Looking for content that catches the eye and engages your audience?
Then chances are, you’re looking to make some infographics!
But what is an infographic? When should you use infographics, and what’s the best way to create one? In this blog, we’ll run through everything you need to know about infographic writing, including both infographic copywriting and the design elements, helping you better engage your audience and create content that both delights and informs.
What is an infographic?
An infographic is a medium for sharing information in a striking, visual and engaging way. Sure, you can write about your new products, services or company data in a document, spreadsheet or email, but if you want to make a real impact, an infographic is the way to go!
Infographics work so well because they transform your words into a narrative, telling a visual story that’s far more gripping than other mediums.
However, creating great infographics isn’t just about slapping your data on some nice pictures and calling it a day. If you want to create successful infographics, you need to ensure that they’re well written, with clear, considered designs and attention-grabbing headlines.
Get it right, and you can see some serious business benefits…
What are the benefits of using infographics?
Infographics are a unique form of content, meaning that they also come with unique benefits, too.
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Improve communication
Infographics simplify complex information, making it easier for your audience to understand what it is you’re saying.
Say your product provides complex, quantifiable improvements to a customer’s business processes. Putting this data into an infographic that visually demonstrates the benefits your business provides makes it far more accessible to the broadest possible audience.
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Engage with your audience
Most of us like it when things are aesthetically pleasing.
In fact, infographics are about 30x more likely to be read than a full article. Sometimes we just want information delivered directly into our brain with as little thought as possible.
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Boost SEO (search engine optimisation)
Google LOVES infographics.
Why? Because blogs containing infographics produce 178% more backlinks than those without them.
When people engage better with content, they’re also engaging better with Google. Search engines will prioritise blogs that have lots of backlinks as they clearly contain useful information.
Not only this, but the alt text of your infographics are one more place to feature your keywords and better rank on Google’s image search.
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Build brand awareness
A well-crafted infographic looks highly professional and helps reinforce your brand identity. You can create your infographics in your brand colours and feature your logo to help create a strong sense of brand.
What types of infographics might your business use?
Infographics can be used for almost any purpose. Whether you want to introduce your products, show off sales data or compare key information, infographics have you covered.
- Statistical infographics – Focus on data and numbers
- Informational infographics – Explain a concept, process or product
- Timeline infographics – Show historical progress or future plans
- Process infographics – Illustrate steps or procedures
- Geographic infographics – Map-based visual data
- Comparison infographics – Compare and contrast items
- List infographics – Organised information in a list format
How to plan an infographic
The key to great infographic writing is in the planning. You need to know why you’re making an infographic, what you want it to include and who you’re targeting.
Here’s how to plan your infographic:
Define your goals
What do you want to achieve with your infographic?
Do you want to create an annual report where you can showcase your marketing data, sales numbers, growth details and other information that your employees, investors and customers want to see?
Perhaps you want a concise way to share findings from a recent survey?
Or maybe you want to share your organisation’s history with a well-designed timeline?
Whatever your goals are, make sure you know exactly what you want to achieve and what the purpose of your infographic is.
Identify your target audience
Understanding your audience is key when planning an infographic.
B2C infographics benefit from being more image-led, while B2B infographics often favour stats and data.
Consider what messaging has worked well for your business in the past and transfer this reasoning to your infographic copywriting and design.
Choose your topic
Infographics take time and money to make – only create one if it’s truly engaging and something your audience actually care about.
Research your content
Do you have the data you want to share available, or do you need to collaborate with another business?
The best infographics share new information, or provide unique insights that other businesses cannot share. If you’ve recently conducted some research, this can be a great opportunity for you to share it in infographic form.
Craft a story
Most infographics tell a great story using the data featured within.
What does the data teach us? How was it gathered? How should the reader use this new information? A story, however short, is a core part of any successful infographic.
How to design an infographic
There are many design elements that go into a successful infographic. Canva have a fantastic guide that dives into the science behind creating a fantastically designed infographic. Here are the most important things that you need to consider:
- Layout and structure – Your layout should be logical, easy to understand and natural to follow.
- Colour schemes – You should always choose colours that align with your brand and enhance readability. Always avoid certain colours for text (green, red and pink) and ensure there’s a good contract between font and background.
- Typography – Your font selection is crucial. Make sure to choose a font that easy to read and avoid any fonts that are overly complex.
- Visual elements – Incorporate charts, icons, images, and illustrations – this is the core component of your infographics. Make sure your visual elements have strong contract to the rest of your colour scheme to help them stand out.
- Tools and software – There are many popular infographic creation tools, including Canva, Piktochart and Adobe Illustrator.
Let’s break down some example infographic designs
Here are some examples of infographics that our specialist designers have produced for Catalyst clients:
This infographic, produced for online ordering specialists App4, is designed to quickly and effectively demonstrate the value they add to takeaways, restaurants and other food and drink businesses.
It’s stat driven, incorporating key stats derived from their own research and data. Through careful use of colour and imagery, we guide the reader through the infographic, finally drawing attention to the call to action, which is positioned on a green button to contrast the white background.
For Machine, fraudulent app install specialists, needed an infographic that clearly demonstrated how vulnerable many businesses that have apps are to fraud.
Using their data (gathered from their software), they clearly demonstrated just how prolific fraud was, having detected over $476,000 of fraudulent payments in a single month!
They used carefully contrasted colours to draw attention to key stats, figures and findings.
How to write content for infographics
Crafting a story through your infographic is key to success – your infographic copywriting needs to be both concise and informative; you must engage your audience as quickly as possible, keeping content length to a minimum where possible.
Infographic writing tips and tricks
Here are 3 of our top infographic writing tips, designed to help you get started on your infographic journey:
- Keep things concise – As mentioned, less is more when it comes to infographics. Infographics need to deliver their message nice and quickly, meaning you can’t be waffling on in your infographic copy.
- Make your headlines engaging – Ask a question, present a fact, identify a client’s pain point. However you decide to open your infographic, make sure it’s punchy and engaging (you don’t have long to capture the interest of your reader!).
- Explain your data clearly – Make sure your content is super clear when it comes to explaining data and what it means to your target audience (how will it affect them?).
Optimise your infographics for SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is really important for your infographics, especially if they’re going to feature on your website or your content.
Make sure to:
- Optimise using keywords in titles, descriptions and text
- Name your files with descriptive, keyword-rich names
- Include metadescriptions and alt tags
- Embed your infographics on relevant blogs
- Promote your infographics on social and other platforms. Encourage other websites to link to your new infographics
Include case studies and examples
Nothing ties an infographic together quite like a case study or real-world example of how your business solves the reader’s problems.
A nice flow for many infographics would be data > explanation > quote explaining how your business helped.
This creates a nice story that is punctuated by validation content (content that demonstrates your competence).
Craft beautiful, functional infographics with Catalyst
Infographic writing is a delicate balance, a dance between design and copy.
Get it wrong, and it can look unprofessional. Get it right and it shines a fantastic light on your business.
Prefer to have professional content writers and infographic designers sort your infographics for you? You’re in luck!
At Catalyst, we deliver results-focused digital marketing for growing businesses in Birmingham, the West Midlands and across the UK.
We can create a broad range of marketing collateral and content for your business, helping you to drive more leads, nurture prospective customers and grow your business.
Fancy a no-obligation chat? Book a call with our digital marketing specialist today.
