Every business wants to stay ahead of its competitors and goes the extra mile to make their business better.
From hiring the best business analysis experts to investing in the research and development phase, businesses know how to influence their audience and increase their revenue.
Consequently, more and more business analysts are seeing the marketing value to infographics.
Infographics aren’t exactly new. Communicating visually dates back to the Stone Age and our ancestors’ cave drawings. Infographics have obviously transformed since then, but they’re still a means of telling stories, visualizing ideas, and communicating effectively.
That’s why every organization benefits from including infographics in their content strategy. As a tool, infographics serve many purposes and check a lot of boxes, making them a very powerful marketing asset to have.
I’ll explore these top three reasons why infographics benefit businesses and organizations:
- Infographics are great for SEO
- Infographics keep your brand top of mind
- Infographics effectively grow your audience
Infographics are great for SEO
Infographics are a game-changer for Search Engine Optimization. Not only can they be tailored to target specific keywords, they satisfy a number of Google’s high-priority ranking factors. Infographics easily improve time on page/bounce rates, page-load times (compared to other visual content), and obtaining backlinks.
A study carried out by MDG advertising states that visuals can generate about 95% of viewership as compared to plain text. This is a massive boost from an SEO point of view, since Google cares about the amount of time users are spending on a particular page. Tied to that is the reduced bounce rate, when people land on your page to view the infographic, they’re sticking around. A lower bounce rate is preferred.
Plus, infographics don’t need to be large image files, making them easy to load and keeping your page-load time optimal. Gifs, videos that auto-play, or even other types of animation can slow down how quickly your page loads, dampen the user experience and lose points from Google.
An engaging, well-designed infographic can spread like wildfire. While infographics are the most shared piece of content online, they’re also awesome organic links magnet. A high number of backlinks from quality sites is something Google looks for. Informational infographics are great references, they help validate content from other marketers and so naturally get linked back to more often than other content.
Infographics keep your brand top of mind
Human brains tend to retain visual information over plain text. Our mind is strongly programmed, and surprisingly, it can remember 65 percent of what we see in an infographic for many days.
However, we only recall about ten sections of what we read in a piece of text.
This means that an effective infographic can help to keep your brand at the forefront of your audience’s minds way longer than messages written in plain text. According to a Hubspot study, more than 60 percent of senior marketing experts said that visuals such as infographics are very compelling when communicating a brand’s story.
This makes sense when you consider the impression branded infographics can have. They’re a great visual asset to incorporate your organization’s branding - its brand colors, brand fonts and custom logo. Not only do you present helpful, relevant information, you package that information in a way that’s memorable and unique. The importance of branding to small businesses is especially important in 2019, with the emergence of online stores and countless niche businesses.
Infographics effectively grow your audience
Nobody wants to read massive slabs of text on a page. A study shows that infographics grow your audience 12% faster than infographic-less counterparts. There are several key reasons for this.
Infographics are fun to share
I mentioned it before but infographics highly shared, partially because they’re so easy to share. You can share your infographic on social media platforms with your own network. They can then share it with theirs, and your content ripples outward. However, your audience can decide to share it with their network, too. Businesses can decide to pick it up and share it with their own audiences as well. The reach of a visually attractive infographic is exponential.
Infographics are accessible
Infographics are easily accessible. Most people can spend a minute scanning an infographic and understand the content and message. They’re simpler than 2500 word blog posts that are insightful but lengthy and time-consuming reads. Their accessibility makes them easy to consume quickly, but also appealing to a wider audience.
Infographics speak to Millennials and Generation Z
Young adults and adolescents of today are more attracted to visual content. They expect to see visual information rather than just textual content. They also spend a majority of their time online and on social media to engage with brands.
8 Tips to designing an impressive infographic for your business
There are several things that you should know while crafting your infographic. It should be engaging and informative, but also visually appealing, logical and organized. The eight infographic design tips I’m sharing today will help you create the perfect infographic.
Think of an attention-grabbing title Choosing an engaging title for your infographic is very important. It is the first thing the audience will notice in your infographic. Your title must define what the infographic is about right at the beginning only. It will be easier for people to understand what they are going to read for the next few minutes. Even though it looks pretty straightforward, you would be surprised to know how often this part is overlooked.
Be mindful of your infographic’s length and file size For non-designers, managing the size and length is probably one of the toughest jobs to master while designing an infographic. Although infographics are meant to be bigger and easily readable, unnecessarily large graphics can result in losing your audience. A typical longform infographic ranges between 7000 - 8000 pixels and anything longer than that will distract people. While you’re managing the length of your infographic, keep in mind its file size. As mentioned before, it can affect load times on your page and wherever else it gets syndicated. A good infographic should be no larger than 1.5 – 2 MB.
Choose an engaging font-style With hundreds and thousands of typography styles available, it can be challenging to choose the one that best suits your infographic. Also, you don’t have to use a single font-style throughout the entire infographic. Not all fonts are made equal, and some font combinations work exceptionally well. Make sure that the font combination you choose matches the theme of your infographic, is easy to read, and consists of no more than 2-3 fonts. Text alignment is also crucial. Poor alignment of text can be distracting to even look at. You need to ensure that your headers are aligned in the same vertical axis. Also, the space between the headers & body text and between different sections must remain the same throughout the infographic.
Use custom graphics and icons Using vector images is cool, but you would be surprised to know how combining geometric shapes can make a completely different shape. It is simple to create attractive vector graphics using several geometric shapes. It needs practice, but after some time, you will be able to create excellent graphics using pre-made shapes and a bit of innovation. Also, adding different colors to the shapes can make it look more attractive.
Choose the right colors Picking colors that go well together can make your infographic look visually engaging and readable. You can spend some time on research and know more about the color connotations that will help draw in your audience. Here are some color combination tips you can use:
- Yellow It represents liveliness, joy, and energy. You can make your infographic more cheerful by adding yellow, but don’t overuse it as it might go hard on the viewer’s eyes.
- Blue This color represents productivity, depth, and identity and is widely accepted because of its relationship with the corporate sector.
- Red It is the color of intention, love, and life. Moreover, it can be used if you are giving out a warning signal or a sense of emergency (SOS).
- Pink It is attributed to love, tenderness, and romance. If you are representing female products in your infographic, then this color can be beneficial.
Avoid flat designs When there is no z-axis depth in the infographic, it gives your visuals a flat appearance. Some designers use flat design intentionally, but it is not recommendable as non-flat designs look more appealing. The purpose of your infographic is to engage more audience. And the more engaged your audience is, the more time they will spend on extracting information from your infographic. You can easily avoid the flat design by using a drop shadow effect in your infographic. You can select the shape or image and toggle “drop shadow” on/off inside the editor.
Maintain white space White space is the empty space in your infographic, and surprisingly, it is as important as the used space. When you add white space within your infographic template, you enhance the focus of the viewer. This ensures that your message is not cluttered and causes any confusion to your potential readers. Apart from the reader’s point of view, adding empty space can help you carry out the proper alignment of your infographic’s headers, sentences, and sections.
Focus on the flow of visuals and information Flow is an indispensable part of any content. All the ideas that you are presenting in your infographic should be well connected with one another. The purpose of your infographic is to move the audience through a thought process and not just throwing a bunch of visual graphics. So, while creating an infographic, make sure you have planned the flow and make it easier for the general audience to digest it.
Wrapping up
The content marketing world is always transforming. What worked last year often won’t work as well this year. However, infographics are still a major content marketing tool, and they belong in the foundation of any content strategy. Whether it’s for SEO purposes, engaging your users, educating your audience or just leaving a lasting impression, infographics help you do just that.
Kavita Verma is a digital marketing expert and a content marketer at Venngage, the online infographic and design platform. She has more than seven years of experience in content writing and in her free time, she enjoys researching and writing about digital marketing topics.