With plenty of different forms of advertising and publication forming over the past several years, many bloggers are looking for alternative ways to catch the eyes of their readers while also creating something that will spread beyond the realm of their own blog – hopefully attracting others to become readers. One of the best ways to do this is by creating infographics that summarize a topic or event in an aesthetically-pleasing fashion. By boiling down the subject material into an easy-to-digest format, you stand to gain much attention from those seeking refuge in an internet environment of information overload.

Origins

Before you begin designing the finer points of the infographic, you must first develop a concept. By having a stellar idea sketched out from the beginning, you will be able to keep on track and deliver all the necessary information. Since your blog most likely is dedicated to a particular niche or category, it is smart to stick to this subject material – although other bloggers have had great success using infographics outside their own realm to generate buzz and hype about their site. Generally speaking, a good concept will cover the history and facts of the subject while also maintaining a creative element. These tactics combined will result in a wave of people and search engine bots viewing and pinging your website.

Data

With your idea solidified and brainstorming finished, you can now move to the research and data-collection part of building your infographic. Some concepts may cover factual, historical events or ideas and will have a plethora of information to support your premise. Others may be circumstantial or involve trends that are not as clear; still, you will need to locate data, statistics and other concrete facts that support your position. After you have assembled the data necessary for putting the infographic together, you should then proceed to organize it in a word processing document or similar program so as to make the final part simpler.

Design

At this stage, your worries are putting the collected data into a graphically-pleasing format that viewers will enjoy and can appreciate. Usually, you will want to start off with a large canvas in a program such as Photoshop; most infographics are shown in “thumbnail” mode and are meant to be clicked on to see the entire image. You can always resize the image later, so feel free to make it as big as you feel comfortable doing. Colour schemes, borders, fonts and other elements are variables that will depend on your own likings, the theme of your website and the theme of the topic.

Distribution

Finally, you are ready to begin pinging your website with the new infographic. We recommend that you host the image on the same server and domain as the blog; you will most likely receive a boost in traffic and an uptick from search engines by earning inbound links. You may wish to put it on its own page, followed by a click-through link to the full-size image. You also want to place social sharing options on the page so others can spread the word about your newly-published infographic.