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10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Written by Angela Alcorn
Column Five Infographics Data Viz, Motion Graphics, Content Marketing, Social Media Strategy...

columnfivemedia.com/

Custom Infographics Expert data visualization, graphics for presentations of all kinds.

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Medical Visualization Symphony knows data visualization! Our pride lies in our expertise

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Information graphics, visual representations of data known as infographics, keep the web going these days. Web users, with their diminishing attention spans, are inexorably drawn to these shiny, brightly coloured messages with small, relevant, clearly-displayed nuggets of information. They’re straight to the point, usually factually interesting and often give you a wake-up call as to what those statistics really mean.
Who can resist a colourful, thoughtful venn diagram anyway? In terms of blogging success, infographics are far more likely to be shared than your average blog post. This means more eyeballs on your important information, more people rallying for your cause, more backlinks and more visits to your blog. In short, a quality infographic done well could be what your blog needs right now.
Designing An Infographic
Some great tips for designing infographics:
Keep it simple! Don’t try to do too much in one picture.
Decide on a colour scheme.
Research some great facts and statistics.
Think of it as a visual essay: ensure your arguments hold and are relevant.
Remember that it’s all about quickly conveying the meaning behind complex data.
Draw conclusions.
Reference your facts in the infographic.
Include your URL so people can be sure who made it.


Ideas for infographic formats include:
Timelines;
Flow charts;
Annotated maps;
Graphs;
Venn diagrams;
Size comparisons;
Showing familiar objects or similar size or value.
Here are some great tutorials on infographic creation:
How to Create Outstanding Modern Infographics
Infographic Designs: Overview, Examples and Best practices
Tutorial: Create Cool Infographics
10 of my Favourite Infographics
40 Useful and Creative Infographics
Seven and a Half Steps to Successful Infographics
The Anatomy of an Infographic
10 Tips for Journalists Designing Infographics
Creating Your Infographic
Plan and research.
If required, use free software to create simple graphs and visualisations of data.
Use vector graphic software to bring these visualisations into the one graphic.
Ultimately, if you have a little design skill, the very best approach is to create all the simple graphs and illustrations yourself using vector graphic software. Your end result will be more visually attractive and you will have more freedom to be creative with it.
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Free Online Tools For Creating Infographics
Stat Planet
Stat Planet allows you to create some amazing interactive visualisations, which you can then use as is or create a static image. It can be used within your browser or downloaded for free. Stat Planet gives you access to some great world data and lets you customise that in your visualisations. It also has some great map-based visualisations to try.


Hohli
Hohli is an intuitive, simple online chart maker. It’s incredibly easy to pick your chart type, add some data, vary the sizes and colours and see the finished chart. The finished charts are also very well designed and look great!


Creately
Creately lets you make easy-to-make diagrams and flow charts (easy to collaborate too). When you start, you can choose from a number of purpose-designed diagram types and quickly add your data to make your own chart. The end result looks very professional.


New York Times
New York Times’ Visualization Lab lets you use statistics from recent NYTimes articles to create visualisations in various formats. You can also see other people’s visualisations and see how other people choose to display the same data.


Many Eyes
Many Eyes lets you upload your own data or use data already stored on the site. The visualisations themselves are well-designed and very professional-looking. This is definitely the easiest way to use your own data for online visualisations.


Google Public Data
Google Public Data lets you easily take public data and transform it into an infographic of your choice. These beautiful, colourful graphics simplify and communicate the data perfectly.


Wordle
Wordle lets you create word visualisations using text you enter. There are plenty of interesting designs to choose from. Enter whole books, short passages or see what other people have used. In this example, we can see the US constitution visualised.


Free Software For Creating Infographics
Tableau
Tableau is a free Windows-only software for creating visualisations. As you can see, these impressive graphs are colourful and quite unique.


Gapminder
GapMinder is a free Adobe Air (cross-platform by nature) application to ensure you have current data on major world issues and can create visualisations for your purposes. Data is updated yearly and released with new versions of the application. The visuals are also quite impressive!

Inkscape
Inkscape is a free vector graphic software available for many platforms. This is the ideal free option for the creation of your overall infographic. Simple and intuitive, you should have no problems importing your visualisations and combining them with other visuals to create your masterpiece.


Love Infographics?
If you’re a fan of infographics, these tools will probably become part of your everyday blogging tools. Feel free to let us know of more great tools in the comments!
Also, check out some of MakeUseOf’s favourite infographics:
Facebook facts you probably didn’t know
How the internet works
The internet in 2020
A brief history of the internet
[Sent from Ralph Paglia's iPhone]

Ralph Paglia
Vice President - Digital
Tier10 Marketing
505-301-6369
Ralph@Tier10Marketing.com
http://RalphPaglia.com
http://Twitter.com/RalphPaglia
http://Facebook.com/RPaglia
http://LinkedIn.com/in/RPaglia
http://GPlusRalph.com

If You Want a True Community on Social Media, You Have to Create It
Written by Anthony DelMonte

Don't be the one to allow your clients to confuse "community" with social media. Marketers too often mistake tweets, follows or pins about their brand as validation that they are building a community.

This past Easter, I experienced community in a profound and refreshing way. I was at church with my family. My nephew and godson, Matthew, is a severely autistic, strapping 16-year-old, and while the priest was conducting Mass, he took it upon himself to run up to the altar to blow out the candles.

What happened next surprised me: The priest asked Matthew over and announced to everyone that it was awesome to see one of God's children celebrating the Resurrection. As the priest began to clap, the entire congregation joined in and clapped simultaneously for over a minute in celebration of Easter and of Matthew. It was very emotional, not because Matthew is my family, but because this community in a downtrodden neighborhood in North Jersey joined together in unison.

Easter with Matthew made me think of marketers and how they need to be reminded about what real community looks like. After all, from their customers' point of view, interacting online requires minimal effort and many times, minimal thought. Seriously, how much effort goes into a click or share?

Marketers also get seduced into thinking that because people buy their product they want to congregate around it. Consider the all-too-common rationale: Since my customers are carbon-based life forms and they purchased my product, shouldn't they be connected to everyone else who also bought my product, and for that matter, shouldn't they engage in interaction with everyone who happens to "like" my product? Are we all deluded into thinking that current fans, followers and others are truly an engaged community? Aren't most of them simply sending virtual high-fives our way in exchange for a promotion?

That day in church reinforced the idea for me that the strongest communities are structured around shared beliefs, emotions and goals. They are places we trust and where we're inspired by support to participate. On the social web, marketers have an opportunity to guide and foster powerful exchanges on any number of issues and areas that are relevant to their audience. The most enduring communities are ones that recognize the commonalities of their audiences and embrace their passions.

Years ago, my agency was working with SoBe beverages. We aligned the brand with action-sport athletes and health-conscious consumers who cared passionately about their sports and their bodies and thought it was important to give people space to engage with one another and interact with the brand, online and off. This strategy encouraged loyalty and intimacy with the brand and led us to arguably break a new category. For SoBe, it was the right approach because the audience was demanding a forum that celebrated their commonalities.

Today, I see MyStarbucksidea.com as an example of solid community building. Starbucks recognized that its customers -- as different as they might be from one another -- were passionate about not just coffee, but the "experience" of being at Starbucks and what might be possible with new products. The community, MyStarbucksIdea.com, continues to generate thousands of ideas and real discussions about ways to improve Starbucks. It's brand listening and consumer co-creation at its best. It works with social media because Starbucks is social: You work there, date there, eat there, cry there and listen to (sometimes) crappy music there.

As agencies, we have to be honest with clients and help them figure out how big or small their footprint should be in an ever-expanding social universe. Are we crafting community strategies with the brands' objectives truly in mind? Marketers should take the time to step back, look at how many things their consumers have in common and build social presences around what their customers care about and why they are connecting.

Real social media community building isn't simple. It's not an add-water-and-watch-it-grow kind of activity. It took my nephew and a North Jersey parish at Easter to reinforce for me this very basic truth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anthony DelMonte is founder and president of Squeaky Wheel Media, New York.


[Sent from Ralph Paglia's iPhone]

Ralph Paglia
http://RalphPaglia.com
http://Twitter.com/RalphPaglia
http://Facebook.com/RPaglia
http://LinkedIn.com/in/RPaglia
http://GPlusRalph.com

Automotive Marketers Leverage a Mix of Tools and Tactics


Online Video Advertising and Social Media Advertising are garnering attention from Car Companies and their Dealer Networks

US based automotive marketing professionals are leveraging more tools as they embark on each new individual advertising campaign or marketing program, and social media advertising is taking a larger role in terms of spending and usage.

In the “Marketing Tools Study 2012” from digital marketing technology and services company PointRoll and Kelton Research, automotive marketing professionals reported using multiple tools in each campaign they execute. More than half of respondents used more than five tools in a single advertising and marketing campaign, with 33% saying they averaged five to six, 15% saying seven to nine and 13% saying they used an average of 10 or more.



As car companies, dealerships and automotive marketing service providers spread their time and resources across digital, social media advertising is becoming a bigger piece of the puzzle. Looking at spending on advertising and marketing tactics, 79% of automotive marketing professionals said they plan to increase spending on social media marketing or ads in the next 12 months, with mobile and tablet spending not far behind, at 75% and 66%, respectively, as the next areas that will see budget growth.



As spending increases for social media, so will the weight automotive marketers place on this channel. In the study, 24% of respondents said that social media will be the most-used tactic in the automotive ad industry this year, tied with search engine advertising and only slightly ahead of online display advertising, at 22%. And looking at the specific trends for 2012, these same respondents highlighted cross-screen media (40%), Facebook marketing (37%) and social gaming (22%) as some of the top trends in marketing and technology.

Automotive Marketers must be proficient in several different areas and technologies, especially as they begin to use different tools in tandem across a single campaign. And as car buying and servicing consumers continue to leverage social media sites, social networks are becoming a key advertising tactic, which auto industry marketers are increasingly investing their time and resources in trying to make work for them.

[Sent from Ralph Paglia's iPhone]

Ralph Paglia
http://RalphPaglia.com
http://Twitter.com/RalphPaglia
http://Facebook.com/RPaglia
http://LinkedIn.com/in/RPaglia
http://GPlusRalph.com