Infographics are a stellar way to package interesting facts and information about a specific topic in a way that’s fun to read. In plain text, people probably wouldn’t actually take the time to read about a lot of facts. But in a fun infographic format, it can really go viral.

Here’s how to create viral infographics.

==> Researching Interesting Facts

Start with a topic you want to write about. Infographics can encompass just about any topic, from the frivolous (e.g. little known facts about beer) to the very serious (e.g. why did the housing bubble crash?)

Use Google, Wikipedia and your local library to find as many little-known facts about the topic as possible.

If you want, you can also try to piece all the facts together to form a story. Or, you can just put the facts together and have primarily a factual infographic.

==> Constructing the Infographic

Adobe Illustrator is likely the most popular application for constructing infographics. Illustrator is built for creating things like infographics which are basically lines.

Though you can use applications like Photoshop or GIMP to construct your infographic, you’re looking at a lot more work. That’s because these programs were built to handle pictures rather than lines.

In technical terms, Illustrator is vector based (lines), while Photoshop is raster based (pixels). Creating an infographic is primarily lines and text, which is much faster in Illustrator.

==> Adding Graphics

One of the things that makes infographics really fun to read is the graphics.

Use things like pie charts, photos of what you’re talking about and even hand illustrations if you have the artistic ability to really spice things up.

==> Adding a Dose of Personality

While strictly informational infographics can go viral if you’ve really got some shocking facts, your chances of getting your infographic to spread go up exponentially if you just add a bit of personality.

Add some humor. Make fun of something in your infographic. Do something out of the ordinary, or use funny or shocking pictures.

Add some personality. Add emotion to the infographic.

==> Getting Distribution

Infographics tend to spread very well on sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Post your infographic on these sites and hang around to respond to any comments.

Post your infographic to your list and/or blog. If you’re not already running a blog and you intend to keep producing infographics, you should probably look into creating one so your audience can follow your work.

Keep in mind that not every infographic will spread. But if you create five great infographics, chances are one or two will spread like wildfire. When one of these takes off on the social networks, the traffic surge can be positively massive.