Creating an infographic is a powerful way to communicate information visually. The key to a successful infographic is to make information engaging, easy to understand, and shareable. This is helpful online, as people tend to be too lazy to read detailed written content.

Because of this fact, infographics offer many benefits from a digital marketing point of view. These include better UX metrics on your site, better organic visibility, and improved social media engagement.

With that in mind, we’ll be looking at a step-by-step process to create an infographic. First, though, let’s start with the basics.

Create an Infographic

What is an Infographic?

How to Create an Infographic

An infographic is a pictogram. This means it combines summary text bullet-point ideas with interesting and eye-catching visuals. An average person can spend just a few minutes reading an infographic and get a nice overview of what may otherwise be a very complex subject.

Colourful infographics help people process information. Care must be taken in the infographic design to avoid excessive clutter that makes it hard to read. The infographic content needs to be factual, interesting, and useful.

Create an Infographic

Studies reported by Xerox show that people are up to 25 times more likely to comprehend information when shown using pictograms. The reader’s attention span is increased to 82% when infographics are used instead of just plain text.

An infographic is also helpful when giving public presentations about a particular concept. While the infographic details are explained by the presenter to the audience, the attractive visuals make it easy to follow along.

Moreover, the infographic serves as an outline guide for the presenter to help make sure the topic is covered logically and organised without leaving out a discussion of important parts of the lecture or presentation.

Create an Infographic
A growing number of content marketers swear by quality infographics.

What are Good Subjects for an Infographic?

Almost any subject can make an infographic. Concepts supported by bullet lists of statistics are great to present as an infographic. The idea is to convey the complex subject in understandable parts and, somewhat like an outline presentation, show them in a logical order that is easy to comprehend.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Compelling Visuals

In today’s digital age, where information overload is a constant reality, infographics have emerged as a powerful tool for communicating complex ideas in a clear, concise, and visually appealing manner. By combining text, images, and data, infographics effectively capture attention, simplify information, and make it memorable.

Whether you’re a seasoned communicator or a novice in visual storytelling, this comprehensive guide will equip you with the knowledge and tools to create infographics that inform, engage, and inspire. Embark on a journey to transform your ideas into impactful visuals that resonate with your audience.

Demystifying the Infographic Creation Process

Creating an effective infographic requires a well-defined process encompassing planning, designing, and refining. Let’s break down the process into manageable steps:

Step 1: Define Your Purpose and Audience

Before embarking on the creative process, clearly define the purpose of your infographic. What message do you want to convey? What audience are you targeting? Understanding your goals and audience will guide your content and design choices.

Step 2: Gather and Organize Your Data

Create an Infographic
Gathering and organizing relevant information

Infographics are primarily data-driven, so gather relevant information from credible sources. Logically organize your data, identifying key takeaways and patterns that will form the foundation of your infographic.

Step 3: Choose a Compelling Visual Narrative

Determine the visual story you want to tell. Consider how the layout, colours, and graphics will guide the viewer’s eye and enhance the understanding of the data.

Step 4: Review the Raw Content and Highlight the Key Elements

The first step is figuring out what you want to create an infographic about. This is harder than you might think. Essentially, you need to have an in-depth understanding of the topic to pull out the key information for users.

Say, for example, we want to create an infographic that convinces people to invest in SEO for their business website. The key information that we want to present in our infographic would be as follows:

Internet marketing includes having a web presence designed well for search engine optimization (SEO) and links to social media for maximum impact.

Companies need an internet marketing strategy that includes website development for ease of use and proper display on mobile devices, plus continual SEO efforts to increase organic search engine results and achieve high rankings on the search engine results page (SERP).

Companies benefit from having an Internet marketing strategy that monetizes customer behaviour in support of long-term strategic goals. To be successful, a company must identify the target market and be able to determine the best methods to reach them.

These methods usually are a combination of attracting attention by providing high-quality content, paid advertising campaigns, social media influence, brand awareness efforts, and customer retention and reward programs.

Step 5: Extract the Key Elements

Once you understand the overall message you’d like to convey to the readers, it’s time to start paring this down to key points. The idea here is to tie what you’re trying to say to the readers’ overall goals.

Since our example is a B2B infographic, this means tying our subject matter to the profitability of a business.

So, in our SEO example, we might want to tie the following elements to the business’ profitability:

Step 6: Organize the Key Elements Into Logical Groups

Next, we aim to break each element we want to tie to profitability into more discrete variables. In other words, we’ll break down these ideas into measurable variables to quantify them and establish a link between them and revenue.

Here are a few examples:

Internet Marketing:

  • Web presence – Site traffic and content variables.
  • Search engine optimization – Keyword data.
  • Social media – Ad spend.

Strategic Goals

  • Target market.
  • Audience behaviour.
  • Brand awareness.

Step 7: Find Data

Next, it’s time to start pulling together the data you’ll use in your infographic. The most compelling infographics present an indisputable statistical link between the topic and the goal.

This requires good data. Essentially, you have two options for sourcing data for your infographics:

  1. Conducting original research,
  2. Relying on existing data.

Researching original data isn’t as complicated as you might think. Most businesses these days have all kinds of data at their disposal. For example, you’re probably already tracking how users use your site in Google Analytics.

You might pull similar data from other business analysis tools.

Even if you don’t have this data already on hand, you can easily survey your customers.

Alternatively, you might choose to use existing data. Simply create a visually appealing infographic using open-source data and credit its owner.

Create an infographic
Infographics are also incredibly memorable.

Step 8: Add Graphics

Be sure to select graphics and create a layout that makes it easy to read, with plenty of white space. Display a thumbnail image version on a clickable web page to see a zoomed version. Also, offer the infographic as a downloadable PDF file.

Be sure to have contact information about the organization at the bottom of the infographic and, when appropriate, have a call to action.

Response to the call-to-action increases by using incentives, such as offering a downloadable white paper for an email sign-up or a discount on the next purchase.

Step 9: Incorporate Engaging Visual Elements

Leverage various visual elements, such as icons, illustrations, and charts, to make your infographic visually appealing and engaging.

Step 10: Maintain Visual Hierarchy

Establish a clear visual hierarchy to guide the viewer’s attention. Use size, colour, and placement to emphasize important elements and create a logical flow.

Step 11: Ensure Clarity and Readability

Prioritize clarity and readability. Use a consistent colour scheme, easy-to-read fonts, and ample white space to ensure your infographic is comfortable to view and understand.

Step 12: Test and Refine

Seek feedback from colleagues or potential viewers to identify areas for improvement. Refine your infographic based on feedback, ensuring it effectively conveys your message.

Content Marketing: The Power of a Story

Effective Infographic Design Best Practices:

  • For sizing, aim for vertical dimensions of 12,000+ pixels for shareability. Horizontal infographics can be 6,000+ pixels wide.
  • Limit word count to mostly essential keywords and facts. Too much text overwhelms me. ~100-500 words is ideal.
  • Use sans serif fonts like Arial or Roboto for clarity. Vary text sizes to create a hierarchy.
  • Employ the 60-30-10 rule – 60% graphic elements, 30% text, 10% negative space.
  • Use complementary colours that reinforce your message and brand. Limit to 2-3 colors.

Creating Effective Data Visualizations:

  • Choose chart types that make sense for the data – bar charts for comparisons, line charts for trends over time, pie charts for percentages, etc.
  • Limit the data points plotted to the most essential facts and statistics. Avoid overloading.
  • Employ design elements like colour, bolding, and highlighting to highlight key data points.
  • Use consistent formatting and styles across all visual elements and charts for congruency.
  • Label charts clearly and include descriptive titles explaining what is being visualized.

Design and Layout:

  • Use whitespace and spacing between elements to avoid a cluttered look—group-related elements.
  • Arrange visuals and text following the conventional Z-pattern for reading. Lead with key points.
  • Break up long text sections with relevant images, subheadings, icon lists, pull quotes and other elements.
  • Establish a clear visual hierarchy through sizes, colours, and styles. Make what’s important stand out.
  • Use alignment, repetition, and proximity to organize – and align similar items, repeat styles, and related items.

Distribution:

  • Publish natively on your blog or site with metadata descriptions to drive organic traffic. Enable social sharing.
  • Promote on social channels like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Create teaser posts that link to full version.
  • Pitch influencers and publications in your industry to feature or link back to your infographic in content.
  • Insert into relevant slide decks and presentations. Use as blog column sidebars or lead generation opt-in gifts.
  • Repurpose into different formats like videos, webinars, and other visual content. Expand each key stat/fact.

Create an infographic FAQ:

Q: What tools do I need to create an infographic? A: Use free options like Canva Piktochart or paid tools like Venngage and Adobe Illustrator. Infogrames are also popular.

Q: What makes a good infographic? A: A good infographic is visually engaging, easy to digest, and focused on key stats and takeaways. It should have a logical flow and structure. Clear data visualizations are key.

Q: How long should an infographic be? A: Most effective infographics contain between 5-15 visualizations and keep the total word count under 500 words. Infographics over 2 pages long tend to lose the reader’s attention.

Q: How do I make an infographic visually appealing? A: Use colour strategically, consistent branding elements, varied text formatting, quality images and illustrations, negative space, and alignment to polish infographics visually.

Conclusion

To summarise, the key steps to creating an effective infographic are:

  1. Review raw content and highlight key elements.
  2. Extract the key elements.
  3. Categorize the content into logical groups.
  4. Find statistics to support the concepts.
  5. Add graphics.

Publish the infographics in all media, including websites, blogs, and social media, and send a copy to the organisation’s opt-in email list.

Infographics are easy to understand and easy to forward to others. This makes it a very convenient way to communicate with customers and potential clients. Organizations that publish infographics frequently become an authority on a specific niche topic.

A popular method of dissemination of infographics is allowing the right to republish on other websites as long as credit is given to the source.

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