Digital Marketing: How to Utilize Infographics To Your Advantage

Information graphics or infographics refers to a visual presentation of data. It should come as no surprise that in today's visual world a colorful display of data can be more effective than a simple chart of graph. Adding a more lively display of graphics to press releases or other marketing materials may seem like a waste of time on the time on the surface, but putting forth the extra effort could mean thousands of leads on your website and a boost in traffic to your site.

The Value of Infographics

Infographics take mundane facts, figures and statistics and transforms them into stunning visual presentations that enhance your text. In terms of social networks and online sharing, infographics can be even more valuable. In other words, people want to share visually appealing graphics with others. Social media makes it even easier to share a fun, snappy article peppered with visually appealing graphics and stats. The ability to customize infographics lets you add company logs, headlines, taglines and other additions to enhance the marketing power of your graphics.

Types of Infographics

As with anything, people are going to judge your infographics. When using infographics for marketing, this can be a double-edged sword. Sure, you'll get more hits and more attention. If your infographics aren't that great, however, you'll also hear about it. You may hear comments ranging from "beautiful" to "amateurish." The key to turning infographics into an effective part of your marketing campaign is knowing what approach to take. There are four basic categories of infographics that fit into various types.

• "State of" - These infographics show the current "state of" a particular industry. You'll usually see timelines or comparisons of how an industry has changed over the years and how things are now. Usually, the emphasis is or how good things are now in a particular industry or for a particular company.

• "Evolution" - These infographics are meant to establish you as something of an authority. This could be the history of the product or service you're marketing or the history of a certain industry. The emphasis is on how things have changed over the years. The goal is give your audience something to think about.

• "Compare/Contrast" - These infographics allow you to compare and contrast - as the name implies - two different things. Usually, your product is one of the two things being compared. You can inject some humor here or create a debate to engage your audience.

• "Resource" - This is where you provided an illustrated "how to" guide. The purpose of this type of infographic is to present yourself as expert and demonstrate how a certain problem is solved with your product or visually show how your product is used.

You want to make sure you use credible sources for any information you put into your infographics. Consider creating a blog specifically for your infographics. The goal is to make images and graphics as easy to share as possible.

Keep It Simple

The point of infographics is to make information easier to understand. Conversely, the content has to be good too. You should avoid the temptation to put too much effort into your infographics. If infographics completely overshadow the actual text, this isn't good either. The general idea is to compile as much data as possible for your infographics and then scale back and edit the data so that it relates to your text. Once you get this part down, the actual presentation of the data in visual form becomes clear. Infographics are only effective if they are informative, eye-catching and easy to remember. You want to keep the point of your infographics simple. If you have a lot of data you want to present, divide it up into multiple infographics.

Finally, you want your infographics to be sharable. Infographics tend to be effective if they are easy to share. This means you don't want images too wide or too large to easily be shared. Not too many people are going to post a huge infographic to their Facebook page, but are more likely to be receptive to placing an image on the side or other convenient location. Think about what becomes of infographics once they leave your site. Some become posters or desktop backgrounds. If you've added your logo or company name to your infographic, you have an excellent marketing tool just waiting to be shared.