If you’re looking for a way to spice up your content marketing strategy, then you should consider using infographics. Through infographics, you can visually share information faster and in an appealing way. On average, people are more likely to read content if it uses graphics or visuals – including infographics – than plain-text blog posts. Take your pick of facts: Universities that use infographics in their marketing see a 98% increase in traffic to their websites. Influencers who use relevant visuals receive 2.3 times as many views and engagement on social media than those without visual content. On Twitter, 50% of retweets include an image.
These stats show just how important infographics truly are for content marketing strategies today. But the next question is: How do you go about creating amazing infographics? Below we’ve outlined our process for creating successful infographics, whether it’s for your brand or on behalf of your clients and/or organization.
Step 1: Provoke Curiosity Through Infographic Making
The first step to successful infographic making should be to provoke curiosity by asking questions at the top. This will naturally get people scrolling down to read more and ultimately share with their friends. On the other end of the spectrum, if your infographic doesn’t ask any questions and jumps right into a dry litany of facts, statistics, and numbers then it’s likely that only those truly interested in the subject will hang around to read it.
You’ll need to think like a journalist here. You can ask the who, what, when, why, where, and how questions. For example: “What does intermittent fasting do?” “How does forex trading work?”, “What is SEO?”, “Should you use infographics for link building?” The goal is to get people’s attention about your topic.
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Step 2: Answer Questions at Top
Now that you’ve got people reading, it’s time to answer those burning questions they have about whatever subject matter you’re tackling with your infographic. Again, be specific. Don’t give short answers like “yes” without expounding on your topic. For our last sample question above, you can write out the reasons why you’d like to use infographics for your content strategy (ex: increased organic traffic, engagement on social media, improved SEO).
If you can find an answer to a commonly asked question about your subject matter then this would be another great addition to share with readers. For instance, if you’re creating an infographic on how blogging can improve SEO and increase organic traffic to your website, don’t forget to include the age-old debate on whether or not blog comments are effective at increasing search engine rankings.
Step 3: Make An Infographic Showing Useful Advice
Infographics that boost SEO also tend to include lots of actionable advice — after all, the ultimate goal is to educate readers on how they can do something more effectively. In this section, you want to provide tips on the best ways to achieve the desired goals. For example: ‘How can I improve my site’s SEO?’ ‘What is the best blogging frequency to increase organic traffic?’
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Step 4: Make Your Social Media Infographic Interactive
Infographics are all about visuals — so why not make your infographics shareable by creating interactive visual prompts? For example, let’s say you’re creating an infographic on how to create amazing social media graphics. Create a quiz at the end of your graphic that asks readers and their friends to take the social media graphics quiz and then share their results. Another example: let’s say you’re creating an infographic on how to write amazing headlines. Create a quiz asking readers if they can identify which headline is better for creating more sales.
Step 5: Make It Engaging
As an infographic creator, the final step to remember in making engaging content with infographics is to include a call-to-action at the end of your graphic. This could be anything from asking readers to share or embed your infographic, asking them to subscribe and/or leave a comment, or asking them to download a free resource on the topic.
Step 6: Promote Your Content Among Relevant Communities
No matter what kind of business you have, chances are there’s a strong community somewhere out there made up of people interested in similar subject matter and content. For example, if you’re working on an infographic about baking and you want to promote it among bakers then consider sharing it with an Instagram infographic, or with a baking community on Facebook, a forum for bakers, or even something as simple as asking readers to share it with their friends. Think outside the box when it comes to promoting your content — and make sure you’re going where your potential customers are!
In Conclusion
Remember: infographics should be entertaining while still offering a wealth of information. There’s a fine line between creating an infographic that simply lists details and one that offers compelling, engaging content to readers. It can be used to enhance your content marketing and SEO strategy — but only when done right! Follow the tips in this article and you’ll have yourself an effective infographic in no time.
Do you want to make an infographic for your brand but don’t know where to start? Venngage can help! Our software is a free infographic maker that allows creating infographics easy for anyone, even if you’ve never made one before. Give Venngage a try today here to see how it works!