How to Make Infographics (Infographic Templates)

Hi, I'm James from HubSpot and today I'm going to show you how to make infographics. If you enjoy this video, don't forget to like it and subscribe to our channel. Post any questions or suggestions you have in the comments below. Let's get started Infographics are a powerful tool for capturing the attention of your target audiences. In fact, businesses that publish infographics grow their traffic an average of 12% more than those that don't. The hard part of course is is finding time and resources to create these infographics. Lucky for you, you don't need an expensive program like Photoshop or a degree in graphic design to create professional looking infographics. You can design stunning infographics right in PowerPoint. You'll want to download some free infographic templates for PowerPoint, like these ones we made specifically for marketers. They're totally free, work right in PowerPoint and they'll help you make a professional quality infographic in under an hour. Once you have the templates in PowerPoint, it's time to start planning your infographic. First, identify the audience for your infographic. Infographics don't sell themselves on design alone. You need to deliver info that's just as compelling as the graphic, and to do that, you need to know the audience your infographic intends to reach. According to the Harvard Business Review, there are five possible audiences that can change how you choose infographics and visualize your data Novice, generalist, managerial, expert, and executive. Start by comparing your infographics ideal reader with one of these five audiences. Which one applies to your reader? When thinking about the data you want to visualize, let the five audiences dictate how advanced your data will be. A novice audience, for example, might need data whose meaning is more obvious. At first blush, an expert might be more interested in getting into the weeds of your numbers and posing theories around them. An executive has more in common with a novice audience in that they only have time for the simplest or most critical information and the effect it'll have on the business. Next, it's time to collect your content and relevant data using the audience you've selected. Your next step is to organize all the content and data you'll use in the infographic. You can either collect third party data or use your own original data. If you if you use third party data, just be sure you properly cite your sources just like in any other good piece of content. When collecting your data, make sure you know what story you want to tell through this information data for the sake of data won't add value to your infographic at all. Compelling data needs to be comprehensive enough to give your readers proper context around the data you're presenting. For example, a spike in website traffic from one month to the next doesn't mean much until, say, you reveal that traffic was on a steady decline over the previous three months. Suddenly, you have a story on how you were able to reverse a downward trend. Now you can choose your desired infographic template. The important thing is to choose a template that specifically works for the type of data set or content you want to present. Our PowerPoint templates offer a ton of different options to suit your data, like a timeline, flowchart, side by side comparison, and a data driven infographic. Here are some basic ideas for choosing an infographic template that suits the story you want your data to tell. Flowchart Infographic this design is perfect for presenting a new workflow for your organization or how a linear or cyclical process works across your industry. Timeline Infographic this design can tell a chronological story or history of a business, industry, product or concept. Graph based Infographic this design is suitable for content creators publishing a high volume of data and statistical information, making it a good fit for expert level audiences too. Image Heavy Infographic this design caters to content creators who are trying to reveal trends and information from shapes, designs or photography rather than just numbers and figures. Once you've selected a template, it's time to customize. Obviously this is the most time consuming part, but it's also the most fun. Come up with a catchy title, plug in your data and content and adjust your font sizes and formatting. Feel free to switch up the graphics and colors too, so they're relevant to your brand and the data you're providing. For other templates, you can use the simple graphs and charts provided by PowerPoint to create things like the bar graph or the pie chart. Finally, make sure you include a footer with your sources and logo so people know who created the infographic if it gets shared in social media or embedded on other websites. Which is definitely something you want since one of the main benefits of creating infographics is their shareability. Looking for even more help with your visual content creation? Click the link above to learn more. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it and subscribe. Let me know how you're doing in the comments below.