Infographics Best Practice Guide Published August 2013 KEY TAKEAWAYS
About this report The Infographics Best Practice Guide was produced by B2B Marketing, with contributions from Designbysoap, Jellyfish, Marketo, Quick Thinking and Reading Room. This report helps B2B marketers utilise infographics to effectively communicate important information and key insights to their customers and prospects, as well as internal and external stakeholders. Best Practice Guides are a regular series of products produced by B2B Marketing. They are available free to premium members of B2B Marketing, or otherwise can be purchased online for 99 plus VAT. Key takeaways are available to download for free.
1. Introduction Is an infographic right for your business? The desire to do an infographic should not be the starting point for your strategy or campaign. You need to map the role of infographics and other content types within your wider marketing strategy. You need to understand your audience. To succeed in designing an effective infographic you need to get to grips with your customers information needs and find a creative way of satisfying them. Infographics are not just pretty pictures. Good infographics reflect rigorously processed data, organised in a clear and consumable way. Tell a story. We like stories; we create them in our heads in order to make sense of the world. To tell a story via an infographic you need to get the information hierarchy in the right order. Make infographics shareable. Infographics spread much more easily than any other content, and the ways to interact with infographics are varied, which makes them adaptable and appealing.
2. Planning Use infographics to communicate internally. It s a great way of delivering new ideas, training materials, or changes to existing processes in a more interesting way to employees. Remember, the computer screen could be the last place your audience is looking at for content. Where are your audience spending their time online? Think about how your audience is likely to use their mobile devices outside office hours. Becoming a bona fide thought leader doesn t require you to deliver original content all the time. Your infographics don t have to be based on your own data don t be afraid to work with someone else s research. One of the tenets of great design is good research. The design stage should only make up 20 per cent of the whole effort.
3. Design Keep design simple. Make sure it doesn t overpower or conflict with the data, but ensure it creates a communicative visualisation to support it. Assume your target audience has an extremely short attention span. Key points and important statistics need to be obvious and clear from the start to make it easily digestible. Data is key. If the information is strong, clear and concise, the design should follow and reflect this. Too many fingers in one pie can affect the flow and consumption of your infographic. Everybody has an opinion, everybody s standards are different, and trying to accomodate everybody doesn t work 99 per cent of the time.
4. Publishing and promotion Work doesn t stop once you ve made an infographic. Attracting and engaging prospects and customers with the right promotions will help to differentiate you from the competition. Make sure your infographic is easily found. Use basic SEO techniques and maximise all your usual channels your website, blog, social profiles and email database. Personalised content is not easy, but it is effective. It s human nature to respond positively when someone takes note of something about us, and personalising content will change the way people respond to it. Events can be a great place to publish your latest infographic. It s a great way to introduce your company at third-party events who may not be familiar with what you do.
5. ROI Set achievable goals before you start your campaign. This will help you accurately judge its effectiveness and inform the concept of your infographic. Use inbound links to get good insight. Not only are they easy to measure, but they shed light on the people and publications who are sharing your infographic. Increase your influencer outreach with infographics. High-quality content such as infographics open up a host of opportunities to connect with influencers in your industry. Use subscriber metrics to track the number of social shares your content receives. Visitors can subscribe to your brand or content via RSS, email newsletters, social channels and comment feeds. This will help your evaluate how engaged your audience is with your infographic.
Contents of the full report Section 1: Introduction History Business uses What makes a good infographic? Content Promotion Summary Section 2: Planning Setting objectives Get to know your audience Content: Getting creative with data Write your brief Summary Section 3: Design Good versus bad Inhouse or agency? Tools and templates Static, interactive or animated? Summary Section 4: Publishing and promotion Ensure your infographic is findable Leverage your network Paid channels Segmentation, personalisation and customisation Infographics at events Prove and improve Summary Section 5: ROI Measuring ROI Setting goals beforehand Tangible metrics Intangible metrics Summary Section 6: Case studies Drowning in data for Mindjet by Brands2Life Humans and machines for Ricoh by Paperhat Mobile trends in emerging markets for Upstream by Diffusion
Buy this report This report will help you: understand what makes a good infographic, select the right information your audience wants to know or learn about, maximise its impact, and gauge the overall success of your infographic. You can buy this report now for just 99 + VAT, or subscribe as a B2B Marketing premium member to get unlimited access to all the reports. B2B Marketing produces the following types of reports: Benchmarking reports: Indepth analysis of key channels, helping marketers benchmark their activities against industry standards. Best practice guides: Practical guidance focused on key objectives or utilising particular marketing tools or techniques. Business cases: Insight and data to help build a case towards a specific marketing investment. Technology evaluation guides: Indepth functional comparison data on a particular type of marketing technology. For more information on B2B Marketing membership, or to buy: Go to membership Email membership@b2bmarketing.net or call the membership team on
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