Using infographics in your content strategy
Who doesn’t love a good data visualization?
With attention spans growing shorter for digital users, infographics are a great way to convey complex information in an easy-to-read format. More than 65% of brands are using infographics in their content marketing, according to Xerox, and usage is expected to continue rising in 2022.
Not only can it be easier for brands to communicate with their audiences using infographics, but the medium can also help some brands drive engagement from their social media channels to their website, according to digital marketing experts at DemandGen.
Personally, I find infographics awkward. Usually, I find many of them to be sized incorrectly, or they are too long, too cluttered, or filled with too much information. They remind me of the internet in the mid-2000s when everyone was really eager to take a lot of data and distill that information down to digestible graphics so that social media users, especially Twitter users, would share them in their posts.
However, I think there’s an opportunity for a lot of brands, especially media companies, to update how they use infographics. And the good news is, you don’t have to have a big budget to make infographics nowadays. Thanks to websites like Canva, it’s far easier for content creators and small brands to make high-impact infographics with affordable software.
Not only can infographics help you tell visual stories, but they can help you create backlinks, which could increase your website or content rank in Google search. Backlinks, also known as link building, help brands rank high in organic search results when the links come from relevant, high-quality websites that Google thinks have authority. Therefore, creating an infographic strategy that is relevant to your niche or brand is essential.
For instance, in the video above, I detail how you can create an infographic in Canva. But the core message of my infographic is why brands should lean into video storytelling. The theme of that infographic is important because I write about brand building for my blog and that’s the content I also publish on Youtube. Therefore, I’m trying to be an authority in Google’s eyes when it comes to marketing and content development because it relates to my niche.
Below is the infographic gif I made in Canva. It’s the same one I recreate in the Youtube video above:
If making infographics seems like a good strategy for your brand, then here are some great tools that you can use to start designing your own infographics today:
How to make infographics for free
Free to use and easy to make, I can’t recommend Canva enough. To access their infographic tool, all you need to do is sign up for a free account, and start customizing pre-set templates. One thing to keep in mind is to make sure that the sizing of your infographic is appropriate. I see infographics that are often very long, and they don’t fit most blogs or social posts.
Visme is another platform that allows you to make infographics for free. It also uses a template model which allows users to sign up or use their guest option in order to start customizing their templates. It’s easy to use, and they have a good set of templates to choose from that can fit your brand.
Venngage has a free infographic maker. The website makes you sign in first before you can start using it. It has really nice, bold designs that you can customize to fit your needs. It’s similar to Visme, in my opinion, although I think Visme is a bit better and easier to use.
Pickmonkey has a free trial option. It’s by the company Shutterstock so they have a wide inventory of stock images and graphics to choose from as you build your infographic. Personally, I think the other options above are quite powerful, so if you want to save a little money, I suggest using those options first.
What size should my infographic be?
Sizing of your infographic is dependent on what platform you’re posting on. Therefore, if you want to publish on your blog, generally, I recommend a vertical infographic between 600 to 1100 pixels wide. However, for shorter infographics, you can increase the height of the pixels to 2000. If you want to publish infographics onto social media, then you’ll need to build them to fit the platforms you’re aiming to publish on. Typically, long vertical infographics are not suitable for most social media platforms.
The social media analytics dashboard company, Hootsuite, has an informative chart on social media sizes for 2022 that you can use as a guide.
And here’s an example of a customized infographic I made that was social specific so that I could share it on Linkedin:
As you can tell, infographics can still be an effective way to communicate complex information to readers. I think they can be great for presentations, business-to-business (B2B) content and communication strategies, sales meetings, and driving social media and website engagement. Therefore, I encourage you to try making an infographic for your brand, business, or publication, and let me know how it goes. Creating a variety of different types of content for your channels can help you potentially reach and engage current and new audiences because everyone processes information differently.
