Have you found your infographics are not generating the traffic and sharing that you had hoped they would? While data visualization continues to become more important in the age of content marketing, just like with pure text-based content, poorly written and designed graphics are not going to get you anywhere. Here are three steps to create infographics that are attractive and useful to your readers.
- Do Your Research
- Inform People
- Visuals Come Last
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Just as you would when writing a blog post, news article, or academic paper, you need to research your topics before you present anything to anyone as fact. Not only is presenting people with inaccurate facts unethical, but it is just plain lazy. People will take notice. Angela Alcorn of makeuseof notes that there are a wide variety of free marketing data sources where you can do your research. Google Public Data is one such website.
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After you have done your research, you need to move on to implementing it properly. Professional infographics creators, like Karl Gude of Cool Info Graphics, know that the key to successful graphics is the content encased within them. If your infographic is supposed to be about global deforestation then provide data points that support that. Make sure each data point is chosen carefully based on its relevance and impact. Step into your reader’s shoes and imagine what they want to see.
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After you have done your research and properly implemented engaging facts, then you should worry about making your data visualization look pretty. You should think of the relationship between research points and data visualization as a slightly parasitic one. The graphic feeds off the exciting information contained in the data points. If the data provided is uninteresting then the whole organism dies. However, that does not mean you should design a visually bland experience.
Data visualization is incredibly important now that everyone is constantly connected to the web. People no longer have the same amount of time to spend reading individual text-based blurbs. By using these three steps you can create engaging content that can be absorbed quickly and keep your readers interested.