What Visualization Tool/Software Should You Use? – Getting Started Are you looking to get into data visualization, but don't quite know where to begin? With all of the available tools to help you visualize data, it can be confusing where to start. The good news is, well, that there are a lot of (free) available tools out there to help you get started. It's just a matter of deciding which one suits you best. This is a guide to help you figure that out. But before we get into what you should use, a couple of questions. What data are you looking at? Hopefully you already have a dataset that you're interested in. There are lots of places on the Web to find data. The above is a very small subset of what's available. Got your data? What's the purpose of your visualization? The next step is to figure out you're trying to do with your visualization. Again, what you decide here will affect what tool you should use. What Visualization Software to Use Now that you have the answers to those two questions in mind, we can make a decision on what will work best for you.
Viral Marketing Strategies: The Virality of Infographics An interesting phenomenon in some of the popular social news aggregators like Reddit, and Digg is the appearance of infographics. Well-designed infographics are like crack to Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon users. (Actually, while StumbleUpon is not my expertise — perhaps this is even more true of StumbleUpon since pictures do well over there). To illustrate this point I’m going to share a number of infographics, which also serves to familiarize you in the overall format and common themes. One of the more salient features that seem to be important that I notice is that data is represented graphically to scale at every opportunity. Anything with more than 600 votes is like… insane on fire, and almost certainly means it exploded on at least one other major site. Make sure to also read my post describing the aftermath of a Digg front page hit. … and also check out The Oatmeal — a popular webcomic that launched his career largely via websites like Digg and Reddit.
The 5 Best Free Tools For Making Slick Infographics It's not enough to simply write about data any longer; the world wants visuals. While there are many professional information designers making a name for themselves, such as Nicholas Felton of Feltron.com, the majority of these digital artists are up to their eyeballs in high-paying work. Where does this leave you? Well, if you want to spruce up your documents, blog posts, and presentations, there are some free tools online that can help. Many Eyes This IBM Research tool gives you two choices: an option to browse through existing sets of data, or use your own. Google Public Data Explorer Like IBM, Google has made a public version of one of its research tools. Hohli There are many occasions when a Venn Diagram is the perfect way to describe a concept or compare relationships among a few different things. Wordle Although this tool describes itself as a "toy" for generating word clouds, it can be an effective service to spruce up your work. Visual.ly Watch more Work Smart: [Images by Wordle]
Data Visualization Techniques The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. Rob and Duncan are currently in Seattle, with this week full of interviews of SEO consultants for our US office. Since the announcement in February, we have been working flat out with a bunch of new clients and dealing endlessly with the US immigration service. Anyone who has heard me speak will know about my love of data. I expect that everyone in SEO has spent at least some time recently thinking about data visualization techniques. Last week, I was approached by the FT to pull together some data for them about the use of the web (and social media in particular) across the UK's political parties as we approach the election. 1. Over the weekend, I had a bit of a think about what kind of data I wanted to be able to visualize. In order to answer any of these questions, I needed data, and lots of it. 2. 3. I'm not a designer. 4. 5. Source: LocateTV 6. 7.
Cool Infographics Tagxedo - Word Cloud with Styles 10 Outstanding Social Media Infographics Nobody has time to read anymore, right? Every day we are all inundated with more and more information overload coming from credible and yet to be verified sources. Where can Internet users find relief? Answer: the infographic. Update: Check out our infographic design services 1 – World Map of Social Networks Let’s start at the 50,000 foot view, shall we? (Source) 2 – Age Distribution on Social Network Sites Is age distribution targeting more your thing? (Source) 3 – Social Media Periodic Table of Elements As we previously reported, our friend and fellow Advertising Age Power 150 member Eyecube created another great visualization called the social media periodic table of elements: (Source) 4 – The Conversation Prism No social media infographic collection would be complete without Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism: 5 – The Boom of Social Sites Focus.com put together an outstanding visual showing both the size and timeline of social communities: (Source) 6 – Make Social Media Work For Your Company
Creative Examples Of Infographics - Noupe Design Blog Sep 29 2010 Today we have an exciting and enticing post which covers handy and innovative infographics. Infographics is basically derived from two words: ‘information’ and ‘graphics’, and it stands for the graphical representation of data and information. Data visualization techniques have been often used in modern maps to incorporate variety of information, for instance for network designs, destination points, and local landmarks. Stunningly Creative Infographics The Most Dangerous Cities for Walking What People are Doing Online Glass Half Empty: The Coming Water Wars Which Countries Have the Most Vacation? Bank Infographic Where Will the Next Volcano Erupt? On Driving: Automobile History The Current State of Twitter Software Wars Who Has Given the Most to Haiti The Social Media Effect An Infographic Guide to Buying Your Own Island SSSMOKIN! The Most Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs The Rise of Walking and Biking Subway Science: 500 Years of Great Scientists Resume Infographic Coffee Drinks Illustrated
5 Unbeatable Types of Infographic + Free Tools to Create Them An infographic (information graphic) has been a very effective way to bait for links and social media votes for ages. Like anything else, it can be done right or wrong (I am sure you have seen dozens of poorly implemented infographics by now and maybe a few really good ones). How to create a good one? The secret is in days (maybe months) of brainstorming. This post lists 5 unbeatable (when done right) types of infographics as well as free tools to help you put your ideas to life – enjoy! 1. As the periodic table hangs in thousands of classrooms all over the world, it has become a visual metaphor and serves now as a template for knowledge presentation in various niches and verticals. Examples: Tools and resources: Here’s a blank periodic table for you to fill out with any info you will be able to collect (quick tip for Photoshop dummies like myself: use the magic wand tool and click inside any cell to select the area inside it to edit it) 2. Tools and resources: 3. 4. 5. Further reading:
Infographic to Boot Up Your SEO! For any website to succeed, one must work a lot on it’s Search Engine Optimization. And when it comes to SEO, the most important part of SEO is Link Building. Link Building means getting relevant and a lot of quality backlinks to your website so that Google and other search engines rank your website higher in their search results. You may be spending a lot of hours in a day to build link for your website but have you ever wondered how many links should I build for my site, what kind of link building method should I use? Recently, I came across an Infographic at VerticalMeasures from a comment left by Kristi of Kikolani.com which quite perfectly answers all your questions on link building. The Infographic compares link building to drinking beer that is why you can see the Infographic has a theme of drinking and is aptly title “Linktoberfest! It tries to tell that link building is much like drinking. click thumbnail above to view full screen with rollovers Types of Links Content Distribution
Designing Quality Infographics: Tips, Resources and Inspiration Infographics are graphic visual representations of data and information. They come in extremely handy when you need to explain complex information, numbers or data rather quickly and effectively. Infographics are used worldwide from magazines to metro stations. A great infographic can render complicated information easily understandable and engrossing. Succinctness When creating an infographic your main goal is to answer a specific question or problem. The World’s Most Disastrous Oil Spills is the title for an infographic created by Travel Insurance. Creativity Ingenuity and design is what separates an infographic from the simple charts you see elsewhere. This graphic, supplied by Minicrane-Hire provides some information about the original UNIC mini-spidercrane, which is celebrating its 8th anniversary this year. Visualization You don’t want your infographic to be just plain text. This infographic by Rackscape is an outstanding example of visualization in infographics. Organization 1. 2.