Instead of constantly producing new pieces of content week after week, why not take a few older blog posts and repurpose them into encapsulating and engaging infographics?!
You already have all of the right information at your fingertips, it’s merely extracting the right chunks to make it digestible for your audience.
Not convinced?
If you hear a piece of information, 3 days later you’ll remember 10% of it. But if you show that information with an image, people will remember 65% of that visual.
Why You Should Repurpose Blog Posts Into Infographics
Following on from this statistic, it has been proven time and again that people gravitate towards images over text because it’s easier to process. Visuals also provide you with a wider reach, because you can share the image on multiple platforms and then use the infographic to develop slide decks and social media posts.
Take one epic blog post for example, you could develop 5 graphical Tweets, 5 Facebook/LinkedIn posts, 5 Instagram posts and 5 Pinterest pins.
That’s a whopping 20 social media posts with imagery from ONE blog post!
Visual content also gets more likes, shares and comments over text. Who ever said no to more engagement?!
Yes, blog posts are wonderful to provide a cohesive story and background for your data and findings, but putting these key points into a visual format makes them stand out. Why not use infographics to take your best fact-driven blog posts and wow your readers with stand-out statistics.
Infographics allow you to share these findings with other bloggers, who in turn can share your infographic. Just give them the embedded code to use on their sites to further promote your content (more on this code later)!
Repurposing blog posts into infographics can also drive traffic back to your site. In fact, it can increase your web traffic by 12% because people pay closer attention to images over text.
You might be thinking, wonderful! I’m going to go back to the very beginning of my blog and just start breaking down each post…. But hold on a moment. Although infographics are a wonderful addition to your content calendar, they take time to design and tend to work better with fact-driven blog posts, over opinion-style blog posts.
Types of Infographics
1. Timeline
If your blog post follows a chronological order, using a timeline template would suit your needs best.
Timeline infographics allow your dates and explanations to flow succinctly into one another and highlight key points using bright icons and text.
2. How-to/Process
This is a long-form infographic that breaks down the steps of a process into numbered guidelines. Each step has a header and explanation underneath, with arrows and lines to give you clear guidance on what to do next in the process.
3. Statistical
These infographics highlight the key facts and findings of a blog post through charts and visual aids or icons with a brief explanation. These infographics are data-driven, and aim to provide the reader with a condensed version of the report.
4. Informational
These infographics are similar to statistical forms but with more text, giving you an overview of a particular topic or trend. Use icons and numbered headings to give the infographic cohesion and to break up the text throughout.
Now that you have an idea of infographic types, it’ll be easier to go back over your blog posts to match them to an infographic template.
How to Repurpose Your Blog Post Into An Eye-Catching Infographic
1. Choose Key Points
But the whole blog post is one key point!?
I hear you, so ask yourself these two questions:
What is the pain point of your reader?
What is the main question and outcome of your blog post?
It’s super important to always keep the reader in mind because they will be consuming your visual after all. When your content aims to solve their problems, they’ll keep coming back for more!
Asking yourself the main question of the blog post also helps you to organise your layout and headings of the infographic, so it doesn’t trail off or cover too many points. Usually you have this already done through writing the blog post, but keeping both of these questions and quick answers at the top of your page can help eliminate writing-creep.
2. Pick An Infographic Maker and Template
There’s a vast array of infographic designers on the Interweb. I chose Piktochart to develop my first infographic, due to its ease of use and (best of all) it’s free!
Piktochart
This online, free infographic tool gave me a range of templates to work from, as well as free image uploads and lots of logos and icons to add to my template. The colour schemes were a wonderful bonus, because for a perfectionist like me it could take a whole day to decide, but given the pretty colour schemes it didn’t take me long at all.
Venngage
Venngage offers a wide variety of templates as well, although some of the premium or business templates might cost you. The free version is consistent with Piktochart, but if you opt for the paid version they offer you more customisations and image uploads.
Canva
Canva is wonderful if you’re looking for a quick and easy template to display statistics and quotes. In comparison to the other two tools, it’s a lot less customisable because there aren’t as many icons and you can’t make charts or graphs, but for basic infographics to get you started, it’s a wonderful free tool.
When you decide on a tool, it’s then time to pick a template! When you go through your blog posts, you can probably match the type of information they present to an infographic-type.
The templates in the tools listed above all provide you with examples of the type of content they produce, in case you’re unsure of how to choose one.
From my experience with Piktochart, I chose a science-looking template because the layout was similar to what I had in my head (even though my infographic was not at all scientific!).
3. Map It Out!
When you begin writing a blog post, you start with the Ugly First Draft, right?! You have your headings, key points underneath, general layout and flow.
It’s the same with an infographic! Grab a pen and a sheet of paper (or if you want to be super fancy, go digital and check out this wireframe maker: https://wireframe.cc/) to map out your infographic concept.
If it’s your first time making an infographic, you might not know what resources you have available to you yet (such as icons, columns or text box structures).
Perhaps look at some of the templates to help you formulate a rough guide. You can always change it around later.
Remember to include text and visuals! Or at least leave blank spaces for where you’d like to include icon, visuals and graphs.
4. Design Your Infographic!
Using Piktochart, I went with the Dexter template. I chose this because I wanted something fun and cartoon-like for my infographic, rather than going for a more formal style.
Remember, the point of the infographic is to sum up the key points from your blog post, not to reiterate every single sentence.
Break up the text with visuals, numbers, headers and directional cues. If possible in your editor, change the background colour as you move through the infographic to signify new sections.
Remember to post the original blog post URL, your social icons and sources at the end of the infographic. This will bring traffic back to your blog, and also ensures you’ve put your stamp on the infographic if people start to share it around.
Citing sources will back up your statistics and give those companies the deserved traffic too.
For easier sharing and a guaranteed link back to your infographic blog post, you can offer the embed code with the infographic.
When I designed mine in Piktochart and hit the Share button, I had the option to make the infographic public. This generated the Embed code, so those who used my image could add this code to their blog post and therefore provide their readers with a direct link back to my website. Win-win!
This is the embed code for my infographic:
<div class=”piktowrapper-embed” style=”height: 300px; position: relative;” data-uid=”42420795-seo-ecommerce-trends-2020″><div class=”pikto-canvas-wrap”><div class=”pikto-canvas”><div class=”embed-loading-overlay” style=”width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; text-align: center;”><img width=”60px” alt=”Loading…” style=”margin-top: 100px” src=”https://create.piktochart.com/loading.gif”/><p style=”margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: Lato, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 600; font-size: 16px”>Loading…</p></div></div></div></div><script>(function(d){var js, id=”pikto-embed-js”, ref=d.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];if (d.getElementById(id)) { return;}js=d.createElement(“script”); js.id=id; js.async=true;js.src=”https://create.piktochart.com/assets/embedding/embed.js”;ref.parentNode.insertBefore(js, ref);}(document));</script>
You can add this code to your blog post underneath the infographic so others can share you infographic in an SEO-friendly way (more links back to your website!).
5. Hit Publish and Share!
In order to actually repurpose the blog post, you don’t just create the infographic and let it stew in silence….
Share it on every platform, especially the ones your audience are on. And even those you may not usually use, like Pinterest or Instagram stories.
Start a conversation on Twitter, or post it into relevant groups asking for feedback, or to wow members with your statistics and data.
The great thing about infographics (particularly long form), is you can break them down even further into slide decks, or into smaller images on social and then link back to the blog post for the full infographic.
There are millions of ways you can share them in order to bring people back to your website, it’s just a matter of figuring out where your readers hang, and then posting frequently there.
Of course, in order to gain maximum effect you should be readily engaging in other conversations and sharing fellow creatives’ content too!
Have you ever made an infographic? If so I’d love to see them! You can find me on Twitter @mariaprendevil1 to share insights and info!
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