How to Create Stunning Infographics for Social Media in Minutes

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about creating infographics for social media. People are desperate to know how to create compelling images that generate tons of retweets, likes, and shares.I’ve even been offered to be paid quite handsomely to create infographics for social media for various individuals. But the truth is, I feel guilty doing so because it’s actually very easy to produce these images.

All you need to know is:

• Which platform you are creating an infographic for
• The main message or data you want to get across
• How to position that information in the best layout

This guide will help you make stunning visuals for social media in a matter of minutes without breaking the bank.

Let’s get started.

1) Creating Infographics for Different Social Platforms

There are tons of social media platforms for which infographics perform well, but the most popular ones are Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I’m going to skip the process of creating infographics for Pinterest since most sizes can be uploaded to the network without issue. But in case you are looking for a more in-depth understanding of designing for Pinterest, take a look at this guide on infographic design for Pinterest.

Twitter

Twitter’s image dimensions for shared content is 440px by 220px.

Notice that it’s quite small. It’s not easy to design infographics for social media or even Twitter graphics for such a small space, so it’s important to limit the content you include on the image. I recommend creating your design on a canvas that is 880px by 440px. By doubling the size you have a wider surface area to work with, and the image will still resize perfectly to fit on social media.

Facebook

Facebook’s image dimensions for articles and blog posts is 1200px by 620px.

Its full size is almost double what you see here. That’s because Facebook automatically resizes the image to offer the best quality view to users.

Instagram

Instagram’s image dimensions are 1080px by 1080px.

Again, this resizes to a much smaller dimensions and can be designed at 800px by 800px or 600px by 600px to make it easier for you to visualize the whole infographic scheme.

So now that you understand the different dimensions to work with for each platform, you can move on to deciding what message and what data to include in your images.

2) Choosing Your Message and Data

Typically when creating infographics for social media, you want to avoid making your visual content to text heavy. Social media images act as an introduction to a longer form of content usually. Some common uses of social media infographics are:

• Inspirational quotes
• Charts
• Facts
• Titles

Try to stay within the above four boundaries when designing visual content for social.

Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational quotes perform best on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Foundr Magazine does an excellent job of using inspirational quote infographics to boost their follower count and overall engagement on Instagram.

Foundr’s content is not particularly difficult to create, but still looks clean and delivers a specific message across. Foundr uses Instagram to drive tons of traffic to their website and to their course that teaches other young entrepreneurs how to get more followers on Instagram.

Charts

Charts are a great way to boost engagement across all social platforms. They can be used to motivate and inspire, to inform and educate, or even used for humor. They are also very easy to share on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with ease.

You don’t need to be an expert at data visualization to create engaging charts for social media either. You can use a graph maker, which are often free to use.

Further Reading: The 13 Best Infographic Maker and Graphics Tools

Facts

Another great way to make use of visual content in your social media is by visualizing facts when creating infographics for social media. An infographic is, after all, a way of visually representing information of some sort.

What is a fact? A fact is a statement or statistic that is backed by credible proof. If you’re looking for some great data sources, reference USA.Gov or the Pew Research Center.

Titles

And of course, many individuals create infographics and visuals for blog headers and title images. These kinds of images can either include the written title of the article or may also be a visual representation of what the article is about.

We have grown accustomed to brand logos, icons, and symbols, many of which are used frequently in infographics in order to alert viewers of specific topics without making use of too much text.

The benefit of not using text is that people still know the gist of the topic, but may be further compelled to click through in order to learn more.

In some cases when you are promoting content that is more general in nature, it can be a good idea to create a header image with text.

3) Laying Out Your Information

Finally, once you have your content planned, you need to lay out the information for your infographics for social media in a visually appealing manner.

Below are various image layouts you can use as a reference. The first image in each section shows you what each element is, and the following images are adjusted to fit the various social media platform dimensions. You can use tools to create these infographics.

Conclusion: You Too Can Create Stunning Infographics for Social Media in Minutes

Following this simple breakdown will make the process of creating your own social media images much easier. Whether you are creating an infographic for Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, many of the same design and layout principles still apply. Experiment with various tactics until you find the style that works for you and for your brand.

Hero photo by Adem AY on Unsplash