The value of crafting a perfect story is next to none when it comes to content marketing. A powerful story has the capacity to capture the market and take them on a journey that they can relate to, creating a more receptive audience.
Storytelling is important because it creates an environment where people can immerse themselves in a story, empathise with characters, and actively engage in a narrative. A protagonist, a conflict, and a resolution, presented with a narrative arc create enticing stories for audiences to engage in.
Role of data visualisation in content marketing
Crafting the ideal story not only requires tact but also requires data and presentation. This is where data visualisation comes into play.
Data visualisation is the process in which complex data is organised and presented in a manner that is easily comprehensible. Taking these efforts to the next step, data storytelling incorporates both data visualisation and content marketing practices to craft informed narratives aligned with business objectives.
In the current business environment, utilising data visualisation in content marketing is a surefire way of crafting stories that are both compelling and insightful.
Selecting the right data
If you have decided to incorporate data visualisation insights into your content marketing strategy, one of the first focus points should be to analyse and choose the right data that match business objectives and address audience needs.
The process of choosing the right data can be simplified with the following steps:
- Establish key discussion points
Before engaging in the actual storytelling process, establish the key topics that you are hoping to discuss in the story. This will make the data-hunting process straightforward.
- Recognise the biases
Having a bias when telling the story is not an unusual development, however, recognising that bias is important. This will prevent you from cherry-picking data and devaluing your story.
- Look for interesting data points
A story where your audience is aware of everything you’re speaking of can get boring. When scouring data for your story, try to look for interesting data points that will draw their eyes.
Crafting the narrative
Now that you have identified the key data points and visualisations that can reinforce your story, it is time to craft the narrative. Keep the following in mind when doing so.
- Choose an appropriate format
There are many ways of presenting your story, from blog posts and ebooks to infographics and videos. Take your audience and the objective of the marketing effort into consideration when choosing the format.
- Balance the forms of media
From text, charts, and videos to interactive media, the possibilities are endless for presenting your story within the format you’ve chosen. Balance them out to create the best experience for the audience.
- Add context and interpretation
While presenting your data in a visualised format is helpful, providing context and interpretation to the visualisations adds much more value to the content. Leverage data analysis to provide useful insights.
Selecting the right data visualisations
In order to make sure that your efforts for data visualisation in content marketing are received with the expected enthusiasm, you should also ensure that you are using the right data visualisation techniques.
When choosing the ideal visualisation technique, these are the considerations you should make:
- What is the message you are trying to convey?
- What is the purpose of visualising data?
- What is the audience you are targeting?
- What is the type of data you’re working with?
Data visualisation generally takes the form of a comparison, composition, distribution, or relationship. The format, medium, and presentation methodology can be decided based on your answers to the above questions.
Use cases for data visualisation in storytelling
Some popular instances where data visualisation in content marketing is used for storytelling are:
Spotify
Spotify Wrapped, an annual summary of your music consumption, is a perfect example of how storytelling can be utilised in tandem with data visualisation to create an interesting, insightful, and exciting story.
Spotify utilises individual and app-wide listening data to create interesting visuals that map out a personalised musical journey of sorts for each user encouraging them to share it with each other, creating a global sensation every year.
Waze
Waze uses its crowdsourced data to create interesting visualisations, heat maps, and interactive dashboards that create captivating stories beyond their core functionality of individual navigation.
Waze’s data visualisations offer helpful information such as traffic patterns and congestion hotspots to its community.
Measuring the impact of storytelling with data visualisation
In addition to crafting the perfect story, data visualisation is also a major contributor to measuring and understanding its impact. Its role in analysis and reporting cannot be understated.
Data visualisation:
- Offers a comprehensive view of the impact
- Speeds up the decision-making process
- Simplifies knowledge-sharing
- Makes complex data more understandable,
To internal stakeholders. This will also help your content teams create more impactful stories going forward.
Enhance your storytelling with data visualisation in content marketing
Using well-defined data visualisation strategies to inform your content marketing efforts can enhance the stories you tell, creating enticing narratives that your audience will love.