you want to share visual content on your platform of choice, social media infographics offer ample opportunities to meet your marketing objectives. From ideation to promotion, keep this guide handy as a quick reference to creating effective social media infographics.

CopyPress

CopyPress writer

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