How to Cite an Infographic Correctly
Information transmitted visually usually has a greater impact on the audience. Not only does it make the content colorful, but also captures the attention of people. This is where the role of infographics comes into the picture.
In the past few decades, stat-packed illustrations and colorful visuals have become an integral part of the content. To make content visually stimulating, content marketers accumulate relevant information and turn it into a graphical representation.
The technique, in the beginning, generated a ‘BUZZ’ in the content market domain. Creating inevitable web traffic, the graphical representation improved SEO. The innovative technique boosted the rate of inbound links and social sharing. It made the information more comprehensive and digestible for the audience.
Infographics, however, soon after experiencing this popularity buzz, declined like other marketing tools. That is to say, the popularity explosion that once hit it soon followed a quality implosion. A number of high-end brands suffered to create quality infographics.
Even though marketers had a tough time due to low-quality infographics, infographics are extremely popular today. The reason is various service tools, such as Infogrames, that use various tactics to create different designs of infographic templates.
Infographics are an essential tool. Hence, you have to understand what an infographic is, what makes a quality infographic and how to cite one effectively. To help you clear your understanding about this, we have enumerated some essential information, plus some easy tips.
What Is Infographics And Why Are They Important?
First incorporated in 2009, David McCandless featured his book with data visualization and called it information designs. Therefore, ‘infographics’ are data visualization which are a combination of two elements: graphics and information.
However, on certain occasions mixing these two elements become difficult such as a text list. You can mold data and statistics into digital visualization. While creating an infographic, you have to make sure that the included data really benefits the visualization. You need to see, does it make the information more accessible and digestible for your readers?
To put it simply, your data information should not be pointless pixilated text. In addition, know that Google does not read information within an infographic. Moreover, the information within does not influence your search rankings. Therefore, if you are hiding text in a JPG file, it will affect your potential surge in Google search rankings.
The users might not find your infographic template if you do not include pertinent information in the image file. The chances are that search engines may be unable to read it.
Want To Create An Infographic? – Things You Need To Know
When it comes to illustrating images within an infographic, you need to conceptualize to get social media visibility. To accomplish this, you need to know certain things to promote your infographic as front content.
An engaging infographic has a vast potential to earn links, grow audience, enhance brand recognition and improve Google ranking. Therefore, before you streamline an infographic template, it is important to explore infographic marketing and your audience.
Explore Audience Interests
Your infographic must reflect your ‘audience’s thinking’. Evoking the feelings of your audience is must and may lead your brand to success. It becomes even more important if your industry is mind-numbing and dry. If you want to create ripples through information design, explore what interests your audience. You can deviate from your niche to come up with something exciting and enticing. You must know your prospective buyers to build a marketing persona.
For example, if your company designs business telecommunication systems. You have buyers who are officers, IT directors, or business owners. Marketing strategies or economic growth is what interests them. You can include these elements in your infographic.
Mix business development strategies and statistics to make it useful for your readers. Tell specifically where your product fits in and benefits their business.
Find an Interesting Topic
Based on your audience traits, you can come up with a captivating topic. Using Google search, Toopsy or BuzzSumo can be effective to find creative topics to complement your infographics concept.
Besides that, read the relevant articles, and snoop around to generate out-of-the-box ideas. Then, you can shape them in creative infographic templates and format. Make sure to pick an idea that relates to your theme and concept and has room to encapsulate pertinent data.
Distill the Relevant Data
Remember that you are still on the conceptual stage. Before you begin your journey on the virtual pavement, do some research on your topic. Look out for authentic statistics to support your topic. They have to be unique and up to date, and should not be readily accessible to everyone. Go for PDFs, official data sources, and power point presentations.
Data Organization
Readability can break or make your infographic, so your next step is filtering and organizing data. Try not to stuff all the statistical information you have come across. It will make your infographic overwhelming and text-heavy. Do not forget that the reader will only skim and scan the content. Nobody has time to read the complete template.
Once you have streamlined things at the conceptual stage, it is time to explore the features of a persuasive infographic.
Traits of a Persuasive Infographic
There are specific components that determine whether your infographic will make an impact or not? Creating an infographic requires your time, dedication and efforts. Following are some traits you can incorporate to design a convincing infographic.
Focus On Data Density
Start by filtering all the pertinent data. Next, it is time to think about how you can present it in an interesting way. Highlight the information you present, especially the ‘meaty’ parts. Thus, your readers can grab the ‘POINTERS’ at a glance.
Data density plays a crucial role in the success or failure of an infographic. Moreover, choosing reliable sources when you source data is another essential feature that makes your infographic effective. In case your reader raises concern on the provided information, you can refer to an established source.
Keep Information Design Simple
There is a subtle difference between stuffing information and providing value. If you over-clutter infographic, it may become unintelligible for the readers. Moreover, keeping information simple in infographic also refers to organizing it in a manner that appeals to the audience.
Add Creative Visuals
In order to stand out from the rest of the content marketers, make sure you create something unique and exclusive. For this purpose, hire a professional infographic designer to work on your project. A professional will design a creative infographic for you. Moreover, they will also professionally guide you regarding content marketing.
In addition to uniquely visualizing data, the designer can guide you what graphics can enhance your infographic quality.
Be Relevant and Precise
A good infographic has a perfect balance when it comes to relevant information. There is nothing wrong with finding tons of information that seems relevant to your infographic. However, including all that information within an infographic is what is wrong here.
This point is often overlooked. You need to be precise by not including all the information under an umbrella. In contrast, going too short with data will also reduce the credibility of your infographic. The key is to create the right balance.
Do Not Make It Self-Promotional
Self-promotional infographic tends to create a fake impression. Famous content marketers believe that it is less effective and does not capture the attention of the audience. It is better to focus on something that talks about the services of your company rather you as an owner.
Make your infographics industry-focused rather than self-promotional.
Promote Your Brand
The purpose of self-promotional infographics is sharing them across the web. You ‘MUST ‘not want your readers to stay oblivious that you have created it’. By incorporating your brand name or logo, you can accomplish this objective.
Branding is one of the key elements of an effective marketing strategy. You no longer need to hesitate to align your infographic with your brand. However, make sure that it remains relevant and consistent with the font style and color scheme of your graphical representation.
Make It Goal-Oriented
This is one of the most important points you should consider. You should create goal-oriented infographics. The infographic should focus on a single topic. Moreover, the goal should be to tell the audience what you are offering. To accomplish this, you need to design an outline to organize content meaningfully.
You may highlight a particular issue and how your company aims to solve it. Target the right audience, incorporate statistics and data to reflect the severity of that issue. Hence, your infographic should establish clear goals about ‘WHY one should avail your service’.
How to Source Your Infographic
The sources you use for retrieving information for your information are important. The more credible the sources, the more credible your infographic. It determines the quality of the data. Using biased and low-quality sources make your graphics invalid and incoherent.
Fortunately, adding high-quality sources is not a challenge anymore. You can keep the quality of your infographic at par by adding official sources from trade association and government websites.
Additionally, There Are A Number Of Research Institutes That Regularly Publish Their Data And Studies. In Short, You Just Need To Know The Right Tips To Add These Sources To Your Infographic.
Your Source Should Tell a Narrative
A great infographic always tells a story so that people can understand it easily. If this feature lacks in your source, it will reflect in your infographic too. You can engage your target audience by sharing data in a storytelling format. It is important that you pick a source that tells an interesting story to design your infographic.
Use Reliable Sources
Not all data you see on the internet is reliable. Obtaining data from reliable sources will add to the credibility of your infographic. Always look for data that government agencies have published. For example, you can rely on the statistics available on the U.S Census Bureau, or government agencies like that.
Moreover, if your data source includes surveys, findings, or whitepapers from an academic publication, it is reliable.
Most of us use sources that are available on the internet. It is an open forum where evaluating the credibility of a source is definitely a challenge. You can ask yourself these questions to assess the appropriateness of a source:
- Does this webpage have an affiliation to any credible organization?
- Who is the writer of this webpage?
- Does this webpage present updated statistics?
- Does it have a bibliography?
- What is the aim of this organization (web page owner)?
Cite the Sources
Source citing is rare in this medium. Many people raise their concerns on the originality and authenticity of the material used in infographics. Proving the accuracy of your work is very difficult when it comes to designing an infographic.
To improve the standard of your infographic, you can provide an easily typed URL. It can take readers to the linked sources if they want to assess the credibility of your data. It is one of the most efficient ways to avoid accuracy issues.
Limit the Number of Sources
You may find data from multiple sources and that can be interesting and exciting. However, it may create problems in building a consistent narrative for your infographic. Using limited but credible sources is the key to tackle this efficiently. Fewer sources will help you retain your focus to create better marketing content.
Try to stick to one or two datasets, if possible. Three and four sources are also acceptable, but more than that might overwhelm and baffle readers. Using multiple sources may result in lack of coherence in your infographic.
Bottom Line
Overall, there is no doubt that infographic grabs the attention of the audience. The information must be visually stimulating and interesting to create an impact on the audience. The given traits and tips are useful and can help you create an effective infographic. Thus, your idea, topic, format, presentation, and citation altogether makes an eye-catching infographic.
