Want Higher Rates of Social Media Engagement? Check Out Infographics!

One of the hottest trends in Social Media today is the migration to content formats that are highly visual and work well on mobile devices (witness the rapid growth of Pinterest).  Various platforms are responding by making large graphics/photographs front and center in their applications as in Facebook’s timeline tweaks and LinkedIn’s dramatically redesigned company pages.

Engagement is in the Eye of the Beholder!

As many Social Media users can attest, the infographic, which is an information graphic—sort of the Cliff Notes of the Internet, has experienced growing popularity online when compared to traditional content.  A recent infographic researched by the editors at Top Marketing Schools, presented The State of Infographics:  The Rise and Impact of This Great Marketing Tool.  If your business has not yet considered utilizing an infographic to share your corporate messaging, here is some compelling information about this trend:

• On Twitter, a traditional tweet receives an average of 62 retweets, while a tweet linking to an infographic receives an average of 587 tweets.  Traction is increased 89%.

• On LinkedIn, a traditional post receives an average of 7 shares, while a post featuring an infographic receives an average of 51 shares.  Traction is increased 86%.

• On Stumbleupon, a traditional link receives an average of 39 page views, while a link with an infographic receives an average of 330 page views.  Traction is increased 88%.

Although no stats were specifically provided for Facebook and Pinterest platforms (traditional content vs. infographics), similar higher rates of engagement, based upon the other cited Social Media venues, would be expected.

Useful Resources

There are numerous tools to create your own infographic or you may hire a firm that specializes in creating them such as NowSourcing.com, Avalaunchmedia.com or Brafton.com.  Another method is to hire a graphic artist to bring your information to visual life.

Realize that creating an infographic is just the first step, that this is a highly competitive format (note that the ‘Business’ topic is the one with the greatest number of submissions at 12.7% of all categories).  You will need to be strategic in your topic choice and design as well as give careful thought to infographic promotion.

Additional resource links, including the best blogs and websites about infographics, were compiled by the Daily Tekk blog and are well worth checking out!