Infographics are a phenomenal way to package interesting facts and information about a specific topic in a visual that’s fun to read and which just begs to be shared. In plain text, people probably wouldn’t take the time to read about a bunch of facts. But in a fun infographic format, it can really go viral.
Here’s one easy process for creating viral infographics.
==> Research Interesting Facts
Start with a topic you want to write about. Infographics can encompass just about any topic, from the frivolous (e.g. little known facts about beer) to the very serious (e.g. why did the housing bubble crash?)
Use Google, Wikipedia and your local library to find as many little-known facts about the topic as possible.
If you want, you can also try to piece all the facts together to form a story. Or, you can just put the facts together and have primarily a factual infographic.
==> Construct the Infographic
Adobe Illustrator is probably the most popular application for constructing infographics. An infographic is primarily made up of lines, and Illustrator is ideally designed for this purpose.
Though you can use applications like Photoshop or GIMP to construct your infographic, you’re looking at a lot more work. That’s because these programs were built to handle pictures rather than lines.
In technical terms, Illustrator is vector based (lines), while Photoshop is raster based (pixels). Since creating an infographic involves mainly lines and text, it is much faster to do in Illustrator.
==> Add Graphics
One of the things that makes infographics really fun to read is the graphics.
Use images like pie charts, photos of what you’re talking about, and even hand-drawn illustrations if you have the artistic ability. The more variety and visual interest you can add, the more people will be drawn into your infographic.
==> Add a Dose of Personality
While strictly informational infographics can go viral if you’ve included some really shocking facts, your chances of getting your infographic to spread will go up exponentially if you just add a bit of personality.
For example, add some of your own brand of humor. Make fun of something in your infographic. Do something out of the ordinary, or use funny or shocking pictures.
Adding personality and emotion to your infographic will bring it to life and help it catch people’s eyes and attention.
****For those of you who aren’t graphically inclined you can also outsource and pay someone to create the graphic for you based on your ideas. I use a site called Fiverr at http://Fiverr.com to create low cost graphics.
==> Getting Distribution
Infographics tend to spread very well on sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Post your infographic on these sites and hang around to respond to any comments.
In addition, post your infographic to your list and/or blog. If you’re not already running a blog and you intend to keep producing infographics, you should probably look into creating one so your audience can follow your work.
Keep in mind that not every infographic will go viral. However, if you create five great infographics, chances are one or two will spread like wildfire. When one of these takes off on the social networks, the traffic surge can be positively massive.
That should give you something to think about 😉
