If you’re at all familiar with what it takes to increase your business’s visibility online, then you know two things:
- Informative content matters.
- High-quality images matter.
What if we told you there’s an easy way to make content and images work together for your benefit? Combining the value of an informational blog post and the instant appeal of a brightly colored image, we give you: the infographic.
What’s So Special About Infographics?
Infographics are images that contain short, simple, easy-to-digest pieces of information. They help you provide valuable information to your audience while typically requiring less than a minute’s worth of reading. Grabbing attention and then delivering useful, actionable information? No wonder infographics are the perfect images for businesses to share on social media!
Luckily, infographics are relatively easy to create. You can take advantage of online tools that offer free templates so you don’t have to build them from scratch. This is particularly helpful for business owners without much spare time or many design skills.
In fact, to show you how easy it is for beginners, we had one of our writers create an infographic for this blog post. Keep reading to discover how she did it and how to create an infographic of your own.
How to Create an Infographic
1. Choose a Topic.
The subject of your infographic should be something you’re knowledgeable about, something relevant to your business, and, most importantly, something your audience wants to learn about. Ultimately, it must add value to their lives before they’ll want to share it with others.
Topics can be anything related to your business that will provide your audience with information they can actually use. They’re often tutorials, explanations, and presentations of data. Some examples:
- How to change your furnace’s air filters
- 10 things to know about tax deductions
- What to expect during your first Swedish massage
- 5 most popular car accessories
- 3 reasons to floss your teeth every day
The possibilities are endless.
2. Keep It Brief.
Remember, since this is a visual representation, all your text should be short, sweet, and to the point. Organize your ideas ahead of time into bullet points and short sentences so you can get all your ideas across succinctly.
3. Use a Striking Layout.
Eye-catching design is what makes your infographic stand out. The idea of designing one from scratch may seem daunting if you’ve never done it before, but don’t worry: There are plenty of free templates online that you can take advantage of.
For our infographic, we used Piktochart, a company that offers an assortment of free (as well as paid) template options. This platform was super helpful because it allowed easy customization. Changing background colors, writing our own text, and swapping out graphics were all simple to do. The thorough tutorial at the beginning certainly helped, too.
Another option available to you is to download free templates from companies like Hubspot. While they don’t have a whole program to assist you in creating your infographic, they give you a variety of templates you can use with Microsoft PowerPoint and customize on your own.
4. Share the Finished Product.
Now that you’ve created an attractive infographic you’re proud of, it’s time to share it with your followers. Upload it to a page on your website, then share it with a link in your social media post. (Including the link may encourage especially interested parties to click over to your site.)
Now that you know how to create an infographic easily and affordably, you’ll be an infographic-creating machine in no time. Good luck!
Here’s our finished product, made possible by Piktochart.
