Published:

02/08/2014 10:24pm

Visually Engage Your Prospects With Content Rich Infographics

This is nothing new. You've heard it before. A picture is worth a thousand words. When you think about, humans have been communicating with pictures for thousands of years in the form of pictograms on cave walls to Egyptian hieroglyphics to temple carvings. As marketers, we should be using visual information in our business on a regular basis.

People remember pictures better than words, especially over long periods of time. This phenomenon is referred to as the Picture Superiority Effect. Based on research into the Picture Superiority Effect, when we read text along, we are likely to remember only 10% of the information 3 days later. However, if the same information is presented to us as text together with relevant images, we are likely to remember 65% of that information 3 days later.

According to developmental molecular biologist John Medina, visual information is a more effective form of communication for humans. In his book, Brain Rules, he states "Vision is by far our most dominant sense, taking up half of our brain's resources." Armed with those facts and figures, as a business owner or marketing executive, you have an opportunity to get out in front of prospects and ahead of your competition by creating engaging visuals to use within your business.

Derived from the phrase information graphics, Infographic was a term used in the production of graphics for newspapers and magazines. Today, infographic has evolved to mean something entirely different. They are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.

Understanding the importance of infographics as a business tool, I have started to use more of them in my social media posts. A Facebook post with a graphic or video is more likely to be shared that a text post. Create your own or share others that are relevant to your business or target audience.

The good news is that you don't need to be a graphic designer to create your own static 'banner' infographics. I call these static banner infographics to differentiate between the smaller size graphics seen on Facebook and the 'tall' longer poster size infographics.

Here are a few ideas to help you develop your own static infographics.

1. Start by deciding what information you wish to convey. Go through your existing company brochures, white papers, articles or blogs. Pull one or two sentences, quotes or comments that are engaging and/or informative. I like to look for things that can also have a visual play on words.

2. Research for relevant royalty free images on stock photography sites such as 123RF.com, istockphotography.com, dreamstime.com or Gettyimages.com. If you plans are to use your infographics on the web only, then you only need to purchase images that are 72dpi.

3. Overlay the text over the image and save as a jpg.

4. For those who are creatively challenged or simply time-strapped like me, outsource your infographics to a freelancer at Fiverr.com, Elance.com or oDesk.com [Recently the latter two companies have merged as one company, but they still operate independently]. You can easily have a series of static infographics produced within a weeks' time.

5. If you are really adventurous and want to try this on your own, check out Piktochart to get a head start with inforgraphic designs.

Adding infographics as a part of your marketing strategy is easy to execute. Make them interesting, fun, relevant and engaging. Notice which type and style of images are getting the most attention and then do more of them.

Pamela Wigglesworth is a Singapore-based American corporate trainer, speaker and Managing Director of Experiential Hands-on Learning, a training and development company. A resident of Asia for over 20 years, she works with companies across multiple industries to enhance their branding, marketing communications, personal communication skills and effectiveness in the workplace.

To learn more about Pamela, visit the Experiential website at www.experiential.sg or email her at courses@experienti