Infographics: Catch customers' eyes and the minds!

It is clear with the rise of Instagram that people like looking at pictures. So for businesses that want to get information out to their audiences, infographics are a great resource.

An infographic is a visual representation of information. They are very popular on social media and often quite fun to look at.

Infographics are typically a combination of words and pictures. Well designed infographics keep your attention, guide your eyes and keep you focused. They make me think of the posters your school teachers posted around the classroom. I spent a lot of time in school looking at those posters. They were colorful, sometimes fun and filled with information. I learned quite a bit by looking at those rather than paying attention to the lecture.

Here are a few really creative ones.

This is one from the http://www.ucihealth.org/ website

And this one from modernservantleader.com

Why do infographics attract us so much?

Consider these facts

• 50% of the brain is visual processing

• 70% of your sensory receptors are in your eyes

• 1/10 of second is how long it takes us to visually understand a scene.

• 150ms to understand a symbol and 100ms to attach meaning to it

• We receive 5x the amount of information on a daily basis than we did in the1980s

• 28% of words on a webpage are actually readColor visuals increases willingness to read by 80%

• We recall 10% of what we hear, 20% of what we read and 80% of what we see and do.

This is powerful information and critical to consider for social media content creators. Back in 1662 Christoph Scheiner published the Rosa Ursina sive Sol, a book that revealed his research about the rotation of the sun. Infographics appeared in the form of illustrations demonstrating the Sun's rotation patterns.

And they have continued to be part of our educational experiences since. But now as businesses take to social media in greater numbers, they need to create more content. And as social media users are being bombarded with more information on a daily basis, creators need to use effective and proven methods to get their message understood as quickly as possible. Thus, the rise of infographics and the ubiquitous use of the word!

Types of infographics

Maps, flow charts, timelines, compare contrast charts, photo lists, illustrated lists

What makes a good infographic?

• Focus on key takeaways

• Sections and headers

• Be brief

• Include pictures and white space

• If you have a lot of information, separate the infographic into several infographics.

When do I choose an Infographic?

Infographics are useful and effective when you have data you want to show, when you have a how to or when the information you want to disseminate has a relationship that can be depicted visually--chronologically, cause and effect, compare and contrast and other similar relationships.

How do I go about creating one?

There are lots of ways to make an infographic. Websites like Venngage, Canva, Visme and so many others make templates you can use. Typically these programs are easy to use, but your marketing professional might be better suited to create this for you. Layout, graphic design and information flow is what a marketing professional is trained to do.