Infographics came onto the scene in around 2008 and have evolved quite a bit over the years. Starting off, they were made of basic colored shapes and used popular buzzwords. Now an infographic is often a carefully designed graphic content piece, which can even include the addition of gifs and other interactive elements. It is clear that real artistic and marketing care is put into this specific visual medium.
But is the infographic a trend that should be considered past its prime? Or is it still a relevant tool you should include in your 2022 digital marketing plan?
(Brooke Cagle / unsplash)
With the high popularity of infographics over the past decade plus, it’s fair to worry about the possibility of oversaturation in the industry and loss of impact. However, people are, and are always going to be, visually motivated. Processing information visually is known to help with comprehension of complex ideas and memory retention.
What has actually changed since 2008 is that audiences have become much more discerning as content consumers. Content is everywhere. However, if you and your marketing team are taking the time to create beautiful infographics that provide real value to your readers, they will continue to be relevant.
Here are five ways that the infographic can continue to strengthen your marketing efforts.
1. Expand Your Reach
Infographics and other visual content are more likely to generate views, and to be shared by your audience and other sources, creating inbound referral links. While you should post infographic content on your own website and social media accounts, it’s also important to make it easily shareable for your readers, with clear calls to action. Consider including an embed code, a download button, and even posting on third-party infographic sharing sites.
2. Provide Value to Readers
It’s not enough for your infographic to look good, it also needs to provide value, and even entertainment, to your readers. Audiences today do not want to simply be sold to. They are looking for content that is informative, enjoyable, and contains useful resources and tips to improve upon their lives. Content that makes use of visuals, graphics, and helpful charts can demonstrate that your brand actually cares about serving the needs of its customer base. The valuable information you share can help your audience make more informed decisions, and in turn can help to build brand loyalty.
3. Build Brand Awareness
While providing value can help build brand loyalty, what you include in the infographic itself can help to build brand awareness. People are hardwired to remember visual images over textual information, therefore it’s not enough to put your company name at the bottom of the graphic and call it a day. Your design should be eye-catching, easily understood, and also call to mind what your company does and stands for.
This does not mean your branding needs to be all over your infographic. Remember that you are first looking to provide valuable content to your audience. However, you should always be sure to include your logo, website and contact information, and a brief description of what your company does. You should also focus your graphic design on using brand associated color palettes.
4. Assist with SEO
Widely read, easily shared, and linked infographics are great for SEO. High quality visual content, tailored to specific, carefully chosen keywords, is going to attract organic backlinks and help to drive traffic to your website. You will also be establishing brand credibility by providing value added information, which will be an additional boost in your company’s SEO. Be sure to also use image keywords when posting on your own webpage, blog, or on a third-party sharing site.
5. Easily Repurposed
When you invest in high-quality, well-designed infographics, you are making a smart and cost-effective marketing decision. A strong infographic can be repurposed into lots of other content types, including both online and offline posters, brochures and more.
An infographic can be a large image or file. It may be beneficial to break it down into smaller sections of information, whether that is cropping out sections to be shared visually on social media pages, or taking out individual points of text to be repurposed as tweets, or status updates.
These days video is the reigning content king. It may also be beneficial to repurpose the information and visual images you’ve used on an infographic into a shareable video.
Not Going Anywhere
Infographics can help people to understand difficult concepts and information. Breaking data and ideas down into easily processed graphics, charts, and visual aids is a concept that has been around for generations, and will likely never go away.
The infographic specifically has grown as a tool in content marketing strategy because it provides information to readers quickly, as well as being easily shared, and helpful for developing backlinks and a strong SEO presence. In 2022 infographics are still here, and still very much relevant.