As the leading image curation site on the web, there's no doubt that Pinterest is a great platform to source a wide range of infographic templates and designs. In fact, there are thousands upon thousands of infographics to scroll through on the site, each one covering a wide range of different topics and styles. But what makes an infographic design popular on Pinterest? What specific elements and stylistic choices differentiate the click-worthy from the ignored? In a recent assessment of over 200 different infographics on Pinterest, we concluded which infographic factors influenced performamce on the site. The infographics were rated based on 20 different characteristics, including subject matter, type, dominant style, colour and font type. Here are the results from the research, and what you should focus on perfecting if you want to ensure that your infographic gets a lot of shares and likes on Pinterest.
1. Infographic Topic Matters
There are plenty of different infographic topics on Pinterest. You can find everything from health and design to technology and business to science and nature, but which topics are the most commonly liked and shared? Our research noticed that the top three infographic subjects on Pinterest are: Travel, Food and Marketing.
2. Consider the Theme of Your Infographic
The theme of an infographic is essentially its genre. If you think of an infographic like a visual story, you need to ensure that you are giving it a specific voice. During our research we discovered that the most well-received genres of infographic are either funny or cute or have a useful or challenging theme. A funny or cute infographic doesn't necessarily involve content that is visually funny and cute (grumpy cat is an example of this form of content), but rather the angle you present information from. Often a funny or cute link-bait title is what will draw a person into the infographic. If you're struggling to generate some good titles, Klock.Work is a great tool for that.
Challenging infographics are usually the "dramas" of the infographic world. This kind of theme presents or highlights a serious issue. A useful infographic is usually one that resembles a 'how to' guide, offering practical advice and information. List-based infographics are an excellent example of a useful infographic template, as it's a simple, step-by-step guide on how to accomplish a particular task.
3. The Type of Your Infographic is Important
Infographic type is commonly mistaken for theme, but the type is actually the overall structure or style of your infographic. There are a variety of different infographic styles that you can choose from including: statistical, informational, process, geographic, and more. The most popular types of infographic on Pinterest, however, are simple informational infographics, closely followed by process infographics. By keeping your designs simple and instructional, you have a better chance of getting it shared more frequently.
Furthermore, text-based infographics perform better than illustration or chart-based ones. Apparently people prefer reading, or skimming a page for facts more than interpreting metaphorical and conceptual imagery.
4. Font Style Can Impact Believability
Did you know that the kind of font you use can either increase or decrease how believable the information you're presenting actually is? It's true - in fact serif fonts (that's kind of font with little edges on the letters, like Times New Roman and sans serif is something like Arial) performed remarkably better in terms of believability.
5. Be Selective with Colour Usage
Colours can have a huge psychological impact, and apparently too many colours in an infographic can be emotionally overwhelming for a lot of people. At least, this might be the reason why infographics with no more than 2 colours were the most effective. Anything with 5 or more colours performed considerably worse on Pinterest.
That being said, infographics that made predominant use of red and yellow performed much better than infographics where the blue was the primary colour. It's worth trying to keep to the brighter colour palettes as opposed to darker and more morose shades.
6. Length Drives Clicks
Infographics that were 5 - 9 times longer than their width, performed incredibly well on Pinterest. Although infographics do have a tendency to be long, a lot of designers and marketers often complain that they're too long. Well apparently Pinterest users have spoken up, and they prefer a lengthy piece of content to a shorter post. Perhaps it just provides them with more information to sift through, perhaps they would rather one infographic with all the information they need, as opposed to a series of smaller ones. What should be noted however, is that infographic templates that are 9x longer than their width performed more than 3x better than all other infographic sizes.