“Without a doubt, 2013 was the year of visual content — particularly infographiscs,” reports Heather Mansfield of Nonprofit Tech for Good. Indeed infographics are everywhere and communicating your key messages in a visual fashion is one sure-fire way to ensure your communications rise above the din of social media sharing.

Courtesy of Vertical Response

But what is an infographic? An infographic is basically any graphic that displays or explains information, whether that be data or words (data visualization is also a general term used to describe data presented in a visual way). See several great examples here. 

Ok, so how can I make one? There are several free and low costs tools out there to help you create your own infographic:

• Canva
• Piktochart
• Visual.ly
• Infogr.am
• InfoActive
• Easel.ly