To paraphrase from The Social Network a bit here, a million (words) isn’t cool, you know what’s cool? An infographic. Nowadays, people don’t have the time or energy to sit and plow through pages or screens of text; they want to be able to ingest information as quickly and easily as possible. Thankfully, with the recent rise of infographics (information graphics), what used to require an avalanche of stats or analyses to dissect, can now be interpreted and relayed into an easy-to-read, fun, and visually appealing schematic – an excellent content marketing concept! Indeed, you can use infographics to spruce up your different online assets (and again, avoid the monotony of text-only posts), such as your website, blog, email/newsletter, or your social network pages (Facebook, Pinterest…).

Listed below are 5 free (!) apps that allow you to start easily infographic-ing:

1. Visual.ly

Visual.ly hosts a large database of infographics created by other users, while allowing you to create your own in a matter of seconds and share it afterwards, no design skills required.

2. Easel.ly

While still technically in beta, Easel.ly is an incredibly easy-to-use application, as you can simply select a template (called “vheme,” short for “visual theme”), add some info, drag-and-drop elements to move them around et voila, you have a workable infographic.

3. infogr.am

While not as simple as Easel.ly, Infogr.am should also appeal to non-designers. It allows you to upload your data to the site, then translate it through static charts or complete interactive infographics using the tools’ different features, all in a smart interface that includes different options for displaying information.

4. Wordle

Describing itself as a “toy” for generating word clouds, Wordle can automatically generate a colorful design based on the content you provide (either from a URL or text you paste in), emphasizing the most commonly used words from your source. You can then put your own twist on it by playing with the fonts, colors or layouts. We created the image above with the words from our Marketing blog.

5. StatSilk

StatSilk offers both web-based and desktop client software that lets you create infographics using interactive, customizable and animated graphics, charts, maps and any other type of data visualization.

Are you using, or have you used of any tools not mentioned here? Share away in the comments!

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