Boost Your Social Traffic With A Quality Infographic
Remember the infographic? The wizzy way to grab eyeball action by displaying a mountain of stats and factoids in an easy to understand flowchart visual. When they first appeared online, infographics were all over the web but now they seem to have fallen out of favour with the social media savvy who quickly saw how thin some of the content really was…
Done well, the infographic is always a particularly clear, concise method of conveying complex information in a single graphic image, which is often entertaining and amusing too. It made perfect sense for the evolving search and social environment, where the instantly digestible format lends itself to the social share. And it still does today.
As a form of social online marketing, when a link to an infographic is flagged up, it can be a welcome respite from reading paragraphs of text. When there really is a lot of interesting bytes of information and cool graphics, which look very easy to follow, it is worth spending time to absorb. Unfortunately, many had begun to have more in common with slides from an enthusiastic-looking but ultimately, disappointing powerpoint presentation. Simple, obvious bullet points or too many arrows to follow!
The key to creating a killer infographic is the ability to condense as much hard data and genuine knowledge into an instantly attractive and understandable visual. Without losing the sense that there is an insightful story being told, valuable content to be obtained and it’s easy for the eyes and the brain to track.
It takes time, detailed research, and considerable skill to create a quality content infographic, yet in many instances they are simply used as lazy marketing strategies to present a few meagre bits of information padded out with huge coloured boxes with long arcing arrows and blown up graphics.
Certainly, the focus should always be ‘less is more’ but often less really does mean less – and likely to be of no real value let alone, shareable interest. From the outset, a clear subject must be evident, not just a simple illustration of one or two points.
Conversely, a key goal of an infographic – the conveying of a complex story in a limited physical space – should not be conveniently disregarded just because it’s online and not in print. In other words, the unending scroll down packed with countless stats and bits of information. The object of the infographic is lost, and so too are likely to be your followers and the possibility of a content share.
A real infographic will boost your social traffic – a thin visual will likely kill it!