Infographics: A picture is worth a thousand words

You might be surprised to see an article about the creation of Infographics on the Conversation Managers blog, but there’s a good reason for that.

Infographics give a visual representation of information quickly and cleary even when the information itself is complex and difficult. They give an overview of the information, order things, show relations and can inspire you to read the information itself. No wonder that infographics work well in the 140 characters information age.

Anol Bhattacharya, CEO at Digital agency GetIT shared some insights about infographics in this interview by Willes Wee. GetIT was responsible for the Quickstart Guide to Social Media infographic which received more than 30K page-views and was mentioned in 200+ blogs.

Remember the good old bar charts in Lotus? These simple bar charts were the start of visual representation of business information. Today we use powerful diagrams, flow charts and visuals that fit the information.

Marketers are publishers.
According to GertIT marketers are publishers and due to the power of infographics to explain complex information, the visuals can playa major role in business; A picture is worth a thousand words.

At the of every year I write an article for Marketingfacts (Dutch blog about Interactive Marketing) with the top 10 articles based on view or comments and the top 10 bloggers both for the current year and all time. Popular information but last year I wanted to have a visualization of that and show our audience the power of infographics.

After a tweet I received a couple of tips for Infographics designers and we selected Dutch infographics designer Erik Wiegers. The infographic he created showed to power of infographics to our audience and boosted the view of the popular article.

The good, the bad and the ugly.
So next time you need to give a presentation or explain complex stuff try an infographic. A good start is this article about the 12 steps for creating an infographic.

One warning: There are good, bad and ugly infographics 😉 Designing a good infographic is a skill, so do ask an experienced designer. A well designed infographic can help you to manage the conversations about your brand.