Smack in the middle of the Information Age, we all absorb visual and textual information from several mediums every day. We watch TV, text message, listen to the radio, browse the Internet, play video games, and more.
In fact, according to statista.com, Americans spend a mind-boggling average of 11+ hours a day on electronic media. That’s a lot!
As business owners, you know where your audience is, but how do you use that knowledge to your advantage? Well, one of the best things you can do is make the information about your business easier to understand. Your prospective clients don’t want to read pages of text to understand what you make and/or what services you offer.
Incorporating visuals is key to keeping your audience’s attention. So, what better way to clearly present data, layout a process, or explain a complex topic than by combining words and images cohesively into that beauty that is an infographic?
I’m just going to come right out here and say it: I love infographics and the science of using design to facilitate communication.
But, just in case you’re not geeking out over this visual media as much as I am, here are three reasons that may cause you to think differently and help you understand how creating infographics can give a huge boost to your marketing.
The numbers prove that visual content is a preferred means of communication on social networks.
Why is that exactly? One reason is our biology. A 2014 study conducted by MIT neuroscientists found that the brain could process images in 13 milliseconds. Mary Potter, senior author of the study, concluded that, “the fact that you can do that at these high speeds indicates to us that what vision does is find concepts. That’s what the brain is doing all day long — trying to understand what we’re looking at.”
That alone tells us that visuals are a huge component to how we comprehend our world. So it stands to reason that visual accompaniment to text increases our level of understanding.
We are also more likely to tell our friends about, e.g. share, visual content that we can understand and enjoy in a short period of time.
Infographics perform especially well on Pinterest. Their typical long, narrow orientation attracts attention by taking up lot of space on Pinterest boards and feeds.
Our most successful pin yet is an infographic I recently created to help business owners determine which social media platform is best for their business.
Initially, the blog post received significant engagement on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Then, in the last few days in September, it hit a tipping point and that’s when the magic happened. The pin blew up! At last glance, it has been pinned over 1.6 thousand times and doesn’t show signs of slowing down.
Increase Website Traffic
Having your content shared over a thousand times is awesome. But what happens after it’s shared is even sweeter!
Each of those shares is a link back to your content!
Since the infographic has been our top-performing pin with significantly more shares than Facebook and Twitter, we looked at our Pinterest analytics to see if the shares were affecting our website traffic. Here’s what we found.
Remember that fateful day in September that my infographic went viral? As you can see, our click and visitor rates got a huge shot of adrenaline.
If you don’t have a Pinterest account, don’t worry. I pin images from businesses without Pinterest accounts all the time, and your audience can too.
Create Long-Term Engagement
As you can see from our “Sharing is Caring” numbers, infographics are share-worthy on several social media platforms. But let’s look at the potential of an infographic on Pinterest.
Twitter and Facebook posts have life spans of minutes and hours, respectively. The best pins, however, are evergreen (content that stays relevant over time). They live on Pinterest boards where they can be found and re-pinned over and over because they continue to provide value.
My infographic has steadily increased our Pinterest engagement and website clicks. And those thousands of shares are links that will live on pinners’ boards instead of getting lost in news feeds as with other social networks.
In Conclusion
In a sea of content, infographics are a great way to stand out and bridge the gap between informative text and appealing visuals. By combining the best of both worlds, you can keep your audience informed, interested, and even entertained all at the same time!
So what are you waiting for? Get those creative juices flowing and make your own infographic today. Bonus, if you’ve ever created any piece of content (which I’m willing to bet you have), it shouldn’t be too hard to repurpose it into an infographic!
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