An infographic can convey complex data in an easy-to-understand format. Including visual images and graphics with textual information works both the right and left sides of a reader’s brain simultaneously. This effect increases the chance that your audience will be able to understand, remember, and share your messaging.
Working both sides of the human brain is powerful, but not an infographic’s only strength. Let’s look at what makes infographics so effective and how to amplify the effects through thoughtful design.
(Dulcey Lima/Unsplash)
Benefits and Strengths
Infographics Increase Your Reach
Infographics add visual interest to data sets and information. Visual interest attracts readers, and there is an increased likelihood that they will share infographics and other visual content. What are you more likely to send to a colleague or friend: a wordy text report or an engaging and quick-to-digest infographic?
To ensure that you are getting as wide of a reach as possible:
- Make sharing easy.
- Add share to social buttons wherever you upload infographics and include file versions sized for Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
- Include your brand or company logo and website URL in the infographic design.
Infographics Can Sway Decision Making
When information is absorbed quickly, it makes decision-making easier. Infographics break down big ideas into smaller bite-sized pieces. As our brains take in images much faster than textual information, you can instantly connect with your audience through visual content.
Quickly share essential information about your industry, products, or services, and influence your readers to action. With short attention spans and the vast amount of content available, you must inform your audience without bombarding them with too much text. Graphs, icons, and imagery help people make quick purchase decisions and form opinions.
Infographics Break Down Complex Subjects
To effectively explain complex data and topics can prove a difficult task. This challenge is especially true when sharing information with individuals outside of your organization’s specific industry. Sometimes making a point or making a sale may depend on the reader understanding complicated statistics or facts.
A clear infographic with highlighted data sets and graphs may be just the tool to simplify dense subject matter. Even those in the know will appreciate clearly presented information that doesn’t take hours of reading and processing. Share infographics on industry websites or social media groups to capture B2B interest and attention.
Infographics Raise Credibility
Interesting infographics that attract attention and rack up shares will significantly increase your organization’s credibility. The more people talk about the information and messaging shared, the more your brand or business will likely be associated with it.
As a business, you want to sell your products and services and be seen as an expert in the field. For this reason, any infographic you create must include your brand logo, colors, imagery, contact information, and website URL.
Tips for More Powerful Infographics
Choosing a Strong Topic
A powerful infographic begins with a strong topic and strong data. There are many online data sources available, including data.gov, Google Trends, and even Twitter. Don’t forget to also look through industry-specific resources such as academic and media publications.
Collecting your own data and information is another great option for many brands and businesses. Look through your organization’s recently published articles, blogs, emails, and even social media surveys, and take note of high engagement. This engagement clearly indicates that your audience will be interested and engaged in a selected topic.
Presenting Information
After you’ve selected a topic, next you should decide how to present the collected data or information, a few common methods for structuring infographic information include highlighting trends, contrasts, and outliers. Using trends involves describing current world or industry trends and indicating their likelihood to continue. Contrast is comparing and contrasting different data sets to prove a point. Outliers will involve ideas or data that do not fit the pattern or norm.
Infographics are visual content pieces, making the visual elements very important. While data creates credibility, the visuals such as graphs, imagery, and icons help engage readers and assist in understanding. Another way to help readers understand complex ideas is to keep the design simple and uncluttered.
Tools and Resources
If you are not a designer, and the idea of creating a complex content piece like an infographic is overwhelming, you can take a couple of routes. The easiest, although the more expensive option, is to hire an infographic designer. Graphic designers can put together infographic pieces, but infographic designers understand the nuances of working with data sets and visual elements.
The other route is to use dedicated design tools and templates. Some online tools available include Canva, Infogram, and Silk. Many of these tools are free to try and very helpful in creating effective infographics.
Blog posts, email newsletters, articles, and textual reports are all practical tools for sharing complex information. However, an infographic can be a much more powerful option if you want to engage readers, reach a wider audience, influence decision-making, and simplify dense topics.