Using Infographics to Educate and Inform

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald. Welcome back to podiatry marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joined as always are my trusty co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, what's going on today?

I not a lot is actually going on. I was talking to a friend of yours today, Sarah Clark, and she talks very highly of big Jim Mac that she met you in Charlotte.

Yeah. In North Carolina. She invited me to come speak to some podiatrist and assistance at the North Carolina state meeting. So, yeah, Sarah's a great gal.

Yes. I'm I'm good, big Jim. How you been doing?

I'm good. I just it's been a lot of sugar invading my house. I've been getting the kids with Halloween not too long ago. We still have a lot of candy from them, but also I received

Oh, the package.

Two two a package with two Australian treats for those people that aren't on the, you know, on the audio podcast. I have some a a box of Tim Tams and Family sized box. Cadbura.

Cad Cadbury.

Cadbury. Caramel milk wallabies.

Yeah. Caramelo wallabies. Yes. And Tim Tams, I sent you the family pack.

Yeah. There's 20 there's 20 biscuits in there as it as it's called in the And the English and Australian world.

Tim Tam. That the postage from Tempe to Oregon was about four times more than what the package what the products were worth. Postage was ridiculous, but I did send it to UPS to make sure it got there in one piece.

It did. It did. And so I'll take a quick bite of this Tim Tam

and see what I think. See what you think.

Taste test.

Give it a shot. Oh, sound effects. Oh, good. The second bite's even better than the first bite.

Well, good stuff. Kinda tastes like if an Oreo was like like wrapped in chocolate kinda.

Oh, they're fantastic. Best I reckon they're the best Australian biscuit. Every time I go to The States, I always take them with me. The other part, you wanna test it out, because you got 20 of them that you can run around with, bite the end off of the Tim Tam off of each end. Nip off each end.

Okay.

Get your hot coffee, and then suck the coffee through the Tim Tam. And and the chocolate melts as it goes through, the whole thing just dissolves in your mouth.

There we go.

It's disgusting, but tastes great.

I'm not sure if this was a wallaby shape, but it's it's it's it's okay. Like

Has it melted? Yeah. It's supposed

to melted. It's in Arizona. Right? So

Yeah. True. Probably set out in the sun. Cadbury, I think, is is one of the best chocolates.

Yeah. It's tasty. So thank you so much for the Yeah. The tasty treats. I'm sure the

kids

will enjoy a little bit more sugar. So

Yeah. Let them have one Tim Tam and then tell them they'll never get another one. Yeah. There's only 20 in the box. Exactly.

So oh, I'm glad you like them. Oh, and you sent me while I was there when I arrived at the hotel. I have officially I have my podiatry marketing stickers.

There you go.

So if anyone bumps into me anyway and they go, oh, he gives us a sticker. I'll have the stickers on me. Fantastic. Okay. So we should get into into today's topic.

We're not talking Enough

for the candy the candy exactly. The candy reviews are over.

Well, sometimes there's a lot of things you can learn. Like I said, yeah, I was over in The States, and I learned a lot while I was actually over there. Not that I'm gonna discuss it today, but maybe in future episodes. Today, I'm gonna talk about infographics. And and if anyone who doesn't know what infographic is, I went and dug out the the easiest definition to make it make sense.

Infographics are visual representations of data or concepts designed to convey complex ideas quickly and clearly, making the information easy to digest.

I'm a big fan.

Yeah. I I just did do a lot of them in different places. I hadn't done one for a while, and then the the topic infographics popped back up again. I went, why haven't I been doing them? So this is tested out.

I did a couple of normal posts, and then I threw in an infographic in between into the podiatry business owners club on Facebook. And as soon as I did that, the engagement with that infographic was like five or six times more than anything else that I normally post. It just so straight away people could read through the five points that that I'd written down there, could easily follow it and just went, yes. So straight away, I was like, okay. I need to do more infographics.

I think it's important to do it. So have you used them much?

I mean, I try to use them a lot, especially when I'm trying to, you know, teach concepts about different marketing topics and techniques. I think it's, you know, if you just talk at a person or you just give them just a bunch of text, it's something they can kinda make people's eyes glaze over. Me, myself, I'm kinda more of a visual learner, so I

think

if I can see some or see relationships between different, you know, things in something like an infographic, it's definitely something that can be helpful. I think, you know, one area that I use it a lot for is when I'm talking to people about Google search ads is that, you know, there's kinda like a triangle or kind of a triumvirate of, like, three things that have to be in order. You have to, like you know, people are searching for a specific thing. So we the the search terms you advertise on have to be related to that, and then the pay you know, they click on those ads, it has to send them to a landing page, which is relevant. And those three things all have to kinda be in concert, and I'll show like a, you know, a triangle or

a pyramid

and arrows pointing. And it just makes more sense when you show it that way as opposed to trying to explain it sometimes. I mean, it's not a super, you know, complex topic, but we use when you think about it that way, you can kinda see the interconnectedness of those those topics together as opposed just, you know, like a sentence where it's it's a little tougher to decipher maybe.

Yeah. Because they they say that they're a very powerful marketing tool. For that reason, they're very visual. So people can follow through a pattern of five things, seven things, three things, you know, whether it's a a list, whether it's a triangle. And so they sort of class it as, like, visual eye candy, which I I actually like that term.

So you can you can take that concept, and you can use data, timelines. You can use them for training, or just what I did with mine in the podiatry business owners club was just a structured idea or a point of view. And I said, yeah, five things that that went through. And even when I the one that I actually posted, had created a while ago. I thought, oh, I'm not gonna create a new one.

It's gonna take this old one and just repost it. Nobody said, oh, excuse me, Tyson, but you've posted that before. So sometimes even with the infographics, post something that works. Don't throw it away. Put it aside.

Six months later, you could probably use it again.

Absolutely. Like, it's like like we talked about in the past, sometimes we kind of, you know, we're a little self conscious about putting out the similar stuff. But like if, you know, not everybody's looking at all our channels every single day. So by, you know, putting it out every three to six months, it it it's something that's new to different people because maybe they missed it the first time through.

Yeah. There's there's a whole episode there about repurposing our content. But the the other thing too with infographics is people love to share them if they're good. So if they're quite informative, you know, five ways to do this, know, six things to do here. If they're informative, they're educational, people are going to click that share button and send it off to other places.

Even though in the podiatry business owners club, you can't share from there because I've got it set up that way. But if you're posting in other places like in your podiatry Facebook page or even on your website, if people like it, they'll copy it. That's why you need to make sure you get your logo and everything on this. So when they do copy it, your business name goes along with it.

No. That makes total sense to get more visibility for who you are and what you provide. I think also what's really important is that, you know, by using these kind of visualizations as infographics, you know, it can make for a lot more interesting presentations.

Yeah.

You know, like, whether you're giving a talk to students or to other podiatrists or to maybe primary care physicians, the more you can kinda, like, mix in, you know, some some visualizations into your presentations, I think it's a lot much more palatable for people. I know that having given quite a few talks over the last, you know, couple of years at different podiatry conferences, I really try to think, you know, what's gonna, like, keep me engaged if I'm you know, it's the last talk of the day, the third day of the conference, you know, they gave me that spot. What are some, you know, ways to inject some humor, but some learning at the same time? And usually, you can you can really do that a lot better. You know, you see a lot of these sometimes, you know, people are pretty good in in podiatrists.

Obviously, there's surgical pictures or wound care pictures. You can add things like that. But if you can add in, you know, original visualizations, it can really engage people and help them understand it in ways that if you just put up, you know, paragraphs or just text only bullet points, they just kinda like they don't really sink in. It just kinda you know, people's eyes glaze over a bit.

Death by PowerPoint.

Absolutely. Oh,

nothing nothing worse. Nothing nothing worse than going to a conference and they go, oh, and the next speaker is professor such and such, and he's just done his PhD in this, he gets up there and just bang, slide goes up and he's just reading it. Slide goes up and he's just reading

it and he go,

oh my god. Someone someone just hit me on the head. You know, just that's where you see people reaching on their chair and pulling out a bottle of bourbon and just start doing shots while they're running through their slides. Anyway, the back back to infographics is they're cheap to produce. So the ones that I've produced so far, I've done them all on Canva.

I I have the paid version of Canva, so I'm sure on the El Cheapo free version, there's probably templates there as well, just not as many. So with the paid version, I mean, there's hundreds of templates that you can actually choose from. And there's another site that I came across called Visme, visme.co. And you can do them through there as well. So do you have any other do you have any that you're aware of?

Canvas seems to be the easiest.

Yeah. Those are some great templates to just kinda get ideas started. You know, I think I use the Mac Keynote a lot to make you know, I take some images from my library or Yeah. Mix run-in Photoshop and stuff to crop out things or to, like, make things smooth. But, yeah, like, that those two are definitely good spots for people that are just trying to get some either inspiration or just wanna do some simple infographics and not take up a lot of time.

But, yeah, there can be some good ways to utilize other types of photo editing or just bringing your own photos into things as well. But, yeah, like, there's there's different shapes and tools within Keynote that make it kinda easy. Yeah. So you just drag an arrow. You drag some stuff in there so you can kinda connect text or put some images next to it or some icons and things.

But, yeah, those those are two good resources you pointed out.

Yeah. And it's sort of there's things that you could sort of like, I look at infographics, and I look at visual models and I look at mind maps as all being completely different. Because to me, the the infographic is more just providing that information in a step by step point form or or number form or whatever it is, whereas a visual model can be something, you know, it's like a lot bigger. So I use Keynote a lot when I'm putting together a visual model because you've got a bigger space and there's so many things you can actually pull around with it. But I do like you said, I learn visually as well.

So if people wanna know how to make an infographic, I've got a couple of pointers here that you can run through. First thing, number one, outline your infographic goals. What's your purpose of doing the infographic? Why why are putting it together? So it might be is it related to stretching for a particular problem?

These are the five things you can do if you have problem x. So first of all, outline what the goal is because if you don't know the purpose of doing the infographic, then it's just gonna it'll just be a shambles. Yeah. Second thing is gather and organize your data or information. So whatever it you're gonna talk about, whether it's the five best stretches for for this particular problem, is go through and and put them in order of what what order should they be done in.

Or if you're gonna talk about diabetes, for example, and you're gonna give five facts, is put them in order. What what what information are you gonna actually put across? And then the third part is transform your data into visuals. So even if you've got some text there, which I put in mind, you wanna have a visual image that goes with it. And this is where the templates are handy because it'll have crappy images in there that you can just replace really easy.

So you haven't gotta think about, where should I put this image? It's already there for you. But I always think it's trying to find an image that relates to the text. So if people are skimming through it, it it I don't know. I think it just registers a little bit faster.

No. Absolutely. I think when you have that visualization next to it or the image next to it, it just it makes the text next to a little bit more engaging because they're curious about what is that image and if you have an explanation there. And sometimes you can you know, depending on the type of font you're using or the boldness of the font or the color of the font, you can really kind of attract, you know making it a little bit different might make it a little bit more engaging than just, you know, black text, and it's all the same font or same size. But by adjusting the the boldness, the the the type of font, the size of the font, there's ways to really kind of make it more engaging.

Yeah. And using your brand colors. And I think this is where having a paid version like of Canva is and even with Keynote, you can actually introduce your brand colors. So if your clinic has a particular color that makes it stand out to say this is my clinic, you wanna make sure that's in your infographic. So any of the infographics I do, people will notice it's got this I I just call it Barcelona red, but that's not what it is.

9222B37 or something like that. And the color code, I have it written in the front of my brain book here. It is A C 2 B 3 7 and my gray is 55565B. I write that in the front of my book because I never remember it. And that way, I always get the color right.

Anyway, point number four is design your layout using an infographic template. That's pretty much one of the easiest ways. And like I said, with Canva, hundreds of them, you don't have to think. All you do is gather the information then use that template. The fifth part is add style for a unique look.

So this is where you use your brand, use your colors, use your fonts, make sure your logo is on there. And try and put it in a place too that people aren't gonna rip it off. Yeah. Hopefully, your logo or your name is is incorporated in there. So it's it's sort of carried through with it.

And most people too, like, they're just gonna steal your infographic. They're gonna they'll use your logo as well. They'll they'll usually will give credit to where where where it came from. Yep. The sixth point is review your infographic design.

So have a look at it. If it appeals to you, you might get somebody else have a look at it, get their opinion. And you'd be surprised. Yeah. It's always what what's it saying?

In the eye of the beholder? Beauty?

Beauty beauty is beauty is in the eye the beholder.

Yeah. Yeah. So you might look at your own infographic and go, that's good. But you just get somebody else to have a look at it and just go they might go, maybe you should change this, maybe you should change that, and just take that on board because you're you know, if you're putting it there, you're not the target market for the for the infographic. So it's probably good to get a bit more feedback.

And the seventh thing is to publish it when you've done it. Make sure you publish it. Get it out there and promote your photography. Push it out to to different channels and platforms, your website, different social media platforms so that people actually see it, and therefore, they wanna share it.

I think that's great. Think what you talked about previously, like, you know, every three to six months if you're kinda coming back to similar topics or, you know, you see how you do that first time, but there there can be a great opportunity to kind of repurpose this in the future.

Well, the one that I've done recently and then well, the two main ones that I'm doing, the first one that I posted in Facebook was bottom feeding versus aiming for top paying patients. That was what the title was. And then I've got to actually load it up here to actually look at it. And so pretty much, I'm just gonna run through what the five things that actually had written in here. And I've put high fees are paid by patients who are doing well, not those who care who are struggling.

That sort of makes sense. So in the the picture, it has like the road to success. That was the first thing that was there, which sort of visually tends to make sense. The second point was high end patients tend to be tend to be believers, low end patients tend to be skeptics. And I've got a person with their arms in the air like that, I believe.

So visually, I think that makes sense. The the third thing I had written down so I didn't have numbers. I just had images that went with it. Paying higher fees means that your patients pay you higher respect and pay your advice more attention. And then the visual is two fist fist punch.

Always works. The fourth thing is there's no profit in a business model that challenges other poverty minded mindset podiatrists in a a race to the bottom. So then there's just a a like a dartboard type thing there. And the last one they put was high end patients expect great work. It's energizing and fun for you and your team to write to rise to that actual challenge.

And I can't see what the image is here. What have I got there? It is I'm not sure why I put that one there. That one's a bit of an odd image, but it seemed to work. And but just just doing that infographic with with those words and those images there got so much engagement with everybody.

That's awesome.

And a lot of people say, when patients pay, they pay attention. And and look at this way. If you don't have any anything original, you know, you don't have any proprietary data to use in the infographic. There's places you can just just go online and just Google information in certain areas. Just take some of the information.

I think five is a good number. I think three or five points in the infographic works really well. I think if we get too many, it starts to get a little bit more complicated. You want them to be able to see it, go through it quickly, get the information, be able to do something with it, like it enough to wanna actually share it. That's the idea behind it.

No. Absolutely. I think you're right. Like, beyond five people just start to be like, they're busy. They're doing other stuff.

They don't have time to read, you know, ten ten things and try to digest all of it. Somewhere in that three to five range is easy to reach pretty quickly, and then also maybe digest it and maybe put some of that stuff into action if that's that's what it requires.

Yeah. Know. Even when you get you get a newsletter or something sent to you. And and some people's news is quite brief. You can just skim through it and go, oh, that was interesting.

I might read that a bit more. Then you get other ones where you scroll through and you just go

Well, then there's some of ones that, like, you get all the way to the bottom and, like, maybe wanted to see what the bottom was like, but it's like, you have to click on that link to, like, then go to the web to read the rest of it because they, like, maxed out the amount of space they had in the newsletter or something.

I think America does it more than over like in Australia when they're promoting like say an event or a conference, they'll promote it and you might get you scroll down a little bit to get all the information. But Right. Some of the American ones, you'll scroll down and you scroll and you keep going. But wait, there's more. And you scroll through.

And here, listen to what this person said, and here's another testimony. You keep scrolling, book here, and it just never ends. Yeah. And anyway, don't know how we got on to that. But they're they're they're very visual as well.

So that was all I wanted to cover on this. I just encourage people, if you have a Canva account at the moment, go there, have a look at the infographics, have a look at some of the examples because some of the examples, they've already got information there. Look at them and go, wow. How could I use this with my podiatry business to educate and inform my my patients? And and just start using what I think I think you'll enjoy.

You'll have a bit of fun with it as well.

That sounds like great advice. I definitely agree that, you know, for people that are visual learners out there, it's a great way to connect with them. And like you said previously as well, very shareable. There's a lot of people that like to learn this way. So, you know, why not spend a little extra time, you know, explaining some important concepts about your business, your clinic in a way that will, you know, kind of be engaged create more engagement with potential patients and other people in your network.

Okay. That's it for me, Jim. It feels Alright. Sounds funny just calling you Jim. That's it for me, big Jim.

And I will I will talk to you again next week. See you.

Sounds good. Bye now. Bye. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at podiatrymarketing.

That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.