Infographics are one of the key elements to a successful visual marketing strategy.
Even if it’s very hard to design (I trully recommend working with a professional designer) you need to do it. because sometimes an infographic can be a pain in the ass for your audience when they don’t have the time to read the entire content.
I know I’m not a professional designer but I have some basic designing skills and before I started designing infographics I’ve done my research on the best infographics. After that, I started designing infographics by myself and reached out to the big publishers (Adweek, CreativeBloq) to let them know about it. And guess what? Those infographics were featured on their homepage.
But throughout my journey of research and designing infographics I’ve found that many other content marketers and designers are doing some big mistakes in this area.
And let’s be honest, designing an infographic is not the hard part, making it popular is. But today we’ll talk about the 8 mistakes you can do while designing an infographic.
1. You don’t know why you design it
If you read or hear somewhere that you need to design an infographic so you can gain more traffic on your blog, and you start doing it, don’t be surprised if you won’t see any miracles happening.
Why? Because many people are rather doing what they heard or read, instead of relying on their data and stats and even talking with their audience.
This is why you need to answer the cliche question you heard so many times, even though it’s the most classic way to a great way of starting your journey: Why do I want to do an infographic?
After you’ve answered this question, let me give some more helpful “Why” questions:
- Why do I need an infographic?
- Why does my audience need an infographic?
- Why can this solution be expressed through an infographic?
2. You don’t understand your target
When you don’t understand your target, whatever you will do, it won’t get any good results. This is why diving deep into your analytics, talking with your audience and figuring out what they want (leaving aside the fact that specialists are saying that people don’t know what they want because this was back in the ‘80 and ‘90 when they didn’t have access to the information) is a vital strategy for your infographic.
See how they react to your visuals. Do they pin it to their Pinterest profile? Do they use it in their social media shares? If you design an infographic for them, will it be bookmarked or downloaded? Will this infographic help them make their life better?
I know that there are several questions you need to answer, but like I told you before again and again, asking question will help you get the answers for your next project.
And it’s better to ask yourself before doing something, than just doing it and worrying about the results.
3. You are using too much information
The internet is full of information. Every day we can see thousands of headlines and articles about another topic, another story, another marketing stat and economic data. Everybody is sharing information, whether it’s personal information or a public information.
The whole digital world is full of information.
So if you want to make your infographic stand out from the crowd, just use a specific type of information. Go deeper in that topic and stay away from wider topics.
The last infographic we’ve created for Bannersnack was a piece of visual content meant to teach our audience about designing a banner ad that Google will approve. We showed them the facts, the banner ads that Google disapproved in 2015 and how to design them so that they can be approved in their next display advertising campaign.
It was a simple piece of visual that is helping our audience create even more convertible banner ads.
4. You are using the wrong format
Now let’s talk with the infographic creator.
Sometimes they want to go with the flow. The best way to design an infographic is by start with the format. It doesn’t matter what height it’s going to be, but it’s important how wide it’s going to be.
I usually use the 800px width and the height depends on the design.
Because the internet is a scrolling thing and we love to scroll, whether it’s on our laptop, tablets or smartphones, we love to scroll up and down.
[Tweet “Scrolling from right to left or from left to right is not in our digital anatomy.”]
So designing an infographic that is wider rather than longer, will be no good for your audience.
5. You just used the ugliest colors, fonts and elements
Let’s say that you are not a designer and you don’t have enough money to hire a professional designer but you truly want to design an infographic. Please stay away from ugly colors, fonts and other design elements.
Even though you think they’re so beautiful you’d print your final result and hang it on your bedroom wall. For you audience it will be a nightmare and nobody will bookmark it or share it on social media.
So if you don’t have enough money to work with professional designers then you can just stick to the professional apps that will help you design a simple infographic (I recommend Piktochart).
But my best recommendation is to work with a professional designer. If you’ve found that you need to design an infographic for your audience to show them something special, it means that special visual content deserves a special treatment.
So for that special treatment you need to work with special people. And those special people are the ones that understand the importance of visual elements. And those are the designers.
6. You forgot about your brand
I’ve found many appealing infographics with lot of important information, but I didn’t know who designed it because I didn’t find any other information about the person who put it on the internet.
This is why you need to insert your logo, your website or even your name (if you don’t have the previous two already). So people who find your infographic will know who to give credit for on social media.
But most important, you want your infographic to be a trustful one. So by inserting your brand, it gains much more importance and reliability on the internet.
Read also – 3 Branding Pillars You Should Take Note of in Your Infographic
You don’t have to be very aggressive with your logo and insert a very big one on the top of the infographic. Just keep it simple and insert it at the bottom of the infographic, so after the user is done scrolling through the entire infographic he’s going to know who to look up on the internet and where to search for more information about the brand.
7. Don’t use embed code
How big is your infographic? Maybe it’s 500KB or 500MB or 5GB and I love it but I don’t want to use so much resource on my little personal blog. So what can I do? I don’t want to download it and insert it in the most common way on my blog.
This is why the embed code is a great way to let people use your infographic on their blog.
It’s the same way you can embed PDF files into your web pages.
Don’t forget to use the embed code on the page or blog post where you put your infographic for the first time.
And if you don’t know how to create an embed code for it you can upload it on visual.ly or Slideshare and from there you can copy/paste the code for your infographic.
But if you don’t want to upload it there, here is an example on how to use the embed code:
Here are a few example of the embed code we use at Bannersnack:
Infographic: How to Make Google Approve Your Banner Ad
Courtesy of: http://www.bannersnack.com/blog/infographic-google-approve-banner-ad/">Bannersnack
Infographic: The Anatomy Of An Awesome Instagram Ad
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