Importance of Infographics

Now that we know the meaning of infographics, let’s discuss the important reasons you should be using infographics on your site as a content marketing tactic:

Infographics Are attractive and eye catching

In the web, people love facts and statistics. Images give authenticity to your content. They are attractive and they will always catch the eyes of your reader. We all know that pictures never lie!

Infographics are Scanned Easily

Many readers usually scan through a web post first before deciding whether a post is worth reading. By adding infographics to your posts, you will give your readers an urge to read your content. You will also make it easy to understand and remember. This is because human beings are highly visual. They process visual content faster than written content.

Infographics Have High Capacity to go Viral

Because infographics are attractive, it is easier to share them on social media compared to written content.

Infographics are Portable

The process of designing infographics involves developing an infographic code and publishing it on your website. This is called embedding. This embedded link can be easily transferred from one website to another.

Infographics Help in creating Brand Awareness

Some types of infographics like a picture of your product embedded with your logo will go a long way in helping you create brand awareness. Also posting images of your products on your website will help inform your customer about your brand.

Infographics Help to Increase Traffic

An infographic that is a well created and attractive will compel people to like and share it with their friends on social media. This will increase your traffic.

Infographics help in Search Engine Optimization

If your infographics become viral, it motivates more people to link to the Infographic, hence more people will link to your website which elevates the page ranking of your website.

Infographics Show Your Readers You Have Knowledge

When you use infographics, you will be able to display to your readers the knowledge and expertise on your niche or category.

Infographics are Powerful Marketing Tools for Search Engine Optimization

When you post images of your products on your website, you will be giving your prospective customers a chance to virtually sample your product before actually touching it. Research has shown that people are ten times likely to buy a product they have seen their image than products which they have only read its description.

David O’Neill is a graphic designer who knows the power of infographics. “Info graphics are an ideal way of delivering your data quickly, in an easily-digestible format. They even have the added benefit of supporting the look and voice of your brand.”, says David.

David, who also illustrates children’s book with author and collaborator Ed Shankman, says the best info graphics are those that demonstrate one key point. You can check more of David’s work at www.shankmanoneill.com.

The bottom line of infographics is that infographics increase traffic to your website. As an online entrepreneur, you know that increased traffic means more market for your online business. The beautiful infographics which you post on your website will help you convert this traffic into sales. This is because pictures of your product give your business more credibility. People love people who they think they can trust, and credibility builds trust.

Though creating infographics is rather difficult, there are many new tools and platforms which will help you make better infographics for your website. Take advantage of these amazing tools and improve the quality, readability and attractiveness of your content by using infographics.

14 Great Tools to Create Engaging Infographics and Images for your Social Media Posts

Pablo a new tool to create beautiful images for your social media posts in under 30 seconds

You can use Pablo right from the get-go, no need to login or create an account. Just quickly create amazing images super fast.

You can try out the first version of Pablo right now – no login required. Just head to http://bufferapp.com/pablo and give it a try!

We’d love to hear your thoughts about Pablo on Twitter, just hit us up @buffer and hope it makes creating images for your social media posts much easier for you.

Ok, back to the blogpost!

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It wasn’t long ago that Twitter added inline image previews to its official apps, including the web view.

Now, Twitter is including more image focus in the latest redesign. On the left-hand side of Twitter’s new web view, your profile and header images are now visible.

We’ve done tests on our own Twitter account previously that showed images make a huge difference to engagement:

Images aren’t just useful for Twitter, either. Facebook and Google+ posts look great with images in them, and Pinterest and Instagram are all about images.

In particular for looking at Twitter, in a recent research study we conducted, we found that images can increase retweet rate by up to 150%:

To make the visual side of your social media strategy a bit easier, here are some tools to help you create awesome pictures.

1. PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a really easy-to-use photo editing tool that runs in your browser. You can quickly and easily edit a single image, create a collage or put together a design—say, for a background or your Facebook cover image.

I love how easy-to-use PicMonkey is, and that you can jump in straight away and give it a go without creating an account or even uploading your own photos. I used the sample images on offer to try the collage editing tools:

It even has some handy built-in collage designs for Pinterest, Etsy and Facebook:

Especially in the image editing world, there exist a ton of other great tools. Check out “The Big List of 100 Tools, Tips and Tricks to Work more Efficiently Online” to get even smarter about editing tools.

2. Social Image Resizer Tool

The Social Image Resizer Tool is an absolute must-have if you need to quickly resize images for your social media profiles often.

It lets you upload your own photos and easily resize them to set sizes for Facebook, Twitter and Google+, as well as custom sizes and common icon and avatar sizes:

For Facebook in particular, getting the photo size and aspect ratio just right is crucial to have it appear large and clear in the newsfeed.

Another similar tool is this Social Media Image Maker which includes even more social network options, such as YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Vimeo.

3. Timeline Slicer

Timeline Slicer is a brilliant tool for designing images for your Facebook Page or Profile.

You can add your own images from your computer to pretty much any section of the mock-Facebook Page or Profile, and then edit them to fit. I uploaded my profile picture and dragged it into the profile image spot:

Once it’s in the right spot, you can resize, move and rotate the image until you’re happy with it. Afterwards, you can hit one of those green arrows to download the edited version of your image or click “Download All” to grab a .zip file of all the images you edited.

If you upgrade to Timeline Slicer Pro, you’ll get to use the sections for Shared Image, Sponsored Story Image and Facebook Ad images.

Especially with all the changes Facebook has made recently to its algorithm, it’s becoming more important to experiment with all elements – including the profile.

4. Photovisi

Photovisi is another photo collage tool that’s really simple and easy to use.

You don’t need to create an account to make a collage, and you can choose a layout and upload your images really fast.

Once your image is finished, you can download it and use it however you like. Too easy!

5. BeFunky

Most of the tools on this list do one thing well, and make it easy. BeFunky is closer to a full photo editor that lives in your browser.

The editor is still really easy to use, but it has features like cropping, red-eye and blemish fixes, filters, borders, text and collages.

It also lets you grab your photos from more places than most, including your computer, Facebook, Flickr and your webcam.

If you want a browser-based editor that’s a bit more serious, Pixlr is a good one to try. These tools can make any content more visual – and visuals are an important part of creating more shareable content.

6. Find and make Infographics

Infographics are especially popular on Pinterest or in blog posts. We’ve even shared some social media infographics here on the Buffer blog.

A few tools have popped up to make creating infographics easier. Here are just a few you could try:

Easel.ly

Infogr.am

Visual.ly

Piktochart

Discover more tools to create infographic here.

7. Make images from quotes

Another great way to make your social media posts more visual is to use quotes to make images. Here are some tools to help you do this, so you can share quotes on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

I used a quote from a recent Buffer blog post to test each of these tools so you can see an example of how they work:

Recite

Recite has my favourite set of backgrounds to choose from, which make it really easy to make your quote look nice:

Quozio

I love that Quozio’s landing page is set up for you to start creating a quote image immediately.

Pinwords

Pinwords is a really basic tool, but it’s great if you want to quickly make an image from a quote and add it to your Pinterest account.

Pinstamatic

Pinstamatic actually lets you create a whole bunch of items to add to your Pinterest boards including website snapshots, pins of Twitter profiles and Spotify tracks that you can pin.

There are lots of visual templates to choose from for your quotes, and you can click each one to see a preview: