Infographics and Images for Law Firm Content Marketing

It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That is why your content needs to include images in addition to text, audio and video. Infographics are an effective way to take images to the next level, and this section will help you get started and avoid potentially time-wasting mistakes.

If you’re looking for an easy, shareable way to present complex content, an infographic might be a good choice. You already know that content is a valuable asset for your legal marketing strategy, but did you know that if you want to stand out among your competitors, you need to vary the type of content you create?

Many law firm websites neglect to include a range of visual content because they believe that their prospects and clients prefer written content. This simply isn’t the case, though. To stop your website visitors from losing interest in your content, add variety to your blog posts. This will also help you generate more quality backlinks for your legal SEO.

In this section, we look specifically at using infographics as part of your law firm’s wider marketing strategy and provide you with a framework to create appealing infographics that your audience will be excited to share.

What are infographics?

An infographic is, as its name suggests, a graphical way to present information. Law firms can use infographics to present complex ideas or information, or to break down monotonous text. Infographics allow you to present a wealth of content and data in an easy-to-understand way. For example, Keating Law Offices uses infographics to explain the 3-foot rule when it comes to cyclists in Illinois.

You can use infographics to present a range of different content. For example, you can offer step-by-step guides that show someone the exact process of getting from A to B. For many people, looking at statistics or data in list format is difficult, but they find the information easier to grasp when you add context through images and illustrations.

How to make an infographic

When you’ve decided you want to start using infographics in your content marketing, you have two main options when it comes to creation.

You can outsource the work to a graphic designer who can work from a creative brief. In most cases, you’ll produce the copy (words and data that should be featured on the infographic) and the designer will put it together with the requisite artistic flair. (At my agency, we do all of that for you.)

Or, you may choose to create the infographic yourself in-house. If you have a designer on your marketing team, this shouldn’t be a problem, but if you don’t have anyone who can help you design, there are a number of free (and paid) tools you can use to create infographics. Canva (shown in the example) is a popular free design tool that is simple to use even for those without much design experience.

Canva includes a range of free templates, fonts, and illustration assets to choose from. However, you can also make use of the specialized paid assets if you wish.

Piktochart and Infogram are other useful tools for creating infographics.

Assembling infographic content

Whether you are creating the infographic yourself, or outsourcing the work to a designer, you need to put together the content that will be featured on it. Data is meaningless without an element of context. This means there is no point creating an infographic with just a numbered list of facts or statistics; without an explanation of why the information is important, the infographic will not mean anything to your audience.

To provide your audience with a clear idea of the context, decide on the purpose of your infographic. You might be creating an infographic to simplify complex information. You might be creating an infographic to show the difference between a private attorney and a public defender, or perhaps you are presenting a step-by-step guide to a legal process.

The purpose of your infographic will affect which data and information you choose show. Don’t get bogged down with trying to include every piece of data or statistic you can find. Focus on the narrative. What do you want the infographic to say, and which data best supports your argument? Tell a story. As you produce more and more infographics, this will become easier.

If you’re writing endless paragraphs, you’re not doing it right. You can of course have very short paragraph explainers at the beginning of each infographic section, but ideally you’re looking for short “bites” of actionable information that your audience can digest quickly and efficiently.

Infographic best practices

You need to make sure your infographic makes sense and tells a story, especially when it comes to infographics for legal content marketing. Remember, people only share what they find useful or interesting. The best way to work out what this could be is to look at some of the core problems your audience faces. You could send out a questionnaire to your audience, or alternatively, look at the comments on previous blog posts to see what people’s major concerns are. When you have this information, you can decide how to create infographics that help your clients and prospects solve a problem.

Helping Injured has a useful infographic that walks readers through the ins and outs of dog bites, who is likely to get bitten, and what illnesses and problems occur as a result.

Especially important in the legal industry, take the time to check your facts. You don’t want any inaccuracies that will diminish your reputation in the eyes of potential clients. Include citations and references for each statistic you use.

Having a beginning, middle, and end is important in stories and infographics. If your infographic is about the rise in corporate tax evasion, then you should include data on past and present tax evasion, and some predictions for the future of corporate tax evasion. This way you have covered how it used to be, how it is now, and how you anticipate the trends will run in the future. For example, Paul Norris Law created this infographic to explain four simple rules for giving good testimony. Readers can quickly and easily digest the information the law firm has presented.

Don’t forget SEO

This wouldn’t be a guide to law firm marketing without some mention of SEO. You should be aware that if you just post your infographic to your site without some key components, it won’t get seen by Google or readily linked to by other sites.

First, the infographic needs an introduction and a conclusion. You can house your infographic in a blog post, or as a standalone page on your website, but you must add an element of text description to allow Google “crawlers” to understand what they’re looking at.

Second, you need alt text. Alt text is a standard field to use when adding images to your blog post or website, and an infographic is no different than any other image.

When you’ve added these elements, you might find that using infographics increases your search engine reach. When you include a keyword-rich file name, as well as a caption and alt text, it helps the image to be found through the search tool Google Images.

People will also share your infographic on social channels, so make that easy to do by providing “share” buttons that link to the social media platforms most popular with your readership.

Takeaways on infographics

Did you know that 93% of all human communication is visual? Creating infographics is a great way to add some variation to your legal content marketing and is an engaging way to educate your current and potential clients. Infographics allow you to provide user-friendly information and data that takes seconds to read and digest, a bonus in today’s fast-paced world.

Infographics are a great way to make your content stand out from your competitors’ content and to grab the attention of your time-strapped readers.

If you really want to get the most mileage out of all this great content you are creating, it’s time to start making e-books. The next section explains how they can work for your law firm and fit into the overall content marketing mix.