Even Infographics Tell Stories

All forms of content marketing should tell a story. They should all pull users in and communicate a message in a way that’s memorable and effective. That usually means creating a natural flow so that one element leads to the next and the audience has to stay engaged to reach the conclusion.

That flow must be present in videos. It should form the underlying structure of articles and it even has to govern the way in which audiences interact with apparently non-narrative content like infographics. While audiences can often find their own way through an infographic, picking out the facts that they find most interesting, the content should have a clear message that it intends to convey—and that message will often be made up of blocks of information that have to be assembled to form a coherent story. Even if not every part of an infographic is read or every number remembered, the infographic needs to inform readers of the solution it contains.

Design can help to do that. The infographic to the left, is based on a Ted talk by Andrew Stanton, a Pixar writer and director of Toy Story and WALL-E. The designers have used a spiral and an illustration of the Ugly Duckling story to guide audiences through the most important elements of storytelling. Numbers help to reinforce the order of the points that need to be read so that one lesson follows another in a clear order. Like a movie there’s a clear beginning, a clear middle and a clear end, and they’re portrayed in a very simple order. (Source: blog.ted.com)

Showing Stories That Sell

Other infographics are both more complex and more subtle. This guide to personal finance starts with the basics represented as a circle that takes readers through the different elements of budgeting. Arrows then guide audiences to the next stage in the finance story, before further chapters in the infographic show the cheapest places to study and provide a round-up of popular finance tools.

The infographic starts with a problem: how do I organize my funds? It moves through a series of solutions and ends by giving the audience the ability to go out and implement the lessons learned in the infographic. Even if audiences only read the top half of the infographic they come away with the  idea that they start with a sum of money that has to be allocated and organized in a particular way. The last three sections feel like a continuation of the story for the most dedicated so that those who reach the end of the infographic and see the brand’s logo and website address will be the strongest leads. (Source: Business Insider)

The infographic is as educational a tale as the Ugly Duckling’s journey towards acceptance illustrated in Andrew Stanton’s Ted talk. It’s also as effective a marketing tool as a sales funnel.

A story is always an essential element in content marketing. While an infographic tells that story visually, it should always have a beginning a middle and an end.

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