Is This The Future of Infographics? ~ Social Media For Business Mag

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You’ve probably noticed a massive shift in the online world from text-based content to visual content.

There’s no denying the power that visuals have on the Internet, as well as in our everyday lives. YouTube and Instagram dominate the visual landscape, with YouTube the 3rd most visited site on the web and Instagram boasting about 80 million photos shared everyday.

Blog posts and articles are 80% more “consumable” when they have a colorful image, header, or thumbnail, and people will only spend about 15 seconds on a website if a visual doesn’t catch their attention first.

And infographics, the favorite among audiences and marketers alike, have been searched for 800% more today than in 2012.

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Image Source

On top of all that, content is being created at an alarming rate – 60% of marketers create at least one piece of new content each and every day!

As more and more people begin creating, one thing becomes clear: To be seen, you have to stand out.

Naturally, content marketers are already looking to the future of visual content, seeing what they can play with now, what they can implement, and what new technologies are just on the horizon. This forward thinking is what can make or break your content marketing efforts; you have to adapt or you’ll be drowned out.

With visual content like infographics, marketers have the unique position of seeing the future as it approaches. Businesses, graphic designers, and marketers are all starting to play with infographics – update them to make them even more appealing to audiences. Even if you “just got the hang of” regular infographics, it’s never too early to see which trends are starting to develop, nor is it too early to learn how to implement them in your own content marketing strategies.

If you want to get a glimpse into the future, and maybe even learn a few tricks before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon, now is the time!

Here are three types of infographics that are going to be most common in the (very near) future.

If you’re looking for a great tool for creating infographics, I recommend checking out Visme. They offer a free account to get you started and have some amazing features for non-designers. Get your free account now.

1. Interactive Infographics

While we’ve seen the beauty of interactive websites and user-friendly games, interactive infographics are still fairly new on the block. As infographics, they obviously contain some sort of information and are visually dynamic, but throwing the interactive element allows users to connect with the information and make it their own.

Regardless of your business, product, service, or message, you can create an interactive infographic that allows people to evaluate themselves (like the “Calculate your own BMI here” link in the image below). Users can also click on relevant information that sends them to more in-depth sources or back to your landing page, thus generating traffic. This is a highly adaptable and fun way to engage your audience.

A number of marketers have already adapted to this style of infographic, and it’s catching on quickly. But while other people have focused on simple interactions:

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See the full interactive infogaphic here.

….think about what else you could do with an interactive infographic.

You might try:

Including scroll-over tactics that make images or figures stand out larger than the background
Building in “pop-ups” that expand sections of text
Connecting images or statistics when they get clicked on
Making your infographic into multiple pages that users can click through

For a great example of an interactive infographic, check out this one:

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To make an infographic highly interactive (with scroll-overs, pop-ups, etc.) you will need to learn a little bit of coding in HTML5 or CSS, or hire someone else to manage that aspect of it for you.

Despite that additional effort, you’ll be rewarded with a unique, engaging, and effective piece of content.

Why should you try to incorporate interactive infographics in the near future?

It encourages your audience to engage with and share your content
It generates traffic (through links)
It proves to your audience that you are innovative, resourceful, and intent on providing content that is relevant and intriguing
There are levels of interactive infographics, which make this a manageable progression of resources and effort

2. Embedded video and GIFs

This is another type of infographic we are seeing more and more today. Infographics that possess short video clips or even GIFs (which means Graphics Interchange Format) are a great way to attract attention and to separate your infographic from the crowd. While it limits the platforms you can currently share your infographic on, it makes up for it in ROI.

A number of simple infographic creation tools, like Easel.ly, offer an “Embed video from YouTube” option, or you can add video to an infographic you create in Photoshop with a video layer. You can even add video to a Powerpoint slide, which you can design into an infographic.

You can also find virtually millions of GIFs and insert them in a similar fashion. The key here is that you now have to share your infographic as a URL, or make sure it is properly embedded into your website. You can’t save or share these infographics as .jpeg or PDFs.

Undoubtedly, as this becomes more popular, other tools will pop up allowing video and GIF insertion to be an even easier process. But if you’d like to use this style of infographic before everyone and their dog has the ability to do so, start now with the tools that are already out there.

If you want to take it to the next level, though, you can even make a video out of an infographic you already have. This is a great way to get seen on YouTube, Instagram, and even other video platforms like Vimeo, Snapchat, and more. The video below is a great example of how to turn your infographic into a video.

Why should you embed video or GIFs into your infographics?

It gives you the element of surprise – people don’t expect images to move!
It is highly entertaining and novel, which increases the odds that people will interact and share your infographic
It’s a great way to establish brand identity

3. Animated Infographics

Animated infographics have an extreme amount of visual appeal and demand a lot of attention. When a user is viewing an image, they don’t usually expect it to move – this is the beauty of learning these techniques before everyone else does.

While animated infographics are slightly more complex, and may require some graphic design, coding, and/or editing software knowledge, they are highly valuable.

Here is an example of what I am talking about:

If you’d like to learn exactly how to make animated infographics, check out this infographic from Tabletop Whale. You can also find a graphic design service that caters to this type of creation. Either way, this is one of the most involved processes in the evolution of infographics.

Why should you invest your time, energy, and/or money into creating animated infographics?

This is going to truly set you apart from the crowd because not everyone has access to this sort of software or content
It will be commonplace in just a few years – you want a head start!
The animation will make the information within the infographic more memorable
It will encourage your audience to engage with your Call to Action

This isn’t science fiction

While this may all sound fairly technical and maybe even out of your range of abilities right now, odds are that these types of infographics are going to be commonplace in barely 2 to 3 years from now. We’re already seeing a massive push towards animated and GIF-style infographics, especially as the popularity of GIFs continues to rise.

Infographics are becoming one of the most consumable and most created types of content on the Web right now. Why? Because it only takes about 250 milliseconds for a brain to process and assign value to an image or symbol.

If the average person spends about 15 seconds on a website before getting bored, it stands to reason that you’ll want to pull out all the stops to make them stay – or at least get the message across in 15 seconds or less. Some studies even find that humans have 8 second attention spans, and it’s decreasing every year.

This is the reason for, and possibly a byproduct of, our consistent need to consume content. We are in the Age of Information, and we have everything accessible to us. But that also means, as more people try to share their message and to answer as many questions as possible, that most of the content produced is becoming background noise.

If the direction of infographics today is any indication, they will soon be everywhere. This means that your job is to innovate. No marketing campaign in history has succeeded by doing the same thing forever.

The idea here is to see infographics as more than just a .jpeg image. They can be adapted to many different mediums and used on a variety of platforms. Entrepreneurs and marketers are already starting to see the potential here. Do you?

Guest Author: Latasha Doyle, discusses all things “infographic” on Easel.ly’s blog. If you are looking for more information on creating infographics, you can also check out Easel.ly’s free ebook, “Infographic Crash Course.”

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