4 Reasons to Publish Infographics on Your Blog

Infographics have been a hot item in the content marketing world for several years now.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, an infographic is a graphical or visual representation of information, from data to knowledge or textual information.

For millions of examples, take a few minutes to browse a site like Visual.ly. I’m sure you’ll realize that you’ve seen several before.

They’re powerful content marketing tools. But most small business marketing departments don’t have the time, money, or resources to create their own infographics. Making your own requires either a graphic designer and hundreds of dollars worth of design software, or the big budget to hire a freelancer for the project. Many small business marketers would conclude that this means they can’t create and post infographics.

You ought to reconsider that conclusion.

There’s no rule that says you can only use your own infographics in blog posts. Through means like Visual.ly, social media (Pinterest especially), networking, and search, it’s easy to find infographics created by individuals or companies that want them shared (usually with a link back). If you see an infographic on a site like Visual.ly, see an embed code on the graphic’s page, or are sent an email about it encouraging to share, it’s safe to assume that it’s okay to put on your blog. In other situations, you can still ask if you have permission.

Here’s why your blog should have some infographic posts:

1. Same amount of information, less time for your readers.

Did you know that the human brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text (source)? Think about how valuable your blog post could be with 60,000 times more information. And it would still take your reader the same amount of time to learn it all. That’s a guaranteed way to provide value to your audience and keep them coming back for more.

Obviously, you’re not really going to put that much more information into a post. But if you take the same amount of information, or a little bit more, and put it into a post of a visual nature, your readers can learn more in a shorter amount of time, leaving them to go about their day. We’re all busy, and your readers will appreciate that they can quickly browse your post, get the value, and get back to their to-do list.

2. Infographics are highly shareable.

People love images, and they love sharing them. Blog posts with infographics are likely to get shared on social media a lot more than your average text-only post. I once saw one of my infographic posts get shared on Pinterest about 500 times more than my blog’s average post. You can’t deny the marketing value in that, even if you can’t take complete credit for the image.

All those social shares will bring traffic back to your site, where if it’s optimized effectively for engagement, people will stick around and check out some blog posts that are 100% you. And if they’re good, your visitors will share those, too.

3. Your post can get promoted by the creator.

Whenever you post someone’s infographic on your blog, let the original creator of the graphic know. Either email them a link or send it to them over social media. When you share the post on social media, tag the source to give them credit.

In my experience, as long as you have permission to be sharing the graphic, nine times out of 10 the creator will be appreciative enough to share a link to your post with their graphic in it. If you’re sharing infographics just once or twice a month, that can be a huge boost in your social reach.

4. You save time on content creation

While you should do more than just slap a page title and some tags onto the post with the infographic, it will still take you less time to write the text for an infographic post than creating a text-only post from scratch. The topic, context, and information is already there; you just need to frame it.

At the very least, you need to write an intro and conclusion. But summarizing some of the information, or adding to it, is always a good idea too. The more information your post provides, the better.

Have you ever used infographics on your blog? Did you create your own or share someone else’s? Tell us about your experience!