The importance of “Big Data” is emphasized more now than ever before; Analysts review reams of data helping management to make better purchasing, selling, marketing and operational decisions. In just one day, we often see 1.5 billion pieces of new content uploaded to the Internet, 140 million tweets and 2 million videos.
While this information may be helpful, educational and enlightening, reading through it can be an endless job. To make sense out of these mountains of data managers and business owners look for new ways to transmit it in seconds or minutes instead of hours, days or weeks, and one effective way of doing this is through Infographs.
What Are Infographics?
These are graphs, much like any other visual graph you see in reports or on websites, except that they mix visual elements and words, analysis and ideas to get a point across.
Do Bloggers and Website Owners Need Infographics?
While this may seem a little too corporate for you, infographics are a great tool for bloggers and website owners too. You see, infographics are visually compelling and communicate an idea or concept visually without your audience needing to read through large amounts of content, and by adding infographics to a blog or website you easily communicate complex data that has the potential of going viral.
Why Use Infographics in Your Content?
Infographics can be compelling but aside from this, there are several reasons why you want to include it in your blog content or content marketing strategies:
1 – Compelling and Addicting
Blog readers love facts and statistics. It is the meat and potatoes of blogging, and when presented, it offers people something accurate to pass on, blog about, and comment on in the social media platforms. So when you add compelling images and graphics to these statistics and facts – well, then you have addictive content that can be shared.
2 – Easily Understood
There are millions of blogs out there and your audience only has a certain amount of time to assimilate your point of view or the information you offer. Giving them a visual element that can help them understand the stats in just a few seconds offers convenience and easy-comprehension they can’t often find on other blogs.
3 – Viral Potential
Infographics are essentially illustrations so they are easy to share, much like sharing a picture. Readers don’t have to go and read an article to understand the concept; all a blog fan has to do is share it with his friends and fans on the social media platform of his choice, and this allows his contacts to ‘Like, ‘ ‘Share’ and comment without needing to read the information either. This gives your link viral capability that is higher than ordinary text content.
4 – Brand Awareness
Infographics allows your audience to recognize your logo and your brand, giving you more visibility and recognition online.
5 – Increase Traffic
When an infograph is shared, liked, and viewed, it creates interest, and those that are interested will promote it, thereby bringing you more traffic and views.
6 – Increase PageRank
You might think that an infograph can’t do anything to improve your positioning in Google Indexing, but it actually can. A well-thought-out and designed infograph can cause other bloggers or websites to link to your website, and this increases your value on Google and the other search engines.
7 – Demonstrates your Experience in the Field
We all know that people are more likely to buy from someone they know and trust, but to get that trust you have to demonstrate your experience in your field. The research and knowledge required to create an infograph positions you as an expert in your field and gains that added trust from your audience.
Bottom Line
There is no question that an infograph can help your blog or website go viral, bring you added traffic, branding and even index your website better in the search engines. But making an infograph can be somewhat complicated.
There are two options; you can use free tools like Visual.ly, ChartsBin or Wordle; or you can hire a graphic artist to create the infograph for you. Both options can be cost effective and productive methods of adding an infograph to your post, blog or website.
Article by Vishal
Vishal Gaikar is a professional blogger from Pune, India. If you like this post, you can follow him on Twitter.
