The Power of Infographics

As a blogger or reader, you might have seen people posting infographics for everything. Have you ever tried to realize the power of infographics. How it’s going to be useful for your blog and how your readers will get benefit with infographics.

The interesting thing about infographics is that they are very much ingrained into our daily lives. We come across them all the time without even realising. Derived from the words ‘information graphics’, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Traditionally used in manuals, signs and graphs, they have more recently been propelled into a more socially popular culture. What once acted primarily as a function has now become cool and creative. Various platforms have picked up on this and they’re now commonly woven into various marketing campaigns. Forget outdated microwave manuals and dusty science textbook designs, infographics have created a modern twist on presenting information.

The beauty of infographics is their ability to convey a message, concept or instruction in a very short amount of time – almost instantly in fact. We are all inclined to process visuals far easier than a piece of text and that is why infographics appeal to so many people. In some cases, they also break down many barriers as they can be appreciated universally. People from different countries who speak different languages can all look at the same infographic and come to an understanding. This is graphic design at its best.
Communication is key in absolutely everything we do. These days, we’re all trying to think of more advanced and efficient ways of getting our messages across. Again, the infographic steps up to the challenge. They tend to incite a punchier reaction than a piece of text would. This is probably because they are known to trigger an emotional response whether it be laughter, anger or shock.

So, What’s the power of Infographics:

Visual appeal

Charts are often used to display information. However, you’d be wrong in thinking that these are your average Excel charts. Infographic charts are dynamic, smart and boast a range of information. Colour schemes and fonts are normally carefully considered to make it as visually appealing as possible. The trick is to keep the visuals and graphics engaging from start to finish.

The colours need to be appealing and inviting on the screen and easy on the eye. Considerations as to what it’ll look like when it’s shared on various websites and blogs needs to be taken into account. Colours can have a great impact on targeting the brain and certain shades will be more effective than others. A lot of research goes into the colour selection process to trigger desired reactions.

Sharing

As well as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, infographics have proved to be very popular and successful on social bookmarking sites such as Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. People go crazy for them on these sites and they’re shared extremely quickly with the potential to go viral.
In a modern culture where everything needs to be instantaneous and attention spans are short, infographics work perfectly. Including share buttons also helps infographics to be shared at the click of a button. Most people will be sold on anything that is likely to save them both time and energy.

Companies sometimes include infographics in their e-mail marketing campaigns and press releases as another way to get the image shared quickly and to a large number of people.

Embedding

A lot of companies will provide an embed code which is normally provided underneath the infographic in a text box. The code can then be easily pasted into HTML coding on other sites. This will display the infographic as well as providing a guaranteed link to the source. Having an infographic published on another site is very valuable in the eyes of search engines. This is a brilliant way to generate traffic and effortlessly create links for a company.

Branding

It should not be forgotten that using infographics is a great way to brand a company. Any business will consider the job well done if they are able to give their consumer an accurate portrayal of themselves. An infographic allows various information, both promotional and informative, to be saturated into an infographic which will reek of the company’s brand. This allows consumers to gain an opinion of the company in half the time that they would through reading a company statement. They will also feel more connected to the company through the story-telling and developing nature of the infographic.

I hope this insight on Infographics, will give you an idea how it’s important and how you can leverage the power of infographics, to get more social media attention. Do let us know what other benefits of using infographics you can think of?

This is a guest post by Alex Woods, who is an online writer and blogger at BaseKit. If you would like to write for ShoutMeLoud, check our guest posting guidelines.

Article by Alex Woods

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