Content marketing has been exploded across the social web, just in case you hadn’t noticed.

Infographics, in particular, have become a fan favorite and a marketer’s favorite all rolled into one. Why?

They’re a form of fun, helpful share-candy for bloggers, pinners, and social media addicts. That’s why I do my best to include one with every post I write.

Any helpful piece of content can be converted into a compelling marketing tool, even if it’s just a long block of text. If you want your content to have a viral life of its own, however, pretty pictures are almost mandatory…

Creating Viral Content

Reports make great lead magnets, but you still need drive traffic in order to that report in front of users. The most infectious content marketing basically shares itself. We’re in a midst of a visual revolution here people, which basically means pictures are worth a thousand words.

Just remember, there’s always a way to represent data visually. You just need to find a designer with a creative vision that can organize a piece of information into small, easy to digest pieces of share-candy.

Here’s where most marketers get stuck: They can’t come up with share-worthy content. They think, “Gee, if I only ran X type of business, creating impressive graphics would be simple.” Don’t fall into the trap, thinking your data is too boring…

For you average user, marketing data is one of the most boring thing in the world — but even marketing infographics get shared all over the place, even on Pinterest! Even if you don’t have data to display, no biggie. Lo-fi instructographics like the one below allow you to create share-bait with zero exclusive or mindblowing content.

You could literally make an instructographic title “How to Make a Milkshake,” and it would get shared on hundreds of blogs.

Sharability

For maximum reach, your graphics need to be formatted to share. That means they need to be optimized for sharing on Pinterest, StumbelUpon, and Facebook.

The crucial part here is to realize that the top portion of your graphic will ultimately become a thumbnail that advertises why users should check out the graphic. At the very least, the title should be easy to read at a thumbnail size.

Branding is also huge. At the top and bottom of your graphic,include all of your business’ relevant branding info (especially your url). Most professionally created graphics can be embedded to blogs with links cooked into the design.

Best Places to Share

The final step of the viral process is, of course, the whole going viral part. While it sounds like an organic process, it may need a little push off the cliff…

According to Marketing Sherpa, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Pinterest should all be considered high-value targets for promoting your content. With that said, optimizing for Facebook new feeds is priority #1 for a majority of marketers. If you’re going after Pinterest, keep your graphic under 2,500 pixels tall.