Social media has invented new ways to disperse content in a more effective way that brings more readers and prospects. One of the ways that are used frequently by bloggers and social media enthusiasts is creation and publication of infographics. These user-friendly graphics not only present complex details in a simple manner, but also attract the attention of qualified as well as random traffic. Although infographics have emerged as a strong medium to pull massive traffic, still very few publishers and marketers manage to leverage them effectively. Sometimes, it's the lack of knowledge and sometimes people are simply not fully equipped to make these infographics. Today, we're going to learn about creating and using these awesome graphics information pieces that can boost your website's and blog's visibility in no time.
Why an infographic?
That's the first question you may ask about using infographics. Why invest time in a type of web content that we've never used before? How it benefits publishers and what are its positive implications? Well, first you must understand that infographics are generally associated with presenting data, facts, and figures in a much attractive format than simply publishing a long multi-column table that is difficult to digest by an average web surfer. They're not meant for use in every other post published on your website. Here're some of the reasons you should consider using infographics on your website.
- You frequently publish data, facts and figures - People love to crunch data when presented in an attractive format. And that's the crux of using infographics. If you frequently come up with interesting facts and figures related to your niche, then you must consider using infographics. The same thing applies to numerical (statistical) data associated with any trending topic. If you regularly acquire or generate such type of raw and unique data, you have a solid reason to use infographics.
- Your content never goes viral - This is yet another strong reason to consider using infographics as a part of your content creation strategy. I remember how I used to try my level best to get my posts on the front page of Digg in my early days of blogging. But that never happened! Why? Because I was submitting general posts having no such element that could trigger snowball effect for voting. The solution is either to create a useful list post or to go for an attractive information-packed infographic.
- You're tired of creating long text-only posts - You do all the hard work and come up with long posts on a regular basis. But still, you're not able to attract decent traffic either from organic sources or from various social media platforms. This is the time you should consider changing your content creation strategy. Infographics can end up the traffic drought you've been experiencing to date.
- You've got a notice to deliver or quit - This is a difficult situation for a professional blogger hired by a company. No job runs on vague claims. You have to come up with concrete data to show your performance. If you're struggling to boost your client's business blog or website, probably it's time to consider using infographics to pump new life into your content marketing strategy.
Advantages of using an infographic
Now that we've discussed some of the reasons of considering infographics for our website or blog, we must also clearly know its advantages and how it is going to affect our overall approach towards content syndication and marketing. Remember, creating an impressive infographic requires creativity and other necessary skills. Even if you understand its advantages but fail to come up with an appealing graphic, you're going to gain nothing. These advantages alone are good enough to persuade you to acquire all the necessary skills to come up with excellent infographics for your audience. Here're some of the advantages of using infographics on your website or blog.
- They easily go viral - Remember, when I say viral, it doesn't mean accumulation of millions of votes or page-views. It simply means experiencing way large traffic than you normally receive on a regular basis. When I talk about viral nature of an infographic, it has an important prerequisite. It should be good enough to grab the attention of a visitor even before he actually starts reading its content.
- They're easy-to-make - Initially, you may struggle to design a good infographic, but success comes after several failures. Designing a good infographic is not that hard as it seems. There are several free and handy tools for creating impressive infographics. If you have data ready in your hands, these tools let you create an infographic within minutes. If you're comfortable with graphic designing, that's like icing on the cake. In such case, you have the advantage of easily designing a unique and completely customized infographic that can bring much better results than a generic one made from a free online tool.
- They build your authority - Since infographics are generally associated with data and figures, they have the capability to establish you as a trusted source of information related to your niche. The more unique and trending data you insert in your infographic, the more your credibility increases provided it is original and accurate. In fact, some of the famous social media marketers reached fame simply by publishing lots of viral infographics filled with interesting data related to their niche.
- They attract backlinks - Sometimes bloggers and publishers use infographics simply to get more backlinks for their website. Any piece of web content that goes viral is bound to get linked from different sources across the web. This is a smart way to build backlinks without using any black-hat technique.
- They're easily understandable - As I mentioned before, infographics have the power to present complex data in a user-friendly format that can be consumed easily by qualified as well as non-qualified traffic. If you present the same data in a long multi-column tabular format, it will result in high bounce rate on that specific post. But with infographics, it's just the opposite.
- They perform well on social media platforms - Social media networks like Facebook and Pinterest are well known for providing ideal conditions for promoting your cause through graphic content. User-base on both these networks tend to like, vote and comment more on graphics than on a textual update. Infographics perform well on both these networks and attracts good number of views and votes resulting in diversion of more leads and prospects towards your website.
Infographic-creation life cycle
We've seen the advantages as well as the reasons to create and publish infographics for our audience. Now let's move on to the final step of learning to create a performing infographic. Before you start the design of your infographic, you must ensure that you've crosschecked all the vital details that must be fulfilled to get an impressive graphics. Here's the step-by-step procedure to churn out an appealing and attractive infographic for your website.
- Grab original, accurate and trending data - The success of an infographic lies in the uniqueness and freshness of the data or information presented in the graphic. The more trending and unique it is, the more it is bound to go viral. So, before you think about designing one for you, you must ensure you have such data in your hands.
- Decide the layout and dimensions - The next step involves deciding the width and height as well as the internal layout of various elements within the infographic. Generally, vertical infographics are known to perform well as they take less space and goes well with readers' natural tendency of scrolling down to the page. Make sure you also decide on various elements like objects and partitions that will be used in the graphic.
- Craft alluring title and subtitles - No matter how unique and interesting is the information you're going to provide in your infographic, unless you don't come up with the equally interesting title and subtitles for the entire graphic, you're never going to taste success with it. Devote ample time in writing persuasive and attention-grabbing titles and subtitles to get the best results.
- Choose your preferred infographic-creation tool - There are several good online tools to create impressive infographics with ease. If you're comfortable with Photoshop or a similar image editing software you should prefer it over these online tools, but if you're depending on these web-based tools then you can try both Visual.ly and Creatly. Both are very popular and provide excellent set of tools to create stunning infographics.
- Web-optimize it - And last but not the least is an important step of optimizing your infographic for web. Sometimes, publishers forget this step and pay the price in the form of loss of large amount of extra bandwidth when their infographic goes viral on several social media networks.
Remember, the infographic is a powerful medium to attract traffic and backlinks. You must ensure that you're always presenting original and correct information through your infographic. So pick up your tools and design your first infographic to see the difference in traffic and attention you get from these awesome graphics.
