Making infographics work for you

Infographics have increased in popularity as a marketing tool in recent years – but what’s the key to making them work for you? Claire Weekes investigates

As a marketer you’ve probably come across the odd infographic in your time, but how far do you think the medium dates back? A few years? A few decades? Try several thousand centuries and you may be getting close. Infographics, or “visual representations of data, information or knowledge,” as Wikipedia calls them, are believed to date back to around 7500BC, when early humans created cave paintings and, later, maps. Scientists, mathematicians and designers have long used pictorial representations of information in their everyday work. But marketers – well, we’re only really just cottoning onto their benefits.

Why is this? Arguably, the rise in popularity of the infographic is down to our increasing reliance on the internet. The world wide web is where we immediately turn to find stuff out. To be able to find all of the information we require in one easy-to-digest, aesthetically pleasing diagram sounds to most of us a lot more appealing than spending hours wading through website after website, making our own notes as we go along.

To give an example – say you want to know which regions of the UK are the cheapest for purchasing petrol. You could spend hours researching this – or, you could take a look at the infographic work collaboration specialists Mindjet put together which shows you a map of the UK and the average petrol prices in each region. Mindjet put together the infographic with the specific aim of making the brand more mainstream to a broader and more ‘prosumer’ audience. So it pushed its petrol price infographic out over a bank holiday weekend. The end result was a double page spread in The Sun, and the first piece of press coverage for Mindjet outside trade press technology titles.

This infographic worked well because it was relevant – after all petrol is expensive and people travel long distances over a bank holiday weekend. Relevancy is key when it comes to infographics – never should one be used as a direct sales tool, or let itself be shaped according to brand values.

“An infographic should be created for the audience in a style that is suitable for the demographic – it should never be something that the company pushes out to directly promote a product or service and that is dictated in its look by brand guidelines,” says Ricky Warren, marketing manager at publisher Research.  “Infographics should be based around thought leadership – any profile derived from that can be used to sell from, but you should never use one as a direct selling tool because it just won’t gain the traction you’re after,” he warns.

Select the data and format

So what exactly does make a good infographic? According to Warren, as a general rule of thumb the text to graphics ratio works well at one to one. That’s a simple enough brief to stick to. But how do you kick off the process to a perfectly illustrated result?

“Start by collecting all of the data you want to put across in its rawest format. Never try to pre-empt the design without the data,” says Warren. “Pick one or two pieces of base data, which could be, for example ‘everything on this page will be in relation to its geographical location.’ Geographical location, therefore, is the base datapoint. You can then [think about] how to represent that through design – maybe a world map, or country flags. Then you can move on to how you represent the rest of the data within the confines of the base data.”

Illustrate thought leadership

Once you’ve collated your data you need to think about the formats your infographic will work best in. “Infographics tend to be illustrative and can be viewed on most devices,” says Henry Brook, creative director at interactive design company Digit. “Interactive infographics, on the other hand, are often built in flash, [which] limits the type of device they can be viewed from.”

Bear in mind that the main point of an infographic is to simplify something for its audience. When Warren created one centred on email marketing best practice, he did so in an attempt to create a thought leadership piece that would culminate hours of email marketing consulting into one, quick-to-check document. On the other hand, when SSP company Improve Digital launched its marketing map of the European online display ecosystem in 2012, it did so in response to requests from customers, as publishers struggled to tell their ad networks from their ad exchanges.

“We launched the initial market map to guide our customers through the maze of the rapidly changing online display advertising system”, explains Joëlle Frijters, CEO of Improve Digital.

Publicise your infographic

Improve Digital made its infographic free to download and laid a PR campaign in place to help push it out. But there are lots of ways in which to promote an infographic – all of them extremely cost effective.

“It depends on the context and certainly on the target audience. A great way to share and promote an infographic is by choosing a few key insights to draw audiences in,” says Laura Tan, strategy director at Digit. The company designs ‘data visualisations’ for market research company TNS, which produces Digital Life – an ongoing study into people’s attitudes and behaviours online, represented via all kinds of infographics.

“We brought TNS’s research findings to life through clean, simple design and an insight-driven editorial approach,” explains Tan. Digit also added sharing functions to the site to encourage users to take designs to new spaces. Tan adds, “Digital Life allows users to generate their own visualisations from findings they consider most useful or interesting. They can then share these with their networks and join existing conversations on their topic of choice.”

Make your infographic shareable

It’s no coincidence that infographics have increased in popularity alongside the rise in popularity of social media. Tweeters, bloggers and online media outlets will all be willing to share your data if it’s been targeted at the right audience. “If you’ve got good data and a great design, chances are it will get passed around a fair bit on Twitter,” says Toby Brown, account director at PR agency Man Bites Dog. “Use photo sharing sites like Flickr, or your press room if it has the functionality to host high and low definition versions of your infographic and make it easier to embed, download or share the image from your page. This will ensure bloggers, Twitter users and online media outlets can access and use your infographic as they desire.

“It’s also important to propagate your infographic throughout your own social media estate – Twitter, Facebook and via LinkedIn groups. LinkedIn has just launched a company status tool, allowing easier communication with followers of your company,” he adds.

In terms of measuring the effectiveness of your infographic we come back to Warren’s earlier point. An infographic should be considered a thought leadership tool – not a direct sales one. “An infographic is not just about getting people to look at it. It presents the producer as a thought leader in the area. It makes the audience wonder what else the producer knows. ‘How deep does this data set really go? I would love to see more!’ is the reaction you should be looking for,” he says.
“The rest – leads, brand awareness and clicks – will follow. In order to go truly viral it must address an area that usually takes a while to explain, and makes the point required in as little time possible. People like to judge things quickly, and if you can get them to approve of the infographic, there is no doubt that they will share it. However virility is relative to who the audience is, competitors, for example, don’t share good information, so it is your job to push it to all those you want to see it.”

 

Top tips for using infographics

1. Relevancy
Your audience will know if you actually have nothing to say and are just creating an infographic because it looks good.

2. Don’t sell
Don’t be tempted to use it as a direct sales tool. Create it for your audience’s benefit, not for you to promote a product or service.

3. Design
Remember the point of an infographic is to make information easily digestible for the intended audience, so don’t over complicate the creative.

4. Data
Don’t let design dictate data. Start with the raw data, decide what area you’re going to focus on and work your way up from there.

4. Sharing
Once you’ve got your infographic, don’t just stick it on your site somewhere and expect people to know it’s there. You could try a PR campaign and make sure it’s easily shareable. Tweet it and encourage others to retweet it. Infographics work well in the social sphere.

 

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