An Infographic Is Worth 1,000 Words

From early childhood we have been influenced by photos, bold colors, and visual elements that help us process and comprehend the information that we are exposed to on a daily basis.  It all started with picture books, then educational television programs and interactive computer games, digital books, and now a multitude of emerging media including infographics.  Currently, infographics are one of the most used visually stimulating media used to illustrate data or to tell a story. The popularity of infographics can be traced back to its tendency to become viral and its capability of transforming a standard text content into an easy-to-understand visual content.

In today’s fast-paced world, we ingest an exorbitant amount of information in a short amount of time, reducing the desire to read lengthy and detailed messages; however, our interest is typically heightened when we see images and visual content.   The main appeal of visual content, via infographics, is its profound ability to communicate complex messages quickly while cutting through the clutter. This is extremely useful to digital marketers, whose goal is to capture the short attention span of its audience. People’s short attention span attributes to the fact that roughly 200% more images are liked on Facebook over text.  Think about it…if we see an image accompanied with text, we will typically pay more attention than merely text alone.

Marketers use infographics as a part of content marketing strategies to capture attention on social media, mobile, the Internet. By incorporating infographics into the mix, people will be more likely to share your content, and in the social media world, shareability is vital to increasing brand awareness and ROI. The more creative and well-designed infographics are seemingly more interesting which can lead to an increased desire to share and generate conversation.  The more conversation that is generated, the broader the audience will be.  So, as the saying goes, a picture an infographic is worth a 1,000 words. With a little time, effort, and data collection, you’ll be on your way to creating beautiful, shareable, and marketable infographics!

Plugged and Charged: Today’s Emerging Media

Picture it. You just stopped in your local Starbucks to place an order for a piping hot Grande White Chocolate Mocha. The aroma of fresh coffee beans hits you as you sink into that plush, oversized chair. Ahhh time to relax and unplug from the world, right? 

Not hardly! Take a look around… you’ll see someone on their smart phone – likely head down and eyes glued to the screen, another person typing away on their fancy 10″ tablet, and then you notice someone else video chatting with their loved ones. Who cares if technology overuse causes carpel tunnel or text-neck? (Yes, it is a real thing!) We would rather make these sacrifices to stay digitally connected…at least then we would know everything at any given time right when we need to know!

It is no secret that we live in a world that is digitally connected 24/7/365, but why are we so dependent on technology and various forms of emerging media? We want information available at our finger tips and delivered instantly. As technology continues to rapidly advance, so will the way we use these emerging media in our every day lives. We use various types of emerging media to order our favorite takeout or schedule an appointment at the hair salon all without talking to a human, and we send emails and text messages rather than picking up the phone.

As a whole, our society is digitally and socially plugged at all times, and if we are not it can be tragic and devastating. Sounds drastic…I know, but you would think the world is ending. Examples of these emerging media we connect with on a daily basis include

• Social media
• Blogs
• Digital media
• Mobile communications
• Video marketing
• Email

Today, we depend on these emerging media as communications with our favorite brands, family, friends, and even our utility companies. The future of digital media and emerging media will only continue to develop and we will find more new and innovative ways to utilize these types of media in our every day lives.

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