As a small business owner, you are probably on the lookout for sources of content ideas for your business blog and ways to make your content marketing strategy more powerful. Many small business owners understand the importance of fine-tuning a content marketing strategy – today’s marketers spend 28 percent of their time on content marketing and the number continues to rise. More and more marketers are turning to infographics as a way to strengthen their strategy, reach more readers and earn new customers.
Infographics are used to present information and data in a visual manner. While infographics aren’t new, they have become much more popular in the last several months as marketers continue to use search engine optimization. Updates like Google Hummingbird have pointed more SEO professionals in the direction of link bait methods that are more natural – like infographics.
In addition to SEO benefits, infographics are one of many easy ways to build brand awareness and get specific messages across to readers. Consumers may not want to read paragraphs and paragraphs of information – plus, most people better absorb information presented in a visual method making infographics that much more relevant when it comes to marketing. Businesses use information to engage their target market and drive traffic to their website. When done correctly, an infographic with the right content and design can result in a return on investment that every business yearns for.
Here are some ways you can create a successful infographic:
Make Sure it’s One-of-a-Kind
There are countless infographics that look almost the same and consumers won’t engage with an infographic if it looks the same as the other 4,193 they’ve already seen. Instead of using an infographic template program, create your own. There are an abundance of tools to create engaging infographics for social media posts. While the price of the template is good, custom options will produce the results you want: an infographic that people share and interact with.
Keep it Simple
As you design your infographic, keep in mind that you want it to be visually appealing yet simple for readers. If it is too busy, people won’t be able to focus and won’t get the message you are attempting to convey. Infographics are visual marketing and the perfect opportunity to reach a new customer base. Instead of trying to impress prospects with statistics, focus on simplicity.
Use Minimal Text
Keep text to a minimum – the point of an infographic is to use a visual medium to capture the audience and create a buzz. Don’t ruin it with text overload. You want your readers to see the infographic and instantly want more. When there’s too much text, a lot of potential readers will shy away before they take the chance to see what your message is. High impact graphics and factual data are the winning combination of an infographic readers will read and share.
Make it Shareable
A beautiful thing about infographics is that they’re easily shared across social media. But if you want people to share your infographic, you must make it simple for them. Businesses often forget this important fact so the hours and time spent on designing the perfect infographic are wasted when it sits idly on their site with minimal views. As a business owner, make sure to share the infographic you work hard to create on all of your social media platforms and ensure the post has a social sharing widget installed so readers are capable of easily sharing it too.
Infographics are a great way to reach a broader audience and share useful information in a SEO-friendly way. Infographics add a powerful punch to your content marketing strategy.
How do you create strong infographics your readers want to share?
Image via Flickr
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.
This post Why and How to Create Powerful Infographics was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.