How to Tell a Story Using Infographics

Infographics are used to share data that would otherwise be difficult to read or understand. Your audience doesn’t have the time or attention span to review pages of raw data, so these creative visuals help them understand the message you are trying to convey.

At its core, data visualization is about storytelling. You want to guide your audience through your logic to help them better understand why the data is important. A good graphic will keep audiences engaged and give them a better understanding of your brand message. Follow these best practices to tell a clear story with your visuals.

Focus on one key message for your infographic.

Think of your infographic as a visual blog post. When you write blog content, you have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The same can be said for your graphics. Start with one big idea or concept that your target audience should care about and make sure each section you create defends that idea. Finally, end your infographic with one last takeaway or a call to action based on the information.

By keeping this format in mind, you don’t need a strong graphic design background to create infographics. You just need to use logic in order to present information in an effective way.

Don’t get caught up in the illustrations.

When you first start out playing with visuals, it’s easy to get caught up in infographic design elements, especially if you use a free service like Canva to create your content. Instead of focusing on the data, you can easily get carried away with fonts, banner options, icons, and other presentation elements.

These cute images and creative additions are fun, but they need to be used in moderation. Make sure your data is represented clearly and then move into creative presentations.

Create a marketing plan for your graphics.

Once you have a story for your data, make sure you have a plan to promote it. Consider how you will promote your images and banners on social media and what content marketing aspects you want to add to create context for your data.

Are you releasing new data that you collected and analyzed yourself? If so, develop a press release so you can get media coverage about your newly-discovered insights. Are you sharing data that you curated across multiple sources? Write a blog post and link to those sources to boost your outbound SEO. If you hire an infographic design service to create your content, tell them about your marketing plans. They can make sure you have the right visuals to achieve your promotional goals.

Time your infographic release appropriately.

You want your infographic to spread across the web, or at least through your industry. To do this effectively, make sure you plan the release of your content to maximize its impact.

For example, if you operate a B2B firm targeting retailers, the time to release an infographic about the holiday shopping season would be closer to September than December. By December, most companies have their operations plans in place and can’t make changes until January. If you want people to learn from your graphic and take action, you need to reach your customers when they have the time and budget to consider your call to action.

If you don’t have a large promotional department in your company, consider hiring a PR team or marketing company to make sure your graphic gets noticed. That way your design efforts won’t go to waste and your visuals, like social media banners, won’t be ignored.

Every graph you share should tell a story, whether you are presenting a chart during a shareholders’ meeting or hiring an infographic design service to market your business. Focus on your messaging goals and the design elements will follow.