How to Successfully Leverage Infographics for Your Small Business

Infographics are a highly visual medium that draw attention, drive traffic and increase visibility for your business. If you’re looking for a fresh way to engage with potential customers, designing and sharing infographics is a logical next step.

Infographic Design Tips

An infographic takes a complex message and condenses it into one easy-to-digest image. This is a great way to turn otherwise “boring” data into something relevant to your target audience.

Keep it Simple

Effective infographic design begins with one key idea. Choose a topic and stick to it to create a cohesive message with an emphasis on the visual. The trick is to convey the most important information without a lot of text. The more people have to read, the less likely they are to stay interested. Use varying font sizes, charts and simple pictures in a way that allows people to absorb your message “at a glance.”

Connect With Your Audience

Part of the reason that infographics are so popular is that they tell stories. A ten-page paper on the popularity of new widget designs, for example, can be turned into an engaging journey through the recent developments in the widget industry. People will connect with just about any subject when you use a mixture of appropriate images, relevant facts and humor to draw them in and elicit an emotional response.

Be Thorough With Research

Even though you’ll be presenting small bits of data in your infographic, you need to do thorough research. Hundreds or thousands of people may see what you’ve created, and if you lack a good base of supporting information, someone will call you out on it. Doing your research and citing your sources builds credibility by ensuring that all of the facts you share are correct.

Marketing with Infographics

The power of infographics lies in the ease with which they can be shared through social media channels. To ensure maximum visibility, add Facebook Open Graph and Twitter Card tags to your infographic when you post it. These tell social sites how to display your graphic when someone shares it, including titles, summaries, images and a link back to your company. Syndication through sites such as Daily Infographic and Infographic Showcase bring your information to a wider audience. Pinterest is another site that’s great for leveraging the power of a visual medium.

People tend to remember images better than text, so the more exposure your infographic gets, the more people will associate its contents with your business. Of course, all of this visibility won’t do you any good if you neglect to include your brand somewhere on the infographic. Branding is an essential part of all marketing tools, so be sure to add a logo where it can clearly be seen.

Designing a good infographic takes time. If adding yet another marketing method to everything else you already do for your business seems like an overwhelming prospect, consider crowdsourcing to create your infographics. Opening a project up to a pool of experienced designers leaves you free to run your business. Put out descriptions for several infographics at once and choose the best of the bunch from the designs that get submitted. This way, you’ll build a library of professional-quality infographics that can serve as marketing tools and will establish lasting credibility for your company.

How to Successfully Leverage Infographics for Your Small Business