Infographics, which refer to information graphics, are the visual representations of data and knowledge aiming at presenting information in a clearer and more understandable way than plain text. They have been popular on social media like Facebook and Twitter for a while, and now, they are enjoying an increasing popularity among both personal and business websites.
As you are a blogger, there are good reasons for you to make infographics for some informative and long posts.
Pictures are easier to read, so that your readers can get the useful content quickly.
Well-made infographics will boost the social shares and help your content go viral. The result of this is increased traffic.
You may be wondering why infographics are not widely seen on personal blogs since they are so useful. The reason is, most bloggers think that only highly-skilled designers are able to create infographics, which is not completely true.
Nowadays, there are many easy-to-use tools available on the Internet which can be used to create infographics. Even if you have no experience or professional knowledge, you can make a simple one as long as you are willing to invest some time. In below, we will introduce the popular infographic-making tools and explain how to embed infographics in WordPress.
How to Make Infographics for Your Blog Posts
When making a search on the Internet, you can easily find a dozen of tools that could be used to make infographics. According to our experience and many readers’ recommendations, the following two should be among the best choices for both beginners and experienced users.
Canva
Canva is one of our favorites. It is good to use, and more importantly, completely free. You can simply sign in with your Facebook or Google account, or open a new account with an email address. Besides, as Canva is an online tool, you don’t have to download any software.
Canva offers a drag-and-drop infographic creator which comes with hundreds of free layouts. You only need to drag the layout you like to the editing panel, and then make changes. The possibilities include:
Changing the grids by dragging one from the dozens of pre-made choices.
Adding shapes and changing the transparency as you want.
Adding beautiful lines, illustrations, icons, charts, etc.
Adding heading, subheadings and body text with the fonts and colors you like.
Changing the background color.
Uploading your own images.
The free resources included in Canva are so rich that you have to take a while to make the proper choices. Also, you can create several pages of infographics at the same time if you are going to publish a series of content with coincidence.
After creating an infographic successfully, you can click on the “Share” button on the upper right of the screen to share it directly to Facebook or Twitter.
But to add it to a WordPress post, you need to download the infographic in the .png or .jpg format because Canva does not offer automatically generated embed code at present. More information about doing this is included in the next part of this tutorial.
Piktochart
Piktochart is specially developed for making infographics. It has millions of users worldwide, and there are both free and paid packages. In fact, the free package is enough for most bloggers.
Piktochart provides over 400 free templates, with which you can get started easily and quickly. Of course, you can make everything from scratch if you are creative enough. Detailed tutorials for beginners are also available.
In terms of the built-in options and features, the infographic maker offered by Piktochart is very similar to that of Canva, which you can see in below. The drag-and-drop capability is great.
When an infographic is ready, you can publish it, download it as an image, and share it on social media. After clicking on the “Publish” button, a popup will appear asking you to publish the infographic to the web. And once you do that, you get the embed code which you can use to insert the infographic somewhere else, for example, your WordPress blog. Copy the code for later use.
Besides infographics, Piktochart also allows you to create online presentations, posters and banners, and visual reports.
Embed Infographics in WordPress
You can embed infographics in your WordPress posts easily by using the embed code which is displayed above. However, sometimes you cannot get such a code directly, and instead, the tool you use only offers a link of the infographic, just like Canva. But don’t worry, we have got the solution.
If you use a tool offering the embed code
You can enjoy an easy life now. Just follow the simple steps below to get the job done.
Log into your WordPress admin area and create a new post as usual.
Enter the post title and content.
Copy the embed code from the source of the infographic, for example, Piktochart. Some tools would provide you with both IFrame and the complete HTML code, and in this case, our suggestion is to use the HTML because you will get more customization options, and the size of the infographic embedded in this way will adjust to the design of your blog automatically.
Paste the HTML anywhere you want the infographic to show. Make sure that you are using the “Text” mode instead of the visual editor. If you have special requirements, you can also modify the fonts, alignment, etc, as you like.
Now you can preview or publish the post to see the infographic.
If you cannot get the embed code
In this case, you will need to use the “download” feature offered by the infographic maker to download your infographics to the local computer as images. Then, you should upload them to the media library of your blog and embed them into posts just like you do with any other image on your blog. If you choose the PDF format, you will have to take extra steps to embed the PDF file in WordPress.
When inserting an infographic in a post, remember to enter the image title and alt text. Also, you have to pay attention to the image size, and do not forget to make the infographic responsive so that it can be viewed properly on any device.
Embedding infographics as images is not recommended if you have access to the embed code because with the former method, customization becomes much harder.
In fact, another way is available – you can “produce” the embed code by yourself. There are several plugins which can do this for you, but most of them have not been updated for over two years, so we don’t recommend them for the sake of security. The online code generators, which are recommended by a number of sites, do little-to-no help, either.
Bonus Tips for Creating Effective and Eye-Catching Infographics
The way your infographic is created has significant influences on the impact it brings to your blog. And below are some good practices that can help you make a good infographic that contributes to traffic, social shares and sales.
Use the proper fonts and highlight the content that is important, such as numbers.
Be creative and try to show some new ideas to your readers that surprise them.
Enrich your content with charts, icons, symbols, maps, etc. Do not fill the infographic with texts as people love visual things.
Use a timeline if you want to explain the history of something.
Do not make your infographic too long or too complex. They must be easy-to-understand, or your readers will lose interests soon in seconds.
Ask your friends or colleagues to review the infographic before using it on your blog.
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