Branding Challenge Day 21. What makes a great infographic?
What Makes a Great Infographic?
Anyone can throw some visuals together and make an infographic. But not all infographics are really good. So what makes a great infographic? It’s important that you have the right elements put together.
It has to have s purpose. Before you start to create your infographic, you need to think about your purpose. What do you hope to share with your readers when they look at your visual representation?
You also need to think about what it is you want your reader to do as a result of looking at your infographic. If the purpose is to get them to visit a site or take another action, it will help you to know that ahead of time so you can build momentum using your image and text combination.
Before you ever get started with the actual creation of your infographic on the computer, take some time to sketch out what you want it to say and create a list of bullet points.
It needs to tell a story. A great infographic does more than share numbers and data. It provides information that’s interesting and actually tells a story that connects to your audience.
A great infographic will state a problem or bring up an issue that’s important to your readers. It will also provide a solution that makes it useful and interesting for anyone who reads it.
Historical Infographics
You can also tell a story by using an infographic as a timeline to explain a current event, biography of a person, or how a problem began.
It should be well-timed. Infographics based on current events and trends are going to get more notice than those based on last year’s trends. Take advantage of news stories and consumer trends when creating your infographic.
Get ideas by looking at other people’s graphics. A great way to research this is to Google your topic. For instance, if you want to design an infographic about list building the Google “list building + infographic”
When you see a major story in the headlines that relates to what you do, it’s the perfect time to produce an infographic and share it. You might even want to have a template of your own on hand for breaking news stories in your niche.
All infographics should be empowering. People will respond with more emotion and connection to infographics that are empowering. That means providing information that will allow your readers to act in a way that’s beneficial for them. Also, the more emotive the infographic is the more likely it will be shared. Once it is shared more people will become aware of your name and brand.
All infographics should be focused.
Your infographic should be narrowly focused. You don’t want to try to tell your readers everything you know in a chart. This should be simple and streamlined so that it’s not overwhelming or confusing.
It should have a great design. It may sound obvious, but you want your infographic to be pleasing to the eye. That means being careful to choose colors that go well together and using images that look cohesive.
You want to use as little text as possible – meaning no long paragraphs, but bite-sized chunks of text instead. Remember this is about giving a visual image. And whatever text you do use should be very clear and readable – so it’s always a good idea to try different fonts until you find one that works best for you.
It’s also important to keep the file as small as possible so that it can still be accepted by social media sites. At the same time, don’t sacrifice clarity to maintain the small file size.
If you feel like your infographic has too much on it, ask yourself if it’s possible to split the topic into two narrower topics. Sometimes that helps. So for instance, instead of one infographic for weight loss that included diet and exercise, you could split those two off into their own infographics.
You also need to keep your infographic as vertical as possible. Today we live in a world where people are using small monitors on tablets and smartphones. When you make your infographic vertical, it’s easier for a reader to scroll through on a mobile platform.
Make sure your infographic is true
Your infographic should have reliable data that’s true and can be backed up. If you put out an infographic that turns out to have inaccurate, false information, you’re going to lose trust with your audience.Also, you can make yourself open to legal action in some circumstances.
Remember that you’re always working to build trust and relationships with your readers. Don’t sacrifice that to get attention. It will turn out to be the wrong kind of attention once the facts become clear. If you use outside sources for information, make sure that you cite those.
Make sure it includes your brand. Every infographic that you produce and share should have your logo (if you have one) and a link to your site.
This has a dual purpose it reinforces your brand on your site. When the infographic is shared it acts to increase your brand awareness.
It also increases the traffic to your site and will enhance your search engine optimization. It’s no good to waste your time creating a beautiful infographic that doesn’t actually help people get to know who you are.
Be sure to edit it properly. Once you’ve created an infographic, you need to show it to someone else before you begin promoting it. Having a second set of eyes to catch mistakes in spelling or to help you see where your graphic needs work is invaluable.
When you’ve been looking at something for a long time, you tend to overlook mistakes. Also, something may make complete sense to you but be confusing to someone who doesn’t have all of your knowledge and perspectives.
Ask a few people to give you their thoughts and reactions before publishing your infographic and promoting it.What makes a great infographic? is to be continued tomorrow.