Why Infographics?
Infographic marketing offers vast potential for growing your audience, generating engagement, earning links, enhancing brand recognition and improving Google rankings. Sounds pretty good, right? If you’re interested in learning how to fully maximize the benefits of infographic marketing, this guide is for you.
The most common model of infographic marketing is this: Research. Create. Embed. Hope. Most people find the data, hand all of the results to a designer, embed the finished product in their site and hope others will pick it up and share it with their audiences.
Below I show how you can improve and streamline that model so you leave nothing to chance.
#1: Determine Audience Interests
If you’re looking to create an infographic that has audiences thinking, “Wow, that’s so cool! I have to share this!”, you need to evoke strong feelings. So before we even start, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. Step out of the box. Right now. You can’t be in the box and create successful infographics.
If you think your industry is too dry or boring to fit with infographics, you’re still in the box. There’s always something cool to be discovered, created and shared—you just have to look, adjust and direct.
Your niche and products matter to some degree, but in many cases you don’t need your infographic to be about your business itself—you just need it to be of high interest to your audience.
To know what your audience craves, you have to get into their heads. Building marketing personas goes a long way in helping you create content targeted to their interests.
Let’s say your company sells business phone systems. Who are your prospective buyers? Based on a marketing persona, you’ve found that they are business owners, chief communications officers and IT directors. Those people are interested in business development, economic growth and marketing strategies. They probably read magazines like Forbes and Financial Times and have studied subjects like economics or business.
You can adjust and direct those interests to create an infographic that shows statistics about business development and growth in general, but doesn’t mention your company specifically. The result is a useful, interesting infographic your audience can share across the board because it applies to their network and makes them look like an expert.
#2: Find a Killer Topic
With your audience’s basic traits in mind, you can use tools like BuzzSumo, Google search, Google News and Topsy to find topic ideas to inspire your overall concept. Type in your keywords (e.g., your audience’s interests or traits) to see the most shared articles across the web related to those terms—the last six months should be plenty.
When you find some relevant topics, click over to the sites and snoop around—fill your mind with ideas and let them slowly shape themselves into different infographic theme concepts.
Brainstorm different themes and narrow them down to one or two. You’ll be able tosee which one fits best as you organize your data (discussed below). When you have a strong theme, it’s much easier to choose which data to keep and which data to ditch.
#3: Distill and Organize the Best Data
As with the conceptual stage, you’ll have to hit the virtual pavement and research your topic thoroughly. Look for data and statistics that support your topic, but aren’t readily available to everyone. Search for PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and other data sources.
Using specific search operators in Google can yield excellent results. Here are a few I’ve tried:
- site:slideshare.net startups statistics
- filetype:pdf startups statistics
- startups intitle:statistics
Filter the results by date and database (e.g., images, news, videos) to find data that may be hiding in less-traveled corners of the web.
Once you’ve completed your research and have a ton of useful information, start organizing the data.
Many marketers try to include every statistic they find and often end up with an infographic that is text-heavy and overwhelming. Keep in mind that people are busy and mostly just scan content. Readability will make or break your infographic.
Avoid information overload by evaluating your data objectively. Is it integral to your story? If you’re not sure, take it out.
#4: Share a Clear Creative Work Order
When you’ve decided on the final theme and direction, write up a clear creative work order that specifies the visual theme (include examples if necessary).
My creative work orders include color codes to show what should be text and what should be visual. The designer can tell at a glance how to convey specific information.
The example below is a partial color-coded work order I made for an infographic related to the growth of startups and new businesses. I provided data and asked for it to be presented in a theme based on the TV show Shark Tank. I chose the theme because the premise of Shark Tank is that hopeful entrepreneurs sink or swim, and startups face similar challenges.
*Any text highlighted in green is text that we actually want to see included in the infographic. Text highlighted in brown should be visual. The rest is just direction for the design or images.
Intro Section:
- Over the course of five seasons of Shark Tank, there have been 93 episodes, 377 pitches and 186 deals.
- As of 2013, the Sharks have offered to invest over $20,044,000 in 109 companies.
- However, only 1/3 of the deals made on the show actually close!
- After the deals are made, the entrepreneurs and their companies undergo a months-long vetting process by the Sharks.
- According to Daymond John, “Only about 20% of [deals] close after doing the due diligence.”
- Why such a low rate?
- Since 2012, only 1 in 17 ventures have ever seen a profit.
- The Sharks are tough—but the real world of venture capitalism and entrepreneurship is even tougher!
Using those clear instructions, the designer produced this:
Ask your designer to make a thumbnail of the infographic and give you the final Illustrator file. You’ll need both when you start the promotion phase.
Cite your Sources!
Whether you’re writing an article, a blog post or creating an infographic, it’s important to cite your sources—both to give credit to the original articles and to lend additional credibility to your own content.
If you list statistics without explaining where you found the data, people may doubt the veracity of your content. Make sure you list all of your sources at the bottom of the infographic so people can read more about the content and statistics you’re sharing.
As an added benefit, you can let your sources know that you’ve included their content in your infographic. Who knows, they just might choose to share it on their site or social profiles!
Cite your Sources!
Whether you’re writing an article, a blog post or creating an infographic, it’s important to cite your sources—both to give credit to the original articles and to lend additional credibility to your own content.
If you list statistics without explaining where you found the data, people may doubt the veracity of your content. Make sure you list all of your sources at the bottom of the infographic so people can read more about the content and statistics you’re sharing.
As an added benefit, you can let your sources know that you’ve included their content in your infographic. Who knows, they just might choose to share it on their site or social profiles!
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