We recently commissioned a new infographic for a client. Paige came up with the concept and gathered the data, Jay put it into graphic form, and we posted it at Colosseum’s blog. From there, we can Tweet and Pin it, share it on Facebook, and generally spread it around.
Why use infographics?
The simplest reason is that people like them. A good infographic makes data scannable and easy to grasp. It’s fun to look at and easy to share with social media.
Beyond the obvious, an infographic can be used extensively across different platforms. Since it’s an image, it doesn’t do you any good with search engines — but it also doesn’t give you duplicate content problems.
The info…
Your infographic is only as good as your data. Your data needs to be interesting and capable of being captured well in graphic form. Infographics with huge amounts of data in the form of multiple charts and lots of text are less successful, since they fail to do the main thing infographics do: present data in a way that’s interesting and quickly grasped.
Colosseum is a fashion-forward activewear company, so the combination of fitness and Fashion Week makes sense for them. At the same time, a fun collection of fitness opportunities in NYC can continue to be useful information beyond fashion week and outside of the context of clothing.
Our second example, the infographic at right, shows the difference in average year over year traffic growth at websites that are managed and websites that are launched and then left alone.
This infographic contains just two data points: good, optimized websites that are launched and left alone showed average year-over-year growth of -.17%; that is to say, they didn’t show any growth. Those that received ongoing work, including things like blogging, social media, and linkbuilding, showed average growth of 51.6%.
The additional text gives further details and background, for those who want to delve deeper into the data, but the difference is clear and the infographic lets us make more of it than we could just by putting the sentence into our blog post.
…and the graphic
The Colosseum infographic was custom built by our graphics guy, Jay Jaro. He has witty touches like the way the number of steps up the Empire State building climb upwards and the word “Running” shows speed with italics. He has used colors and graphics that suit Colosseum’s website and created a custom background that reflects the subject matter and the company. It took him about four hours, and it took Paige a while to collect the data.
The infographic on the right is one I put together with Piktochart. I picked a theme, made a little adjustment of colors to fit our website a bit better, and edited the text. It took me a while to collect the data, and about half an hour to customize the Piktochart image. The graphics don’t precisely suit the data, but they’re pretty close. This is the best alternative I’ve seen so far for people who don’t have graphics capability in-house.
The post
Where should you put your infographic? Everywhere! You can use it in brochures, on your website, in social media, and at your blog.
Don’t just post your infographic and leave it at that, though. Remember, an infographic is an image, so search engines can’t read it. Include enough text to let search engines know that you have something interesting for people. You may also want a call to action, supporting details, and other content for your human visitors.
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