The Kick-Butt Infographic Blueprint

Photo credit: Daniel Zeevi

There’s nothing like a kick-butt infographic to catch your prospects’ eye and quickly engage them into consuming your content.

It’s no secret infographics are an effective piece of your overall content marketing puzzle…and for several good reasons.

• Infographics allow your audience to digest information quickly.

• Infographics provide valuable insight in a smaller amount of space.

• Infographics equip your website with an actionable lead magnet.

• Infographics leverage facts and statistics that make the case for doing business with you.

• Infographics build your credibility as an expert in your field.

• Infographics add variety to your content marketing plan.

[Side note: adding variety to your content marketing plan is crucial to increase audience engagement and conversions. Discover what it takes to implement diverse pieces into your overall marketing strategy.]

The list of infographic benefits stretches on, but there’s one hang-up…

They must be engineered in a way that gives your audience the precise information needed to engage more with you.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much a comic strip. (We all love Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, but they don’t help our target audience much.)

Check out the following strategies that create a successful infographic.

Show the value in the title.

Whether you use your infographic as a lead magnet or simply feature it on your blog, the headline must preview the value proposition.

Yes, an infographic may take 30 seconds to read, but it’s still important to compel your audience to give up their time.

To accomplish this, show readers what they’ll walk away with. Here are a few example headlines, courtesy of our friends at Kiss Metrics:

Maybe your audience will avoid a painful situation?

Or you could help them leverage an opportunity…

And another option is giving straightforward value…

Source: Kiss Metrics

When your title is direct and shows value, you can’t go wrong. See the example below for a headline that shows readers exactly what they’ll gain from reading the infographic.

Source: Deluxe.com

Introduce the stakes.  

When you’ve hooked your reader with a compelling headline, you have to turn the spark of interest into a burning urgency to read.

That means it’s time to introduce the stakes. In order to up the ante, let your reader know what your infographic helps them overcome or solve.

Use industry-specific statistics or verbiage such as:

• The average attention span remains under 3 seconds. Is your website content moving fast enough?

• If you store customer data online, their information may be at risk. Find out how to protect them.

• Did you know that Google ranks you higher based on how long your traffic stays on your website? Here’s how to keep your audience browsing your webpages.

[Side note: that last example is very, very true. Click here to gain information on “time-spent SEO.”]

As you work to up the ante on your infographic, think about what impacts your audience.

Here’s a good example that’s relevant to online businesses.

Source: IDF Marketing

Use the agitate and solve technique.

When you’ve leveraged what’s at stake, it’s important to counterbalance with a solution. In other words, your infographic must project the new reality your business creates.

If you show you understand your customer avatar’s problems, you show empathy.

At the same time, when you outline the corresponding solution, then you show you’re an expert who cares.

And that’s the perfect recipe for conversions.

Here’s an example of the agitate and solve technique in action:

Source: Web Marketing Today

There you have it: the blueprint for a kick-butt infographic.

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