An infographic can make or break your social media post or an article. It’s a powerful way of distributing information, but you must do it correctly. You can spend all the time in the world making an infographic. If you miss the mark, it’s going to be wasted.
Here, you’ll find the five best strategies to elevate your infographics to the next level, convey the right information, tell a story, and increase traffic to your website. The more time users spend on your site, the higher the chance of converting them into paying customers.
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Stick To One Point
Leave the deep dives for a webinar, online course, ebook, or long-form blog. Infographics are supposed to be for one thing. That could be a visual illustration of data you gathered or supporting arguments for a specific point. Every element in the infographic needs to add to the message you’re trying to convey. Make it easy to understand the main point from the get-go. Think of your grandma. She needs to understand what you’re trying to say.
Choosing the topic for your infographic is hard. You’re paralyzed by knowledge because you’re deep in your industry, and there are so many things to pick. But you need to distinguish between what’s interesting to you and what’s attractive to your audience. Remove yourself from the equation and always stick to the latter. Or, even better, brainstorm a couple of ideas, make a poll, and ask your audience to vote. Then just do what they ask of you.
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Let The Visuals Talk
An infographic is short of an “informational graphic.” And you shouldn’t interpret that meaning by posting an all-text post and calling it an infographic. Visuals are the key, center, emphasis, main point, or whatever you want to call it. Your infographic must make sense when you remove most of the text. Every word you add needs to supplement the main point.
If possible, try to make the visuals related to the topic. If you’re presenting data about green energy, saving the environment, or the impact of wildlife, you can use a graphic of a tree or the planet to illustrate your points. In every case, you need to keep the design consistent. You don’t want the graphic to break in half or just look weird. Simply put, if you use line icons at the top, you need to use them at the bottom. Sprinkle that with text bubbles, shapes, diagrams, and a few data visualizations. Voila, you now have a memorable infographic.
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The Flow Needs To Make Sense
When guys look at girls at the beach, their eyes naturally go to a few places. The same thing happens when girls look at guys. It’s natural, and it usually follows a specific order. Well, the principle applies to your audience, too. Where will their eyes automatically go as soon as they lay eyes on your infographic? Will they follow your intended order, or do you need to add arrows, lines, or other visual indicators?
If your infographic isn’t organized, you need to add some cues to lead the reader from one section to the next. There need to be clear separations so they know how to understand and digest the information. You don’t want the infographic you worked super hard on to confuse your readers.
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Have a Basic Color Scheme
Imagine looking at a picture of a green sunset. It just looks weird, and you’re just imagining it. There’s a process to selecting colors, and it needs to be consistent with your branding. Everyone is already familiar with your logo and branding, so don’t experiment with using contrast or different colors for an infographic. Keep it natural, and keep it simple.
If you stray away from your branding, some users might think that you got hacked. Imagine if Coca-Cola or McDonald’s got a new design intern who changed their color scheme and branding for an infographic and posted it. You’ll be wondering what happened to them and whether you’ll get scammed if you click to view their infographic ad when it opens in a new tab!
The design intern will probably get fired for doing so, but a similar thing can happen to anyone. So always be secure online. If you’re browsing the internet with an unsecured connection and no malware protection, you can be a target for cybercriminals. They then can get hold of all your data and files and use your branding to scam people. You must know what is a VPN and how to use it, and the same thing goes for an antivirus. Think of these tools as shining a bright red light to hackers, signaling you’re not to be messed with.
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Make It Mobile Friendly
Does the infographic look like the same on mobile and desktop? This is a question you have to answer before posting. Most people are browsing the web on their phones, so making your content mobile-friendly is the best way to ensure it reaches a wider audience.
If you’re integrating the infographic on your website, instead of using a huge JPG image, build it as a responsive page. That way, it will look the same no matter which device your end user has. Your users won’t need to zoom in. They’ll just absorb the information.
Another option is separating the infographic into multiple chunks for mobile devices. One version (the full one) will be shown to desktops, and the second (the one divided into chunks) will be shown to mobile users. You can also use the latter for social media posts like carousels and slideshows.
