10 Traits of Amazingly Awesome Infographics

As a fan infographics I found this article from HubSpot to be interesting. It lays out what makes a successful infographic. The goal with most infographics is to promote sharing (boosting traffic and inbound links) so the infographic itself has to be worthy of sharing.  According to the article the 10 keys to awesome infographics are:

1. Highlighting tons of reliable and interesting data

2. Focused on a valuable topic

3. Presents information simply

4. Creatively visualizes data and information

5. Isn’t too long or too short

6. Isn’t overly self promotional

7. Incorporates branding

8. Provides clear and obvious takeaways

9. Cites data sources

10. Gets promoted

Beyond #4, creatively visualizing data, which you would probably need to hire a designer for, I think the real challenge here is to find something that provides clear and obvious takeaways. For these to be successful they not only have to be fun and interesting but they also have to highlight a problem that your product or service helps solve and they have to do it in a way that’s overly self promotional (#6). I think the balance here is a hard one to strike.

I recommend checking out the full article especially because it is full of successful infographics to learn from.

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/28436/10-Traits-of-Amazingly-Awesome-Infographics.aspx