Infographics play a crucial role in generating brand awareness online. In 2016, 37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging (38%). In 2017, we’re looking forward to taking visual marketing to the next level; over 80% of learning is done visually and infographics are an easy way to connect with your audience and generate awareness for your brand — especially if you’re a law firm.
What Is an Infographic?
Broadly, an infographic is a piece of content created to convert data and information into a reader-friendly format using charts, graphs, icons, and other visuals to share information with your audience.
An infographic can be as simple as a design-focused callout for a particularly insightful quotation or as complex as an interactive web page (and just about anything in-between).
Whether you’re trying to create a brand new infographic from scratch or edifying some of your existing content with visual elements, we have some practical tips for infographic success below.
Best Practices for Creating Infographics
Perfecting your own infographics for use and distribution can become challenging very quickly, and there are various degrees of complexity at each stage of development. For example, you can use tools and software that will handle most of the design for you, or you can create original design elements from the ground up. Similarly, you can assemble facts and statistics from various existing sources or dive into an analysis of your own unique data to put wholly original information out there for your audience.
Regardless of how involved or simple the process for creating your infographic is, you’ll want to devote careful attention to the crucial steps outlined below to give your content the best chance of success.
1. Topic Ideation
Ideation begins as you brainstorm and develop the topic for your infographic. Best practice dictates that you should do some research before jumping in, so we’ve come up with just a few of the important questions you can ask yourself while developing your infographic ideas:
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What are the topics I am most experienced in?
Try focusing on topics of interest to you, practice areas, or recent news that’s relevant to your firm. Determine what you’d like to share. Has there been a recent law that was passed? Is there a problem in your area of expertise that you can solve with facts and data? Is there a story in the news that sparked some interest around a subject in which you’re well versed? Deciding what you’d like to write and design for an infographic about is the first and most important step, and one that should be carefully considered.
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Who will be reading the infographic?
If you haven’t developed your ideal client personas, it would be best to start here. After you’ve considered who your ideal clients might be and who may come across your infographic, you’re one step closer to getting started! Relevance is important here. Knowing your audience plays a key factor in the success of your infographic.
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Do I have any existing content on my website that could be repurposed into an infographic?
Recycling content and giving it new life in the form of a visual can be a great way to capture readers who might have missed a lengthy blog post on a similar subject. See if you already have pieces that could be re-used or spun in a different way.
Once you’ve decided what direction you’re taking with your infographic, you’ll need to make an outline that includes the points you’d like to make, facts you’d like to share, and other content to be included. When you’ve come up with the “bones,” the real fun begins: developing the structure and “meat” of your infographic.
2. Content Development
Infographics usually contain facts, short sentences, graphs, and/or visual icons to present information in a new, exciting, and easily-digestible way. To develop content for your infographic, it is often easiest to begin writing without a length in mind and later discarding facts and sentences that don’t fall in line with the narrative of the infographic.
Using an active voice and concise facts will get your major points across effectively. Remember: words are great, but visual content is power. Be deliberate about the words for the piece, but don’t get bogged down in the writing phase; instead, focus on how to display the data with conviction using icons, graphs, and other visual components.
By the time you’ve completed the content development stage, your written work should tell a complete story including relevant facts and punchy sentences that will educate your readers from start to finish. But we’re not at the end just yet. In fact, we’ve just reached a key component in infographic creation: the design.
3. Design
How you display your facts is arguably the most important way to capture your readers. The infographic should be attention grabbing with a color scheme that complements your content and aligns with your brand. Whenever possible, choose no more than three colors to use throughout your piece. Using two fonts (at most) for a cohesive design is also recommended. The length of the infographic will depend on the amount of content you’re including, but there are no hard rules for this.
There is a great deal of software available to help you with your design needs if you don’t have someone in-house who can create designs from scratch. Many law offices have the full suite of Microsoft Office programs available to them and can use PowerPoint or even Word (with some patience and know-how) to create compelling visuals, and Excel has some extremely powerful data visualization options as well. Online tools such as Canva, Visualize, Piktochart, and others are all worth investigating as you find the right program to help you realize your vision for your infographic.
As you wrap up the design phase, don’t forget to cite your sources and have some fun!
4. Distribution
Although it can feel like a lot of work to get your infographic from an idea to a well-designed piece of content, the time and effort you’ve invested will be wasted if you don’t effectively distribute your infographic across multiple channels. Consider promoting your infographic both online and off:
- Send it to your contacts in an email
- Feature it in a blog post
- Print it off to distribute in your office
- Promote it on social media
- Share it at community events
- Post it on your website
- Use it anywhere else that it’s relevant
LaFleur Legal Marketing: Infographic and Content Marketing Experts
Here at LLM, we know the importance of using visual content in your marketing efforts. According to the well-known psychologist Jerome Bruner, people only remember 10% of what they hear and 20% of what they read, but about 80% of what they see and do. Infographics are a powerful way to engage your audience and stick in the forefront of their mind.
Of course, a lot of work goes into creating a successful infographic. If you’re too busy to ideate, write, design, and distribute your own infographic, let us help! We’ve got an in-house marketing team with the knowledge, skills, experience, and talent to bring your content marketing to the next level with unparalleled writing and powerful visuals. Plus, we have years of experience developing and implementing marketing strategies for law firms all over the country.
If you would like to learn more about introducing visual content into your marketing strategy (or any of our other digital marketing services), please call us today at (888) 222-1512 or complete our brief and simple contact form. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Related Posts:
- How to Film Testimonials and Interviews for Your Law Firm
- Video Killed the Analog Star: Great Video, Ideal Clients
References
Corner, N. (2015, April 2). 10 incredible infographics facts. Axonn. Retrieved from https://www.axonn.media/content-marketing/infographics/10-incredible-infographic-facts
Stelzner, M. A. (2016, May). 2016 social media marketing industry report: How marketers are using social media to grow their businesses. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved from https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2016.pdf