As content creators, we always want to ensure that the message we’re trying to get across to our audience is understood. Added brownie points if our audience really enjoys consuming our content!

The good news is if you repurpose your blog post into an infographic, you are more likely to meet both of these requirements.

In this post and this week’s podcast episode, we look at why infographics should be a key part of your content repurposing plans, plus some tips and tricks on how you can start repurposing your blog posts (and videos or podcasts) into infographics.

1. Your audience will love them

Check out this one on how to moonwalk... we love it!

They’re visually appealing, highly engaging and make it easy to digest information quickly.

2. They help to break down information into bite-sized chunks

Infographics are really effective when you're simplifying a complicated concept or want to make a clear comparison between two or more things. An infographic pares down all the content you have in your blog into a much faster and easier-to-digest format.

According to Visme, infographics improve reading comprehension by 50%. So not only are they easier to consume, but your audience could also be getting more out of your infographics than your blogs.

Infographics also work really well with blog posts or podcast episodes that use lists. For example, an episode or blog post titled ‘10 Reasons To Use Infographics’ could make a great infographic for those who would rather not read the full post.

3. Infographics bring topics to life

Infographics are not only visually engaging but they can, if done well, bring topics to life.

If you’re trying to get across a concept that’s complex, a little dry or has been done a lot before, an eye-catching infographic is just the thing to bring the whole topic to life, grab attention and spark interest. They can be just the thing to liven up your blog posts.

For more on this, take a look at How to Turn Your Blog Post Into a Multimedia Experience.

4. It's a faster way to consume content

Did you know that scanning is the new reading?! Infographics enable us to scan and learn much faster than any other type of content.

In other words, infographics feed our short attention spans!

This makes it a handy alternative for people who would rather not or don’t have the time to read a long blog post.

While infographics can be consumed very quickly, you can still convey your key message, just in a shorter time.

While we’re talking about repurposing blog posts specifically, this is all applicable to any type of written content. For example, I've seen many sales pages turn into infographics, and that can work really well.

Not just that, you can easily take out the key points from a podcast episode or a video and turn that into an infographic as well.

…and while you’re there, you might as well turn them into a blog post as well. For pointers on how to do this, take a look at our blog on How to Repurpose a Podcast Episode into a Blog Post.

You can either do this yourself or outsource it. If you opt for the latter, you can do it really easily using services like Rev, which charges $1.50 for one minute of video or podcast content, or Fiverr. Having the written content can make it easier to plan out your infographic, but it’s not essential.

Long story short, you can repurpose pretty much any type of content – written, visual, audio – into an infographic.

The next question you might have is…do I need to create infographics for every blog post?

No, don’t worry. Infographics are best suited to your high-end, flagship content. They’re probably not something that you’re going to create for every blog post. Save them for that content you really want to make a mark with. That way, you can avoid overdoing it.

Essentially, it’s up to you – there are no set rules, but here are a few pointers.

You can repurpose your brand new blog post into an infographic, or you can repurpose older posts.

If you repurpose an older post, use your analytics (Google Analytics or any other analytics tools) to look at which posts are the most popular.

If people like the post and the content, then there’s a good chance they'll love your infographic too.

Firstly, you need to turn your blog post into a storyboard.

To do that, you’ll need to read through it and work out which bits you want to include in the infographic.

Completely strip your blog post down – getting rid of any words and sentences that aren't needed. Think about what the sections will be and turn long paragraphs and text into bullet points.

You want to end up with the following:

• A clear title
• Sections you want to focus on
• Bullets points (within each section to summarize)
• A call to action at the end

Now you've got the storyboard. Let's create!

There are a couple of options for doing this. One option is the DIY option. You can use tools like Canva, which is free (there is also a paid pro version) and has lots of infographic templates. There are other options aside from Canva that are free or not too expensive – this great article runs through a few.

Fair warning – it can be quite fiddly and time-consuming to create good-looking infographics, unless of course you're quite the whiz on Canva and similar tools.

If you've got a designer who works in your team, then this is the perfect job for them.

Otherwise, you should consider hiring a freelance designer to do this for you.

Of course, if you’re a Content 10x client, then we can create an infographic for you.

There are a few different places that you could go to find a good freelancer. For example, upwork.com or fiverr.com as well. There are lots of amazingly talented freelancers on these sites, but there are poor-quality freelancers too! Be sure to look at their ratings and their reviews, and don’t always go with the cheapest!

Once you’ve created a storyboard, make sure to give it to your designer so they have an idea of what you’re looking for. In addition, if you’re working with a freelancer, be sure to share your logo, brand colors, brand fonts, and so on.

If you have brand guidelines, then you should share those with your designer so that the infographic is branded for you. Any reputable designer will ask for all of this as standard.

In terms of the design, either find infographics that you think look really good and share those with your designer...explain that you would like something that looks similar.

Or you could sketch out what you want your infographic to look like (even just pen to paper, sketch it out, scan it and email it over to the designer). The more information that you can provide your designer, the better.

Your designer is likely to provide you with some JPEGs and PNG files, and a PDF file. Maybe ask for a thumbnail image of the infographic that you could use for social sharing.

Always make sure that you focus on quality with your infographic. It needs to look really engaging, really professional and fun!

While HubSpot says that infographics are shared three times more than other forms of content, you still need to make people want to share it.

They’re going to want to share it if it provides really good information. If it’s really useful, and really helpful, people will share.

When people think of infographics, they often think of Pinterest. That's a great option if your audience hangs out on Pinterest or you're trying to reach an audience there.

But what if Pinterest is not right for you?

Fear not. You can also share your infographic on other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, don’t forget LinkedIn and SlideShare too!

Another great place to put your infographic is your own website. If you've turned a blog post into an infographic, then put your infographic in your blog post as well. That way, people have a choice between scanning through the infographic or the blog (remember, not everyone has time for long blogs).

Another top strategy is to include the infographic as a download on your website in exchange for an email address. This transforms your infographic into a list-building tool as well.

There are lots of different places to put your infographic and plenty of places/people to share it with.

If you want people to share your infographic, then make it really easy for them.

If you're going to put it on your own website, then I really recommend making sure that you have some social sharing options (e.g social sharing widgets), and you can provide an embed code.

You can add the "pin it" button with a Pinterest widget making it really easy for people to share it on Pinterest.

One final tip is to make sure that you track your success as well.

If you put the infographic onto your website, then it will be loaded in there as media and it will have its own URL. You can track that URL via your analytics. If you store your infographic elsewhere, like Amazon S3, you should still be able to track it.

By tracking your infographic on your website and social media analytics, you can see how much impact it’s having on your audience. You can see traffic, engagement levels, and even sharing stats to either replicate successes or find areas for improvement.

I hope I’ve convinced you about all the benefits of infographics and you found the above helpful for your own blog posts and infographics.

As a little bonus, we’ve created…drum roll…yes, you guessed it, an infographic about repurposing your blog post into an infographic! It’s right below this post (click it to download)!

We would really like to hear about your endeavors with repurposing your content into infographics. Please do get in touch and comment below.