Infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than a text article. It’s not a secret that online audiences prefer visual content and share graphics and photos more than copy on visually-driven social sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Facebook.
But even with this knowledge, far too many bloggers are failing to embrace this media type and publish infographics on their site.
A text-minded blogger might feel inadequate when it comes to creating a visually-driven content product, but that’s not an excuse. Here are few ways to get an infographic up on your site — even if you aren’t a professional designer.
Team Up with a Designer
Most writers are not designers, and most designers are not writers. So rather than hire a designer to create an infographic for you, consider collaborating with the designer instead.
Find a way to trade out services or assist each other in places where the other is lacking.
Use a site like Behance, Dribble, or CopyPress Community to connect with designers and then offer to barter services. If you have solid research and writing skills, it is likely you can trade those services to a designer for some design work.
Know How to Create Infographic Copy
When you find a designer who can create the visual, do your part as a writer to come up with the data and story for the infographic.
1. Research – Start with finding the data that you want to base the infographic on. It is much easier to find data and then analyze it to tell a story, rather than come up with a concept and then find the data to prove it. A few awesome data resources include:
- Wolfram Alpha
- Statistic Brain
- Pew Internet
- Statista
- Fact Browser
2. Find the Story in the Data – Once you find an interesting data set that relates to your industry, you can start to discover the story that the data tells.
First, look for the relationships in the data. Identify how the data points relate to each other. Then consider the implication of those relationship in order to find the story.
Which trends, patterns, differences, similarities, and comparisons are interesting? Identify those points then consider if your audience will find the information useful or engaging. Only then can you start to consider the design that will follow.
3. Consider the Design – If you are going to put the creation of the actual infographic in the hands of a designer, you aren’t responsible for coming up with too much of the design plan — but you should have some idea of what you want.
If you don’t consider the design at all, what you think is good data that tells a story may end up looking flat, boring, and needlessly displayed through visuals.
Review your data points and consider which types of visuals will display the information in the most interesting and relatable way and add notes for the designer. If you can’t envision any broad design elements, you may want to reconsider the data. Type of visuals to consider include:
Pie Charts
- Bar and Line Charts
- Scatterplots
- Venn Diagrams
- Period Tables
- Bubble Charts
- Maps
While giving a suggestion for the type of visual is part of your job as an infographic writer, don’t worry about giving directions for color, style, and fonts. Leave that part up to the designer.
Use a Template and Create Your Own Infographic
If you don’t want to loop in a designer and feel up to the challenge of creating your own infographic, there are dozens of infographic tools online to help you create a simple or complex design.
- Picktochart – Over 900,000 infographics have been created on this simple platform that offers both paid and free versions of a large variety of templates.
- Infogr.am – The free version of this platform offers templates that are easy to edit and rearrange. All you have to do is upload the data and choose the types of charts and color palette you want.
- easel.ly – This is still in beta version but it’s worth checking out because you can edit, change, and customize graphs, maps, and charts and share easily.
Hire Someone To Design It
If you just don’t have a designing bone in your body, don’t stress. You can simply hire a designer to do the leg work for you. Visual.ly and 99Designs are two reliable sites for infographic creation that require little work on your side of the project.
Whatever way you use to get an infographic created, do it. If you aren’t creating amazing infographics for your site, you are missing out on major traffic and engagement from your audience. Have you experienced an increase in traffic after posting an infographic?
No comments:
Post a Comment