Infographics have become an increasingly popular storytelling tool for nonprofits and for-profits alike. Combining striking visuals with snippets of compelling data, infographics allow viewers to absorb information in digestible chunks. For businesses and nonprofits looking to develop their own infographics, here are three opportunities to develop an informative and appealing infographic:
Milestones
Is your nonprofit celebrating its 50th anniversary? Do you have compelling data on the increasing number of individuals and communities you have helped? Statistics demonstrating increased demand for services over the past five decades? Aggregating this information, and tracking its evolution since the organization’s inception, can lay the foundation for a compelling infographic.
Studies and Polls
Did your IT company recently commission a study on document security? Are you a trade association with new, proprietary data on industry trends? Oftentimes, market research provides an overwhelming volume of valuable data that is housed in a lengthy text report. Creating an infographic for the data is an opportunity to break up the data/text with some visuals, cull out some compelling statistics and provide people with a wealth of knowledge on a particular topic or theme, without them having to leaf (manually or electronically) through the full report.
It’s visual
Sometimes, data isn’t as compelling in a graph or text report as it would be with a creative visual representation. For example, is it more impactful to say ‘we recycled 50,000 aluminum cans’ or to combine text and visuals to report ‘we recycled 50,000 aluminum cans, which, if stacked, would be the same height as 19 Eiffel Towers’, placing the statistic next to a stack of said towers? Packaging a broad range of data from the recycling industry with various visual equivalents could yield a powerful infographic – and help people to grasp the importance and impact of recycling.
When considering how best to tell your business or nonprofit’s story through an infographic, consider what will resonate with target audiences, how best to pair the data with visuals, what themes are present in the data and what action you want people to take after viewing the infographic. While having viewers share the infographic across multiple social media platforms is valuable, one needs to understand how investing time and resources in developing the document will support a larger strategic goal, be it to increase donations or attract new clients.
